「約束の大地」 (Yakusoku no Daichi)
“The Promised Land”

After the Christmas episode last time, it’s nice to see Niche clinging onto Lag’s arm again. Here, she accompanies him on a routine letter delivery which eventually mends the relationship between the sender and the recipient. Things were somewhat episodic, but at least Niche demonstrated some expert melee circle strafing for us.

As fun as that was to see, it was a bit strange having other human characters being the cause of problems. I’ve grown so accustomed to running into new Gaichuus every week that the idea of an evil tycoon forcibly taking over land to build a gambling house was the farthest thing from my mind. That being the case, it was a refreshing change watching Promessa Prometas (the sender) try to retrieve a letter containing experimental rapid-growth flower seeds he sent to Pistis, the woman he left behind five years ago. I couldn’t really stand the aforementioned tycoon Galador and his goon’s meddling to get Pistis’ land though, so it was nice to see them get victimized by Niche for drugging her, Lag, and Steak and stealing the letter.

Given the brevity of the story, it was a bit hard to get attached to any of the characters introduced here; however, I felt they did a decent job giving Promessa and Pistis a conclusive ending. (i.e. The two of them deciding to get married after Promessa kept his promise of giving Pistis a field full of flowers for her birthday.) Amidst all this, they were also able to reiterate how Lag can’t leave those he can help alone. Once Niche accidentally cut up the letter and Pistis didn’t want anything to do with Promessa anymore, Lag was well on his way to firing his shindan to clear things up. Lately, it’s been the universal fix for misunderstandings, so I’m actually quite pleased he didn’t have to use it here — it’s just too easy of a solution.

Overall, this week’s showing was all right despite feeling a bit episodic like I mentioned above. Up until now, none of the previous episodes have really felt as such, so I’m curious as to whether we’re in store for more. Personally, I’d like to see things focus more on Lag’s journey to find Gauche, but I understand that he needs some character growth before getting there. Question is, just how many of these character growth type episodes will there be?

* The broadcast is taking a week off. Episode 14 will air on January 9th, 2010.

 

Preview

18 Comments

  1. Dissapointed!!!…just the episode though, not d anime

    BUT! thx to this episode , i finally appreciated the character designs in this anime… its all thx 2 d red haired chick whos prolly in her late 20s..

    still it was disappointing, even d previous preview bout this ep looked disappointing….

    neways, the preview stikes my interest a bit..

    Alec
  2. @dmo: true if you consider how the mail he’s delivered so far either ends up muddy or ripped and torn. XD but it’s the earnestness that counts and I find it awfully sweet and funny whenever he’s so apologetic.

    MsF
  3. well at least Lag did some development, he was able to cry very discreetly at the end instead of the wail we are used to. Maybe the past two episode are filler-like due to the holidays and will pick up again next year.

    Island Esper
  4. gotta go wit “Alec” on this one, true i enjoyed it and lord know its the awesomeness that is niche that keeps me here, BUT are we ever gonna get to an actual serious plot here?
    we need some conspiracy, some cliff-hangers, SOMETHING. i know that its a little late in the game “ep13” but we’ll see.
    and yes “dmo” he is quite terrible, if he was my mailman I’d be default on all my loans…”What’da ya mean you sliced my bill in half!?!?!!”

    BROOKLYN otaku
  5. Haha, I don’t think Lag is a wonderful mailman yet. He’s too naive… maybe I’m an unsociable pessimist, but was it necessary to tell your letter’s destination to some random person you met.

    Niche is adorable, and the next episode looks pretty interesting.

    Veee
  6. Pretty poor episode.
    I wonder how long this series will be?
    I only thought it was gonna be 13 eps but clearly not.
    Guess they could really stretch it out due to the nature of the plot, but they’d need to make the deliveries more exciting than the one in this ep.

    blinx01
  7. Niche is my favorite anime character this season (along with Sawako from Kimi Ni Todake). I would be ok with watching a series with HER as the main character instead of as a sidekick.

    Splash
  8. I’m kind of wondering why they needed to use fillers, since there’s plenty of material in the manga to keep the anime going for a while. Unless they mean to keep it ongoing like with other shonen jump/SQ series like Bleach and Naruto…? 😀

    I’m still looking forwards to actual Plot coming up, but with a series like this, it’s easy to come up with episodic fillers in case they need to let the manga get ahead, so it’s understandable that something like this would be the result. I’m personally okay with the episode, since it could have been much worse.

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