Story and Art by Hiroyuki Asada
Viz, 328 pp.
Rating: Teen

Gauche Suede is a Letter Bee, a mail carrier in the world of Amberground. He travels from place to place, carrying letters across the hostile, night-shrouded wilderness far from the safety of the artificial sun that hangs over the capital city of Akatsuki. On this particular journey his delivery isn’t a letter at all, but a mysterious young child by the name of Lag Seeing.

Tegami Bachi starts off well enough, depicting the journey of Gauche Suede as he attempts to deliver Lag Seeing, a young boy who was apparently abandoned to the mail system for reasons unknown. The journey the two undertake is a nice introduction to the setting of the series, giving us the basics of the world and the creatures and more that inhabit it. Sadly, it soon goes off the rails as it jumps forward several years and switches the focus. Lag Seeing, now a teenager, takes center stage as he embarks on his journey to join the Letter Bees, having been inspired by Gauche all those years back.

Unfortunately, he’s not as interesting as Gauche and things get creepy when he finds a nameless child who’s also labeled as mail to be delivered. Much like with Lag, there’s more to her than meets the eye, and by the end of the volume she joins up with him as his sidekick and accepts his name for her, Niche. Bizarrely enough, she seems to be portrayed as some sort freakish sexual fantasy given form. She looks to be twelve at the most and hates wearing underwear. She also makes several comments about how none of the other men ever made her wear underwear. In addition to this, she’s shown chained and topless, and at one point mounts Lag and begins lapping at his face like a dog. It’s supposed to be a touching and emotional moment but was just creepy and pervy instead. She really makes the second half of the book a weird read. It doesn’t help matters that Lag comes across as your typical upbeat shonen stock character, complete with a secret that grants him powerful abilities.

The opening full-color pages are lovely and had me wishing that they’d published the entire book in color. The purples and blues did a fantastic job at evoking a surreal fairy tale and twilight feeling. The character designs, Niche aside, are okay and I do rather like Gauche’s appearance and the general Letter Bee uniform itself. Asada’s art is very busy and detailed to the point of feeling cluttered. Far too often do characters, word bubbles and sound effects bleed into neighboring panels, making the book an incredibly cluttered and messy read. It could just be me, but I think Asada’s work might actually look better in a larger format where everything has a bit more room to breathe.

I’m not quite sure what to think of Tegami Bachi. The world and setting seem interesting, intriguing and unique, but Lag just couldn’t hold my attention in the second half of the book and the portrayal of Niche is just creepy in the extreme. I’m sure it’ll find an audience, though, since it seems to have all the ingredients that make a shonen series popular.

Volume one Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee is available now.