Shigofumi
Shigofumi is a masterfully mediocre anime. The premise is pretty interesting, "Fumika is a mailman from the underworld, tasked to deliver the last letter of the recently departed to a person of their choice". It sounds similar to Hell Girl or any other anime dealing with connecting the underworld to the world of the living that came around the time Shigofumi did, except it falls into the type of anime that panders to otaku a bit more.
Shigofumi doesn't do much with the cool concept. For the first few episodes it follows a dead person of the week formula, which is what I expected wholeheartedly, but you'll begin to notice the death part is often times forced and cheesy and seems to be something that merely has to happen so the dead person could send their message to whomever. One would usually expect from these anime that through her adventures Fumiko either continues alone with her sidekick, or develops a cast of reoccurring side characters. If the anime had multiple seasons you could imagine all of the reoccurring side characters, including Fumika, getting some kind of an extra backstory and char development being spread out through the dead person of the week formula.
An interesting narrative twist happens however, which is that when the steady cast of side characters is developed early on, they are connected to Fumika's past in some way. By barely the mid point of the 13 ep anime we're already fully fleshing out Fumika's backstory, and we stop with the whole shigofumi NONSENSE, instead focusing on Fumika's past entirely. All this had me feeling like what was the point of the shigofumi at all? Like why even bother setting it up, when it takes up so little time in the story?
That's not to say I hated this anime or thought it was completely shit, I liked it in a trainwreck kind of way. I was only kind of surprised that the main premise of the anime was very obviously put on the backburner in favor of the main characters tragic backstory. Which... is so out of nowhere that I actually found it incredibly entertaining, especially because of Fumika's personality and demeanor. This is why the first climax that comes around episode 7 or so was the peak of the show for me. Sadly, the most original part of the anime, the underworld and the logistics and rules behind the delivery of letters from the departed gets the least amount of attention...
Plot and ending spoilers
Prepare for an exhausting paragraph...
We learn that the underworld mailmen are all supposed to be dead and basically aren't supposed to age, but Fumika's eternal loli coworker mentions how Fumika is clearly growing. Well, that's because Fumika is alive! And her "body" is actually comatose, in a hospital! Afterwards, we find out that one of the random schoolboys from one of the first episodes is actually Fumika's former middle school classmate that crushed on her, and he has seen Fumika in her mailman form, prompting him to start researching about her whereabouts. We find out Fumika initially went comatose after shooting her abusive father, she collapsed and fell into a coma or something (this anime isn't exactly known for medical accuracy). Who is her father? Why, he is a famous poet known for being obsessed with beauty! He would torture Fumika by writing poetry with a glass pen on her body, which caused Fumika to develop a split personality. Her split personality... is the mailman form. The REAL Fumika is actually asleep. Meanwhile, Fumika's dad's publisher wants him to start writing again despite knowing about the abuse, but they know that since his muse is comatose getting him to write has been impossible. Because of that combined with the fact that they don't want to experience more shame in not being able to get him to write they assign him a new inexperienced editor knowing that she'll likely fail, this editor being a "fresh" employee of "only" a couple of years that consisted of her working as a glorified secretary (i loved her, best character) whose younger sister is also Fumika's former middle school classmate, and she of course crushed on the guy that crushed on Fumika. I don't remember anyone's names. Together the three of these side characters happen to find themselves in Fumika's dad's house in a great showdown of them confronting him for his crimes, and Fumika joins them as well. Well wasn't that something?
There's just something hilarious about this whole setup. Some other things I liked were how the publishing company is so soulless LMAO it seems like the author REALLY doesn't like publishers. Fumika's dad was actually a compelling and kind of funny villain, I loved the way he was portrayed as a giant retarded manchild. The appearance of Fumika's mom in the last episode made her family situation doubly tragic (and kind of funny to me idk) because she's ALSO a massive asshole lmfao. One would expect for her mother to also be a tragic figure, but the anime blindsides you by making her a shitty parent too which you know what? Cool.
One thing that confused me was Fumika's eternal loli coworker, Chiaki. Chiaki looks like a pretty young girl, but according to her backstory she's.... she's actually an adult? All of the flashbacks of her and her boyfriend looked insane because she legit looks 12 and her bf looks like a regular adult. Just, baffling character design all around.
The other half of the anime deals with Fumika wanting to be killed by her original self when she wakes up, Fumika's friends want her to not do it, they try to prevent it, and it all turns out ok in the end with both Fumikas continuing to live their lives, Fumika the og as a normal high school girl, and Fumika the underworld mailman. The end.
I didn't enjoy the other half of the anime much because I felt like it was obvious what will happen, and compared to the wild ride that was the mid point of the anime all the excitement deflated.