Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Here's what the directors told Menma- "Menma we know you can touch and hold things and even write. But don't you dare do so till 2/3rd of the series is already over, because we are absolutely incapable of creating any drama without everybody disbelieving Jinta." AnoHana has a brilliant premise- a teenager unable to cope with the death of his childhood friend is now hallucinating about her. He reaches out to their former friends, each with their own separate life now, who reluctantly agree to indulge in his delusions because they too have not entirely gotten over the trauma. The series is in an uniqueposition to explore trauma, grief, friendship dynamics, guilt and schizophrenia. But all that is flushed down the toilet as Menma is an actual spirit who comes back to the world to make her unfulfilled desires come true. The series never explains where Menma was all this time or why only Jinta can see her. She literally haunts him to the point of driving him crazy till he agrees to fulfil her wish. Not as innocent as she seems, huh? She has no desire to communicate with her family, even though her mother has clearly gone off the rails, and is satisfied simply goofing off with her friends. She knows that she is dead yet never tries to understand her current nature or exercise her abilities or even figure out whether or not she has any abilities. She just magically knows that she needs a wish fulfilled, a wish that she has no clue of. The series doesn't care to explain how Menma knew she was dead or what her reactions to this are. She has a perfectly functional mind yet the experience of dying and coming back seems to have zero effect on her psyche. Her body has grown yet her "mind" hasn't, proving that the creators have no awareness of modern science.

Now comes Jinta, who keeps on pleading people to believe him instead of just handing Menma something. The rest of the equally idiotic group has no reaction whatsoever to discovering Menma's actual existence. They just accept it without any kind of shock or awe. They don't question the nature of their reality or try to figure out if more spirits are there. They are not even scared of the possible existence of other spirits. Brilliant potential once again wasted. They never try to understand why Menma is still here or how the spirit world operates. They never even ask Menma how exactly she died or how it feels to just come back as a ghost. Just imagine how you would react if a dead friend of yours just came back as a spirit and tried to communicate with you, and you'll realize how absurdly ridiculous all the characters are (unless, of course, you too are absurdly ridiculous). Ditto reaction to learning of Yukiatsu's night-time masquerades as Menma. All of them just wallow in their guilt and try their best to make viewers cry without succeeding even once. In the end they just all bawl together and scream out their feelings because what else are anime characters supposed to do?

The story foregoes any real emotional depth to make all of them into immature, possibly retarded kids who have only two driving forces in life- i) "I killed Menma and I am so guilty", and ii) "I am eternally in love with this person and pledge my life to his/her happiness in the most melodramatic animeish way possible." The characters' emotional reactions are all about crushes and petty jealousy, as if losing a friend to an accident and seeing her ghost is not enough trauma in itself! Menma's only purpose is to get Jinta back on his feet and help her friends rekindle their friendship and get over their trauma. This is Jinta's wishful thinking- that everybody is just as miserable as he is and that someday everyone will reunite and he'll be the leader again. Only, as per the story Menma is not a hallucination, but an actual spirit whose sole purpose for existing is to fulfil Jinta's fantasies. She doesn't even care to say goodbye to her brother who came to the fireworks show, forget her parents. The asshole friends doesn't care to tell him of his sister either. The story is basically Jinta's unfulfilled desires (not Menma's) playing out where he regains all his friends, gets Menma's love, gets to be the leader of the group once again and gets a hold on his life as he rejoins school. Don't you just hate it when an entire series and all the events and characters are designed solely to fulfill the protagonist's (read writer's) fantasies?

Without getting into all the logical fallacies and the total rejection of common sense that the show exhibits, I'll just talk about the world-building a bit. If spirits with unfulfilled desires wander the earth there should be more spirits out there. Can Menma see those spirits or interact with them? Where do the spirits whose wish remain unfulfilled go? Every human has tons of unfulfilled desires, so which desire gets selected as the one to be fulfilled? Do all spirits interact with living humans? How does Menma eat? Does the food vanish into another dimension or can she actually digest, thus being corporeal? Let's not even get into how spirits with memories and emotions is incompatible with modern science. The show doesn't even try to maintain an internal logic. If ghosts do exist then there would be reports and accounts of it. Some people will inevitably come forward with their encounters regardless of how hard they get ridiculed. Why did nobody ever try finding such reports and understanding what's going on? Oh wait, all the characters are idiots!

One thing AnoHana gets right though- the suddenness with which death can arrive. No reason, no mistake, no catastrophe- just a simple slip and fall, and a person is no more. Menma's mother's obsession, her questioning the world and hating other children growing up is perfectly understandable. This side too has been left unexplored for a predictable one-dimensional story. If you wish to see something substantial watch Gakkougurashi.