Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

This is a series about death and the effect it has on the living. I’ve seen anime that deal with death before. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of anime that deal with death before. But what makes this one different is how it focuses not on one person’s struggle to find meaning again, but on the devastating effects it has on a group of friends. After Honma’s tragic death her social circle basically disbanded, everyone going their own separate ways and dealing with their grief in different unhealthy ways. Jinta’s the most extreme case, living now as a listless shut-in, but everyone else struggles intheir own way from running away to foreign lands to actually buying similar clothes to feel closer to her.

And it goes even deeper than that because these guys also have to deal with their feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Honma was the popular one who everyone loved. And this means that there was a rivalry among the boys and jealousy among the girls. And now that she’s dead they can’t admit to those feelings without feeling like awful human beings. Instead they take it out on each other and on themselves.

I really enjoyed the social dynamics here. The characters really felt like an old group of friends who’d lost touch with each other. And their individual reactions felt genuine. It’s a hard thing to pull off. The progression throughout isn’t a straightforward one of moving on from loss. The fact that Honma is back, and worse that she’s only visible to Jinta, just makes everything worse. The guys get jealous of Jinta’s new closeness and Jinta starts to feel like he can hang onto Honma even beyond the grave. And while they are uniting to sent Honma on her way these fissures are also tearing them apart.

I really liked all the characters here, with one exception. Unfortunately it’s a big exception. I found Honma impossibly annoying. She’s got a lot of that irritatingly helpless kawaii that Japan loves so much, but she’s also childish beyond all belief. I get it, she’s the ghost of a child (though somehow she’s still aged) but even for a child she has no attention span, does stupid things, and always has to be the center of attention. It gets very annoying. And that is a big problem because for the story to really work you have to fall in love with her a little. The depth of the other characters got me over that hurdle, but it still rankles. The final episode is also unimpressive. I mean, it was fine. It just could have been more. I’m not really surprised that what she needed was something so small and childish, but the emotional climax of the show should have been more engrossing than just checking off points on a list.