Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

This one was high on my list for awhile, and I finally got around to binge-watching it. It was somewhat as I expected: A well-made slice of life, good overall, but a little melodramatic. Anohana is about five high schoolers who are all still dealing with the grief and damage they took from the death of their friend, Menma, ten years ago. The main character, Jintan, has become a shut-in following Menma's death; each of the other characters has his or her own issues to deal with. One day, Menma reappears to Jintan as a silly, waifish ghost. Jintan immediately assumes he'shallucinating, but eventually accepts that she's real and starts trying to grant "her wish" to get her off to heaven where she belongs. This requires reuniting with his other estranged friends--and we're off. Prepare for heavy feels.

As a character piece, it works well--each character is well-defined and has a different kind of damage from dealing with his/her grief, expressed through different dysfunctions in their continuing lives. The show spends much of its time gently explaining how each of them has reacted to Menma's death, and the ways in which it has twisted their lives.

Where Anohana falters a little is in using romantic tension too much to generate drama and drive the characters. The writers place Menma at the center of a huge love triangle... quadrangle... pentangle? The point is, too many of these characters are in unrequited love with each other. This isn't that unusual for teenagers, but even still, it's a bit overdone. What's really weird is--and I looked it up--how there were all these deep romantic feelings going on when they were SIX, in the show's flashback scenes. Some people do get crushes at that age, while barely understanding what it means to have a crush, but Anohana takes it much further than the way I've ever seen any six year old feel or behave.

This would have been easily solved if the protagonists had been around 4 years older instead when Menma died--and it wouldn't have changed anything about the show except the character design in the flashbacks--but for whatever reason, they didn't go that route.

Beyond that issue, I still feel like all the love triangles were too much regardless. It's okay for people to just be friends and to have deep emotions about the loss of a friend. With the exception of Poppo, every character's trauma is tied up in romantic feelings relating in some way to Menma. That's unnecessary, and hitting only one note like that is the very definition of "melodrama".

But there were many things to love about the series. Even though the writers didn't seem to know any other notes besides "unrequited love", they definitely expressed that note in different ways with each character. And the way it all unfolds is delicate and well-paced.

The animation is beautiful, with probably the least amount of cost-cutting filler I've ever seen from an anime TV series. They could get away with this by reusing the same locations many times, but it's still nice to not have those moments where they ran out of money and had to use a still image which plague so many other shows.

The emotional climaxes hit the right notes. A little too much screaming and bawling, but the bones of each scene were good, so I can excuse it for the most part.

All in all, definitely worth a watch, especially for only, what, eleven episodes? You can binge it in a sitting without too much trouble, and you'll feel some feels and maybe even cry a few tears. Eight out of ten.