Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

What is holding back Anohana from being a classic in the Slice of Life anime category? Two major things. 1. The Wish The entire premise of the plot of Anohana is that Menma has returned to the Earth, hoping to have her one wish granted. Over the course of the show, you as a viewer start to try to guess what the grand wish would be. Jinta going to school? Nope. Peace Busters becoming friends again? Too cliche.. How about.... Jinta cries. Yep. Thats what they went with. Truly one of the worst ways the wish plot question could have gone. It would have made much moresense if it was more vague like " Jinta opens up to others". The problem with the wish they went with is, the entire rest of the cast is useless. They serve no purpose to this wish. Not including the group of six within Menma's reason for coming back was a huge miss.

2. The Romance Pentagram

I cant believe more people dont critic this part of the show. Six main characters, with five of them having some type of feelings for another of them. The unrequited love of Yukiatsu and Anaru worked extremely well, and the emotional appeal was there. However, it just became corny and borderline hard to watch when they started just throwing in random love interests. The shy girl with the glasses had no reason to be in love with Yukiatsu. Menma also had shown no true feelings for Jinta over the course of the show, so dropping the " i wanna be your wife " was unrewarding.

Anohana up until the final episode was amazing. The animation was something of the most consistent, high quality I have ever seen in an anime that isnt ufotable or kyoto. All of the songs throughout are memorable and emotional. As with a lot of A-1 Productions however, the ending fell flat. The final couple minutes were great and all, but that doesnt excuse how laughable the first 10 minutes of the final episode were.