Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Recommended I finished watching the show an hour ago and the finale made me cry a lot, but for some reason I don't feel this great loss now that its over. It had a positive take on dealing with death and didn't bog down the mood with depression porn and nihilistic rants. The group has decent chemistry, but with an 11 episode run time it could have done with elaborating on certain characters more. I had no sympathy for the blue haired girl or the brown haired honors student guy but I Poppo was a guy I'd like to talk with. Generally the characters are alittle less dimensional than I'd like, but still pretty good and attractive designs that fit the personality.

Interesting how surprised I was on the maybe ninth episode when everyone started muttering to themselves how, "This is it, we're sending her to heaven." and I realized, "Oh they're actually making this the ending." The story structure must not have clicked with me.

What's most unorthodox about this series is how it presents 6 children growing into teenagers that are quite different from how they were, but in such a way that is backed up through events. Anytime an anime is unorthodox it catches my attention. I won't be grieving this series because it's so short, but I liked relating to the friends and growing up.