Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Before this season, A-1 pictures has done little worth noting for me, but when I saw the synopsis for this anime coupled with the fact that it landed a notamina block spot, I was certain that this was going to be a winner. The first episode was emotionally riveting, and surely I knew we were in for something a little special this season. I've always enjoyed stories that manage to make connections to you personally. To me that's one of Ano Hana's greatest strength, its ability to pull on one's nostalgic chords. The whole story about old friends split apart (And in this case it's about somethingemotionally traumatic for the group) and managing to come back together and move on was a fairly straight forward, but effective means of drawing interest from the viewers. Most of if not all of us have probably gone through similar experiences where we split with old friends for one reason or another, and I'm sure many of us have thought about those so called "glory days" as well. In that regard, it managed to make an emotional connection with me from the synopsis alone.

However, this strength may also be Ano Hana's greatest weakness. Due the nature of having to follow the series intermittently week by week, and the fact that the series drives an emotional punch right from the start, there were many moments throughout the anime which failed to elicit the proper sympathetic response. No, one does not necessarily have to tear up or anything, as I never expected that sort of emotionally involving standard, but the anime still should be able to properly maintain the emotional involvement that it started with.

The series was weakest on this front during the middle portions of the story. However, I felt they managed to come full circle by the end, so Ano Hana gets points from me there. Though I will say that the last episode could have been a tad less melodramatic.

Perhaps not necessarily secondary to this strength/weakness though is Ano Hana's characters. Almost everyone in the group was developed extremely well, and each had their own little story, and each had their own problems and frustrations. Couple this with the fact that there's actually 3 guys and 3 girls in the Super Peace Busters instead of the usual harem or 4-5 girl ensemble, and it provided a much more interesting composition of characters in the main cast than you'd typically see in any other kind of show.

Really, the first thing a story should always do after creating the premise to make sure you have characters worth caring about. None of these stock cardboard cut out archetype characters that can't stand up on their own when compared to all the other stock cardboard cut out archetype characters. There needs to be some sort of substance, something more to see that just their quirky personality traits.

And no, it's not simply about giving them some sort of dramatic past like "my parents died in an accident, or my family, or my friend," and then showing them to be sad or distraught. Sure you can throw details like that into any story, but if you don't manage to successfully detail each character's personality, their woes and likes, how they respond to different events, why they think a certain way, then it's hard to understand what these characters even really think about in the end.

While melodrama and magical realism has been done to a certain extent before (See KEY animes), I feel like Ano Hana manages to separate itself and its narrative significantly. One large reason being the length of it, but also the type of story it wants to tell. Melodrama doesn't define a narrative, and people shouldn't try to pin Ano Hana as a story about cheap emotional involvement. I always felt it had a genuine and honest feeling to its story, something that shines true all the way to the end no matter how sappy it got.

That's probably the best word to describe Ano Hana, genuine.

I fully recommend the story to anyone who can accept the premise as is and whose sole goal isn't to make themselves cry. Ano Hana is a story that is more about the journey than the destination.