Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

At the time of this review, I have watched Anohana three times now. And it's amazing how many ways you can look at the same content and try to understand some of the characters you didn't quite get in the first place. Anohana, at least to me, is something much needed in the selection of anime we have out there. It doesn't try to over-complicate the plot and I rather enjoy that. What we get is a simple premise with the focus being more on the characters. I never found the story getting too ridiculous for me to to enjoy, in fact, it alwayskept a good pace and every single episode made me very much excited for the next one. I never found myself bored and there were moments where I would genuinely smile, laugh, or cry. But what stood out to me the most were the themes. While this show is a drama and yes there is romance, at the end of the day it's all about working towards your friendships and being able to put your childish feelings aside. That being said however, I can understand how the romance can be shown as melodramatic and I would be lying if I said I didn't find any of it unnecessary. But I think people are a little too harsh on it as many say this melodrama makes it much less than what it should be. Originally I would have agreed with these claims but the more I look at it, romance wasn't the focus, it was getting over the melodrama and the selfish feelings and redefining love so that it extends to friends as well. The show by the end basically tells us that no matter how we feel, we can always love our friends equally and that relationship will last as long as we keep fighting to maintain it. As I'm at a point in my life where all my friends are starting to live far away, I felt like I watched this at a good time as it was just a nice thought to end the show with. Overall I thought the story was excellent.
The art for this show while not the most amazing, does look very nice. The characters are very expressive and the environments are colorful and easy on the eyes. There's not really much to say honestly except that A-1 pictures did a great job.
Now for the music; I could listen to this soundtrack over and over again. It's not grand or anything, most of it is actually played on a piano which is an instrument that is always welcome to my ears. The pieces are simple yet very effective and they make the scenes that they are in so much better. The opening is a song I always listen to and I never skip it. I would say it is probably one of my favorite anime openings as far as the song goes.
Character-wise, this is a bit hard for me to talk about. This is because I understand that there are some people out there that dislike Menma (who is the ghost in the show). She's not a bad character exactly but depending on the person, you may or may not find her annoying. As for myself, I never had a problem with her, in fact I found her to be endearing. To me she embodies the purity of childhood and I think that's what the show intended her to be. At the same time she can be very childlike, talking in silly manners and what-not but really I don't think she overstays her welcome. Now there is one character that always bothers me whenever I rewatch the series and that would be the character of Yukiatsu. I can't say much without spoiling anything so I will just say this: he has a bit of a creepy hobby and he can be incredibly selfish. If Menma's child-like, then he is childish because I find him incredibly petty too. That being said, I don't hate him as much as I used to anymore but I do still find him to be a bit of a flaw in an otherwise exceptional show. Now with all this in mind, some characters will indeed get much more screentime than others and in retrospect, yes I wish some were given more time in the spotlight but I am happy with what I got and I didn't feel like they were completely ignored.
This is one of if not my favorite anime, it's one of those ones I keep wanting to revisit. Every time I watch it I keep trying to put myself in every character's shoes and try to understand where they're coming from. In my opinion they can be very human and I enjoy that because they don't exactly stick with one character archetype. And usually the more I think about this show when I'm watching it, the more I tend to enjoy it and the message it is conveying. This is one that I would recommend to people who feel that anime can be too over the top sometimes and want something a bit more realistic and humble. It has its shortcomings but I find most of them forgivable, nothing truly is perfect. Overall this anime gets a 9/10 for me and I think it deserves it.