Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

*Brief review.* A real tear-jerker, and not necessarily in a good way. The plot involves a group of friends who fell out as children after one of their club members tragically died. Years later, the dead girl reappears as a ghost, in need of some help in order to move into the real after-life properly. The characters are (mostly) well-realized, extremely well acted, and the art is simply gorgeous--none of which saves this well-intentioned series from itself as it begins bludgeoning you with sadness as if with a blunt weapon in the last episode. While the previous episodes do an alright job of bringing the feelswithout ever coming across as *too* manipulative, the final episode drops all pretense of subtlety and hammers away relentlessly, right up to the point of narminess. Things are even worse if you don't have a high tolerance for teenage waterworks. That said, the emotions throughout feel genuine, and, while a little coolness and restraint would have gone a long ways toward making this a more enjoyable experience, one can't deny the power of some of the revelations that do crop up throughout.

All in all it's something of a mixed bag. It looks and sounds gorgeous, and when it isn't pushing over-the-top sentimentality (did Spielberg have a hand in this, lawl?) it works very well. There's still one more major flaw, however: above I mentioned that the characters are mostly well-realized, so it's unfortunate that the ghost girl herself is the flattest character, and her cute appearance and attitude are frequently overbearing. Still, if you've got a taste for blunt cathartic bitter-sweetness you'll probably like this one a lot more than I did. I did still appreciate my time with it, and there were enough scenes of genuine power that I'd still recommend it to most people--for my part though, any recommendation I give I'll give with some reservations.