Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

I just want to make one thing perfectly clear; I am not very good at expressing emotion. As such, I come off as a very dry individual. That's definitely something to keep in mind while reading this review, because it generally establishes just how thick and full of emotion this particular anime is and how strongly it comes off recommened for those who want a good, and really sad, anime. Let's dive in. Dealing with a death is, without a doubt, one of the hardest things an individual can deal with, especially when it's the death of someone close. There's your story, folks. Menma, the femaleprotagonist, has died and has come back to "haunt", for lack of a better term, our male protagonist. I say haunt figuratively because that's not her intention at all but ultimately, that's the pain she makes the characters feel, for they were all close friends with Menma. Our male hero feels that he has loose ends to tie and tries to send her back to heaven happily by fullfilling a wish of hers. He tries to get her other childhood friends involved, but they cannot see her. And ladies and gentlemen, here's one of the strong points of this anime; its power. Because they can't see her, this generally opens up to some of the most powerful scenes I've ever had the pleasure to see.

The characters either loved her, or envied her to no end and you can absolutely feel the tension in the situation. Some of these things had me on my knees with just how strong they were and how relateable. The ends you'd go to, to avenge the one you love, it's absolutely crazy how relateable and well executed it was. I absolutely loved it.

The characters themselves were perhaps the strongest point here. Like I said before, you can feel how badly they feel about Menma dying and because they can't see her, it kind of kills most of them inside, I say most because SORRY NO SPOILERS WATCH IT FOR YOURSELF. Anyhow, there wasn't one bad character. They each changed from when they were children and you either love them or love to hate them, there's no way in between. I very rarely say that. I even liked the clashing of egos, which is really hard for me to like. I was able to connect with almost every character, and not one character is dry, nor dull.

There wasn't a point in this anime where I thought to myself "Jeez, can we PLEASE get to the point? This is too freaking melodramatic!" I thought that was really good and just added to my enjoyment for this show. When an anime is over and i'm crying like a baby not just because of what happened but moreso BECAUSE it ended, I think the anime did it's job quite nicely. How dare the younger male lead call Menma UGLY...