Review of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

This show isn't necessarily bad. It's a decent show that worth the watch even if you, like me, have found a few issues with the story the show was trying to tell and the way the directors and studio went around it, even if your opinion on why it wasn't so good differs from mine. The show managed to do two things that I heavily dislike. My first issue was with the characters ages. Supposedly, the characters where 12 when Menma passed away and then when they all come together again to talk about Jinta's problem with seeing her, they are around 17. I know as childrenyou would be somewhat traumatised by this, but after five years you would assume most of them would have got over it, and would not still be complaining about childish crushes and who loved someone more. Also, the show makes the characters appear that they have all gone separate ways and grown up, but later reveal that they haven't gotten over the troubles of the past. My issues with this are that their emotions almost seem fake, and in one of the last scenes, I thought that the moment dragged and that the characters were over emotional, where at that age they would be far more mature about Menma's death after five years of already grieving her.

Secondly, one of the characters referred to themselves in third person. I understand why Menma referred to herself using her own name during the entire show, and this was one of the more interesting unnoticed things about the show. She was referring to her past self when she was alive, which is why she says her own name before talking about her feelings, as she acknowledges that she doesn't exist, and any emotions she has are only that of the Menma that was alive. This is deep I know, however, I still can't hide the fact that I found it irritating as I found that it was overused and a bit too childish for someone of 17.

Personally, I think that the show should have made the characters either 13 to 14 as the incident would still be fresh in their mind and I would have felt more compassion to the characters and would have understood their grief and tendencies to be overdramatic. I felt that this show was emotional, but not as much as it could have been if the show thought about the characters and how dramatic the age difference between Menma's death, and when the show was set, was. I would have felt a lot more sympathy if the characters would have seen her die or contributed more to her death, because then I think that it would have made for a much deeper psychological show, rather than unnecessarily emphasising characters emotions.

(apologies if I offended everyone this is just my opinion)