Anime: Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai was the surprise hit of the Summer 2011 season, beating every other show from that season in the rankings on several fan websites, including this one, and getting a very close second in sales to Tiger and Bunny. Its creator recently won the Animation Kobe Individual Award, and as of September 2011 it’s still on the first page on MAL. It’s an intensely emotional story with a few undeniable strengths and a strong start, but suffers from a number of glaring flaws in characterization and plot development; in the end I disliked it. This review ended up being basically an episode by episode summary, not really the best way to do a review, but I thought it worked for this show. I went into it with high expectations that only rose after watching the second episode, and I think this format helped show how a talented team of the director, voice actors, and artists was weighed down by writing that, whatever brief flashes of brilliance it may have had, failed in the most basic tasks of creating a coherent story with believable characters and ended up ruining the entire show.

The first episode was solid, introducing Jintan, our moody, teenage protagonist; his father, who says “kawaii!” more often the worst fangirl-stereotype; and Menma, a ghost or something who used to be Jintan's childhood friend and has returned to our world to get her wish granted. Apparently no one except Jintan can see her, but does have a physical presence. Not the most original story ever, but it sounds good enough and just a few minutes in I'm already impressed by the art and animation. Menma acts like a child and it really wears on Jintan (and me), he suggests that she’s a manifestation of the summer heat. But of course it can’t be helped and Jintan asks her about her wish, and it turns out that Menma doesn't remember what it is! So that’s going to be the plot of the whole show, finding out Menma’s wish and then granting it. Sounds like we’re going to have one of those clichéd, cheesy, overdone and somehow still so moving endings that anime often does well.
We're then introduced to Jintan’s former friends: Anaru, a red-headed girl with a harsh personality, and Tsuruko and Yukiatsu, two serious-seeming former friends of Jintan’s who seem to have an equally harsh attitude towards him. We also discover he’s recently become a hikikomori. Maybe he's somehow responsible for Menma's death? Maybe everyone else in the town knows it, it would explain why everyone seems to hate him, and why he doesn’t want to leave his house. I’m already imagining a glorious climax where Jintan changes his hikikomori ways, is accepted by the town, confronts his own feelings of guilt, and to top it all off, gets a very nice romantic ending that makes the awful childhood friend cliché work.

If only. We get a flashback to the cast’s elementary school days. They’re in a clubhouse, and one of them asks Jintan if he likes Menma, and Jintan responds like any grade school boy would. This makes Menma oh so very sad and she runs out of the clubhouse. Jintan feels bad and decides to apologize, but Menma dies in an accident before he’s able to. Back in the present Menma has left Jintan’s house to visit her parents and Jintan decides to look for her and apologize. While looking for her he goes to the clubhouse and finds the last of his five old friends, Poppo. He doesn’t seem to dislike Jintan at all, and come to think of it, isn’t Anaru an obvious tsundere? It was starting to sound a lot less interesting, and then the ED played and any doubt I had about this show evaporated. The ED theme itself is excellent and the way it always begins at exactly the right time is a wonderful touch, it really heightens the mood.

The second episode seemed very good. It started on a bad note, with Poppo instantly believing that Jintan has seen the ghost of his dead friend, and has another pretty soon, when Poppo suggests that Menma’s wish to catch a rare “Nokemon.” Poppo, Jintan, and Menma went to a video store to buy an old Nokemon game and it turns out Anaru works there! She was at least somewhat skeptical of Jintan’s crazy story, but she showed her deredere side and the four of them go to Anaru’s house to play video games. Menma was very impressed by Anaru’s room, which is full of video games and manga, just like when they were kids. It’s hard to make something like playing Pokémon be interesting on the screen, but this episode succeeded at it. The sense of nostalgia for their carefree childhood was expressed very well, and the annoying requirement to trade with another cartridge to get certain “Nokemon” is used to make the same trite, childish, and unforgettable point about the importance of friendship that children’s shows made. It was like I was watching Pokémon again for the first time, with the same sense of wonder I had as a child. I’d got a similar feeling about my other favorite childhood show, Sailor Moon, from watching the last episode of Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica not so long before this, and that took an entire twelve episodes to set up! Removing all doubts once again, and wondering if it would even been possible for this show to top itself, I eagerly awaited the third episode.

The third episode was okay. Jintan tries and fails to return to school (I thought this was a very nice touch – it was a good way to show Jintan’s mental state without beating the audience over the head with it as many anime do). Menma tries to make the muffins that Jintan’s mother had made in their childhoods – they don’t turn out well. The studious girl, Tsurumi, starts to show up more regularly in this episode, and she joins in Jintan, Anaru, Poppo, and…Menma…in their Menma Search Party. A major doubt I’d been having gets addressed here – we get a real sense of Anaru and Tsurumi’s uncertainty about whether Menma is actually there. This episode also treats us to our first plot twist – suddenly, there’s another Menma that Yukiatsu can see!

It ended up being as dumb as it sounded. In the fourth episode we find out Yukiatsu was actually running around in the forest in Menma’s white one piece, when the Menma Search Party finds him he instantly regains his composure and points out how absurd the whole situation is. He abuses Jintan very personally at accuses him of making up Menma’s ghost to try to get back the friends he doesn’t deserve – ouch. This isn’t the moment I would have chosen to have Jintan prove Menma’s existence to everyone…and then he doesn’t. Huh? What was the point of this? And come to think of it, why hasn’t Jintan proved that Menma is there already? We know she can lift things if she made muffins, and showing everyone a levitating bowl would at least prove that something supernatural was going on…and if the rest of them aren’t sure she exists, why are they following along? Why would they be looking for Menma when Jintan has already said they wouldn’t be able to see her? We also find that Yukiatsu has a broom with a wig and a dress on it that he treats like Menma (and his feelings are definitely romantic). I found a high school student still being in love with his friend from elementary intensely weird – not too weird for anime, but definitely out of place in a more “serious” drama. Turns out I could not have been wrong, and we end up seeing a lot more of this.

The fifth episode is where things really start to go downhill. It is filled with tears, one bout of crying after another from multiple characters (and it’s going to get a lot worse, episodes eight, ten, and especially eleven go way too far in this area.) We meet Anaru’s catty friends – I’m struck by the fact that she still seems pretty well-adjusted by the standards of this show – and get another flashback – this time showing us a love quadrangle between second-graders. As if it’s not unrealistic enough for our entirely pre-pubescent cast to have these kinds of romantic emotions, they all feel the same way now as they did back then. It’s the worst kind of writing – taking something that’s already kind of cliché and making it worse. This isn’t just a cute moment, either, it’s central to the rest of the story. There was also a really terrible almost-rape scene involving Anaru and some guy (the event will never be mentioned again, of course, as the whole thing was just a transparent plot device) at a love hotel where she gets saved by Yukiatsu. I guess it was supposed to make Yukiatsu and Anaru more sympathetic – but then I already didn’t hate Yukiatsu, because no matter how much of a jerk he can come off as, at least he’s sensible enough not to believe his shut-in friend’s ghost story without any evidence.

Jintan goes back to school for a few hours in the sixth episode – but now there are rumors about Anaru and her experience with the love hotel. Jintan feels like he has to defend her and does. At the time this seemed unlike him but later we find out that he had a “leader’s” personality as a child and his current personality comes back very quickly whenever he’s confronted with a major problem– this was actually very good characterization and showed a solid understanding of the mentality of most hikikomori, something the previous episode was definitely lacking in. In the second half of the episode Jintan, Anaru, and Poppo visit Menma’s house – her m other seems oddly willing to let them go through all of Menma’s things and we don’t get any idea at this point that she’s not as over her daughter’s death as any mother could be.

In seventh episode we come back to the main plot thread. Menma’s wish is to send a message to God in a rocket asking for Jintan’s sick mother to get better. Seems kind of pointless, seeing as Jintan’s mother is already dead, I hope this isn’t another obviously wrong wish! In any case Jintan and Poppo start to work to get the money to buy a rocket and Jintan asks his father to look into how to get a permit. Why any of them besides Jintan are willing to do this when there’s absolutely no evidence that Menma is actually there I just don’t understand. He works so hard to make the money that Anaru started to worry about his health, and at this point she confesses her love to him. There didn’t come out of nowhere, there was foreshadowing here, most of which I didn’t get into, but that doesn’t mean this was handled well. Anaru talks about how she felt inferior to Menma in elementary school because Jintan liked Menma more than her, which makes sense, but why is it she still feels that way now? She can’t actually think of Menma as romantic competition ten years later, can she? But then again, this is Ano Hana, where elementary school crushes are serious business, forever. Jintan’s work ends up being in vain because Menma’s parents have told the man who makes the rockets not to waste time on high school students. Huh?

In the eighth episode we find out that Menma’s mother resents the main cast for being alive when her daughter couldn’t be, and thinks they’re all just messing around at her expense. No problems here, in fact it’s pretty good and not over the top, even without allowing for this genre, but why wasn’t she like this in the first place? Yukiatsu accuses Jintan of making up a story to help him push his negative feelings onto everyone else. I’ve got to say, it would have been completely convinced by this if I hadn’t known Menma was really there, maybe Jintan ought to have had Menma lift something to prove that she was. It’s pretty obvious and would have saved him a lot of grief! But he doesn’t. He keeps working to get money for the rockets anyway and goes to beg Menma’s father for permission to use one – he says yes, making the whole thing with Menma’s mother pointless except as a way to add even more melodrama and gets Menma’s mother’s character out there. It’s not awful writing, but it came across as a transparent plot device. A bit later, Anaru, Yukiatsu, and Tsurumi finally ask for proof that Menma actually exists and an for explanation for all the silent phone calls they’ve started getting, and then get it when she drops her diary on the floor with a new message in it. FINALLY. In the last four episodes a huge amount of time was spent focusing on the character’s doubts about Menma – every single second of that served no purpose; every opportunity to advance the story that time should have given the writers was sacrificed for the sake of meaningless drama.

There are some “slice-of-life” style nostalgia moments in the ninth episode that were pleasant enough, not quite matching episode two, but still good. More importantly for me, Poppo finally, after the fact, notices how dumb it is that Menma never tried to prove her existence in the first place despite how easy it would have been. “Jintan must be a real idiot,” he says, but there’s no good reason to think he’s dumb enough not to have figured this out, and even if he was, why didn’t anyone else think of it? Yukiatsu and Tsurumi are at the top of the class and didn’t, Anaru is nowhere near as dumb as she acts, and Poppo is no idiot himself. Arguably it is true that something like this (as in the diary) was necessary to prove it was Menma and not some other entity, but that’s not what I’m saying. Prior to the diary falling, everyone except Jintan has doubts that there is anything there at all, and those doubts, which would seem very well-founded to the characters, could have been dispelled in an instant. And after confirming that there is some invisible entity hanging around Jintan, and that it can lift things, someone – including Jintan himself – should have thought of having it try to write. The writer tries to cover this up by making it so that Menma can only write in the secret base – no real reason this should be so, it just is – but that still means nothing. She can lift things and make bread outside of the secret base, it would have been completely trivial to make her presence known from day one. Arguably this was necessary for the plot to play out as it did, but when something as lazy as this is necessary to keep the story going we should come to realize that the story has a major problem. There are some better answers that get suggested: Yukiatsu suggests that it’s because Jintan wants to keep Menma all to himself, which would make sense if he hadn’t spent the last eight episodes trying to convince everyone that she really did exist. I’ve heard it suggested by fans that Jintan didn’t try to prove it to anyone else because he had his doubts about Menma’s existence that he didn’t want to see confirmed – this falls apart, too, as we saw in the first episode Anaru noticed Menma’s weight, and in the eighth that she can call people on the phone, so he should already have known that other people can, at some level, tell that Menma is there.

In the tenth episode Poppo finally gets some development – this late in the game it serves no real purpose and it’s not worth mentioning except as another example of wasted potential. The girls tell each other about how they’ve both held on to their elementary school crushes who have yet to get over their elementary school crush – in Tsuriko’s case it makes sense, since she at least spends time with Yukiatsu (who is suddenly willing to consider it!), in Anaru’s case it’s almost as crazy as it is in Yukiatsu’s. They all pressure Jintan to admit that he was in love with Menma, and he does – Anaru seems pretty unhappy about it. Anyway they fire the rocket, Jintan tries to stop it, deciding he really doesn’t want Menma to leave, but the rocket goes up and…

Menma is still there. The rocket wasn’t her wish. Everything about the rocket was a waste of time, too. Why would they do that in an eleven episode anime? It’s already as short as a TV anime could have been, did they really have to fill that much time? It actually turns out that Menma’s wish was for Jintan to cry about his mother’s death. Seemed odd that we haven’t really heard anything about that, but I like the idea very much, it could be made to fit in with a theme of accepting what happens and has happened and moving beyond that emotionally combined with a more universal story about growing up – not that we can get any of that. Every bit of character development we’ve be able to see underneath all the melodrama is thrown away for the sake of an all-crying episode. Menma goes on, and before she leaves she writes individual farewell notes for each of her friends. I thought they were touching and made for a really good final scene – and this made me sadder than the show itself ever did, that writers who were capable of moments like this one, the Nokemon scene, and every scene with Menma’s mother except the first wasted what talents they did have on this mess of a story.

Now for the good parts! There are more, in fact apart from the story and characters it was well above-average. I already mentioned the ED, but it needs to be mentioned again, it was so good that it was able to add emotion even to a lot of the silly melodrama in the later episodes. The OP and BGM are also above average, though they can't hold a candle to the ED. Tomatsu Haruka’s performance as Anaru was very good, and Kayano Ai’s as Menma matched her character perfectly. The art and character designs aren’t anything that hasn’t been done before, but both are done well, in particular Ano Hana has excellent background art and the foreground animation blends in with it quite well. Scenes that take place in unlit places like forests are never drawn too dark for the viewers to see in, that kind of thing always bugs me and I’m glad they didn’t do it here. Though the plot as a whole was a mess, there were some excellent scenes; in addition to the ones I already mentioned the rocket-launching scene in episode ten would have been very good if I could have brought myself to care about the characters, and Jintan’s character, when he’s allowed to show it, is much better developed than most protagonists. While in my opinion this specific childhood tragedy has had a pretty unrealistically big effect on the teenaged characters (minus the romance I would have been able to suspend disbelief, though) the concept of childhood tragedy binding all our characters to the past is smart and refreshing.

Whatever you do, don’t just listen to me. Go watch Ano Hana. It’s only eleven episodes, and before the story collapses on itself it’s pretty entertaining. Going by my anime list, where I gave this show 4 out of 10, 99.2% of you will like this show more than I did, and even I would tell anyone who likes dramas even a little that this is worth trying out. If you do end up liking this anime (and even if you don’t!), consider Clannad and Clannad: After Story, which also have very good art and music, cute characters, romance, and plenty of drama, but avoid many of Ano Hana’s failings.

I have wiped my eyes of the tears that have been lingering there since the start of the final episode of Ano Hana, debatably one of the most emotionally driven, down to Earth, and genuinely sad anime I’ve ever encountered. Sitting down to watch this anime is not a temporary respite from school or work or boredom, it’s a commitment from school or work or boredom. While it is not long at all, clocking in at eleven episodes, it is absolutely one of the few anime I’ve ever been able to sit all the way through and not get bored. It doesn’t take shortcuts, it doesn’t elongate the plot to make it any less emotionally impactful. No, the emotions running through this anime punch you in the face and they don’t let up until the final credits roll and leave you on the floor in pain. When I was recommended this series, I was told it was like Toradora meets Angel Beats, two of my absolute favorite anime. This is an apt description, though neither had the emotions that Ano Hana did. These are the emotions that create one of the most compelling anime dramas of all time.

Before I delve into the story of Ano Hana I’m going to go off on a tangent concerning why I as a male junior in high school enjoy romances and dramas. The thing is, I don’t enjoy them in any other form than anime. I like romance in my book series, but I don’t like it as the focal point. What the Japanese do right with their drama and romance television programs that Americans don’t is something that you would think is utter bullcrap if you have not been exposed to American and Japanese programming. A good drama anime has the ability to leave you in tears. A good drama anime contains likeable, realistic characters and sometimes very real romances. The problem with American television is that while Japan has Ano Hana, a testament to the emotions of humans, a testament to the power of a single person over a group of people, a testament to the power of emotion in animation; we have Sixteen and Pregnant. That’s an American teenage drama. Or Secret Life of the American Teenager. Cookie cutter characters, barely more than a piece of cardboard, fake romances that are in no way cute and in no way convey emotions to the person watching, and the drama is usually nothing more than a guy having sex with a girl other than the girlfriend or something along those lines. How many people are able to relate to that and find it in anyway dramatic? Meanwhile, Ano Hana, despite having a story that I can’t personally relate to, makes me feel like I have gone through such a story. When I follow these characters through their revelations, when I watch Menma die, I’m right there with them. When Ashley (or whatever the hell her name is) from Sixteen and Pregnant has her baby, I just feel like punching her parents and telling her she’s a slut.

What I’m getting at is that it’s sad that anime replicates real life more than live action with real people. Now, back on subject:

Ano Hana follows Jinta, an average teenage guy. He doesn’t go to school, he doesn’t work, he’s just kind of a bum who enjoys video games, sleeping, and eating. But during a hot summer a girl named Menma comes to him as a ghost. Menma died when he was a young child. They were part of the Peace Busters, a group of six kids of the same age who did normal kids’ stuff. But after Jinta is forced to admit his feeling toward Menma in their clubhouse, he calls her ugly and runs away. She follows him and winds up slipping and dying in a river below. Years later, Jinta wants to grant her wish and send her to heaven, though slowly decides he doesn’t want to because he truly has feelings for her and doesn’t want her to go. Compounding the issue of granting her wish are the four other members of the Peace Busters, each of which has emotional scarring from the Menma incident. Tensions are high, loves are admitted, and in the middle of it all is the ghost of Menma who doesn’t remember what her wish was and can only be seen and speak to Jinta.

It’s a fantastic set up and is definitely reminiscent of Angel Beats, though I think I enjoyed this set up better. The idea of Menma only being able to communicate with Jinta makes emotions even larger and adds great tension. Trying to make her wish come true is both cute and heartwarming. And the romances that develop (or have already developed) are so compelling, so heartrending, so human that you feel that you are for sure watching real people. The writing is just fantastic. I can’t complain about the dialogue because it was so heartfelt. When an anime makes me choke up, and even thinking about the ending makes me cry afterwards, you know that the writing was amazing. Sure there were a few jokes here and there to lighten the mood that felt a little out of place, but it was human.

The animation was good. I was in no way totally impressed by it, but the characters looked good most of the time (sometimes they looked…off) and the environments looked especially good. I do like to point out that the character’s faces portrayed emotion nearly pitch perfectly. The blushes, the twitches of the lips, the tears. They all helped convey the emotion of the dialogue even further.

As far as sound is concerned, I found myself listening to the opening song every time. I never skipped it. The opening was just fantastic, the vocals were great, the lyrics were just as heartfelt as the show’s dialogue. The voice actors were superb and really conveyed the emotion perfectly. The ending song was again heartfelt and fit the show perfectly.

The characters were all fantastic. Atsumu may have been a little over-the-top, but I felt for him nonetheless. Menma was fun, though sad, and Jinta was definitely a good main character. He was strong, he had resolve, and he wasn’t exactly cookie-cutter. He acted as a human. The other characters did as well. Naruko was, to me, one of the most emotionally riveting characters and while she could come across as somewhat annoying at points, her eventual revelations are truly heartfelt. And that’s just the thing that makes this anime so good. The characters are all three dimensional, all have pasts, all have ambitions, and all have weight they are carrying that they eventually throw off in the most tear jerking way.

The final episode gets flak for the fact it is just tears and tears and is not subtle. But I felt that this was what made it so human. The tears were flowing like a river and it could be a little much for some, but I felt it was a perfect ending and I could understand why they were crying and yelling. They were finally getting emotions off their chest that they had carried on their shoulders for years and the pay-off for watching the series is getting to see them release that and finally be happy once again, finally be able to move on with their lives.

Ano Hana isn’t without its faults though. Menma being able to manipulate objects should have been readily apparent from the start, but she was a bit of a ditz so I guess I can sort of let that slide. And the other one I had was what the hell is a WcDonalds? I mean, I know what it’s supposed to be, but how do you pronounce the Wc? That’s strange.

Overall, I loved Ano Hana. It had great writing, great music, great characters, and was one of the most emotionally riveting anime I have ever seen.

AnoHana is a lite-fantasy drama about the hardships of the death of a friend, growing up and drifting apart, and regaining those lost bonds. A heartwarming story of loss and gain, love and friendship, and life and death. With a set-up as beautifully poignant as this, what could possibly go wrong with the show’s actual quality?

Apparently a Hell of a whole lot.

But let’s start with the good. The character interactions between everyone as –friends- were actually very nice to watch. Not because they were endearing but because it was anything but; that incredibly awkward feeling between people who haven’t met in a long time is conveyed so well when they’re all interacting as –friends- (more on this later). The show also packs a strong emotional punch and becomes a stand-in for how all of the characters are feeling. AnoHana is excellent in that regard.

That is, until you start looking at why everyone is becoming so emotional in the first place.

Most of the show’s story revolves around the ghost of Meiko Honma coming back after dying in a tragic accident 10 years ago to have her wish granted. The only problem is Jinta Yadomi is the only one who can see her, meaning he’s running around trying to grant her wish, whatever it might be, while his (former) friends question what exactly is wrong with Jinta when he’s seemingly interacting with nothing and talking to himself. The tension toward his friends rises because Jinta can’t expect them to accept their best friend is back from the grave. This is despite how Meiko can –interact with the objects around her-. Yup. Avoiding all of this drama is as simple as Meiko picking up an object in the presence of her friends and it’s further exacerbated by how the show points this out. Oddly enough I wouldn’t have noticed if the show –didn’t- point this out; failed damage control much?

Now remember what I said earlier about the interactions between everyone as –friends- being very good? Well, the show also has interactions between the characters in a web of –romance-. Every guy who knew Meiko was in love with her and every girl that knew Meiko was jealous of her. 10 years prior to the show, this makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how all of the characters feelings toward Meiko remain largely unchanged even 10 years after her death. No matter how strongly one feels toward someone or how devastated they are after their death, it is something that eventually heals with time and certainly should only be an occasional memory after 10 years. But nope. Everyone is still devastated over Meiko’s death because lolanime. The heavy themes in AnoHana require a realistic touch but instead they get a bombastic slam.

If you’re looking for an anime with an emotional punch, AnoHana can certainly deliver. I found myself choking on my emotions despite how a lot of things were messed up. And while I normally don’t disregard my feelings in an anime like this over some irrelevant plot points, it’s when those plot points actually matter to the emotions that I feel cheated. Jinta and company may have remembered the name of the flower they saw that day but this is one show I’d rather forget.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (holy shi...) is yet another slice-of-life released in 2011 that follows the trend of having cute characters mixed with big production values and who tells a light drama sourrounding high school environment and a group of friends. I'll call it Ano Hana as everyone else because the name is ridiculously long, so bear with it.

From the initial idea it's hard to think highly of this. We have dozens of other shows who tell us the same thing, from very stupid ones to some very powerful shows. So what Ano Hana has to make a stand in this genre and in this age where animes are all about lolis with clumsy or tsundere behaviors? Well, it is slightly more mature than most, has some supernatural element mixed, and has a superb execution. It can remind many people of Honey & Clover, mostly because it shares the same director as the second season of it. And hell, Honey & Clover was one of the best slice-of-life in its time, so there is little who can go wrong here.

Art & Animation
Ano Hana is animated by the guys from A-1 Pictures and the job here is nicely done. The show shares the real location backgrounds, very detailed and varied, joined by a sharp artwork with a nice animation for its genre. It also has quite a nice usage of light, colors, and all other sorts of elements needed for a great visual experience. Sadly, they draw the character design from the same template of these last few years, so it can look very generic with the big eyed characters with cute curves and loli-style.

Sound
Considering the length of the show, Ano Hana manages to make a decent and varied set of background music, joined by a intro song that is fitting and helps to create the required atmosphere for the show. Voice-acting is very mature, even though Menma can be a bit annoying with her genki behavior and annoying voice, everyone else has a great work and help to make the cast the most powerful asset of the show. Sound effects are what is to expected from a show with locations based on photos, meaning they help a lot to make every scene feel more realistic even with a ghost girl hanging around.

Story
Ano Hana is the tale about an old group of friends. During their childhood, one of them, Menma, dies in an accident and the group breaks up. Years later Menma returns to haunt her old friends, trying to gather the group once again and bring an end to some unfinished events and allow everyone to move forward in their lives.

1. Nice Premise, Light Presentation
   The ghost girl could make one think that this will be a shady tale, but fret not. Ano Hana tells things in a very light way, and Menma is the happy genki girl even in the afterlife. The show manages to bring very emotional scenes with the group of friends, making Menma only visible to her old crush named Jinta, and thus creating a nice point to explore. Most of the show will be about how Jinta can prove their friends that he is not crazy and that Menma is indeed walking around and talking to him, and the way this is handled is always with a nice deal of maturity and never as clueless as, for example, how Clannad dealt with the ghost girl it had in one of its arcs.
   
   Bad Start, Dramatic Ending
   Sadly, Ano Hana first episode can give us a very different feel to how the series behave. Menma and Jinta living together, stupid scenes with her carefree attitude putting Jinta in embarassing situations, her genki style always happy and Jinta's basic protagonist style, etc. But don't be scared, when the rest of group gets introduced and start interacting with each other, everything becomes more mature and belieavable, even with Menma around. The tale moves to a far more dramatic approach, showing how each of the friends dealt with Menma's death, the current state of their lives, how they changed from childhood, and how they deal with the fact that Jinta's is bringing such delicate matter to the table after so many years. The ending sequence is about what japanese directors do best: making you shed tears. It's light, warm, but very sad, and most people will find it certainly pleasing.
   
   School?
   I told above the show is a high-school slice-of-life, but don't expect your typical stuff here.Fortunately, most of the show happens in places that doesn't even has school near it. So we won't have the typical classmates, school clubs, and other of these elements plaguing everything. A nice change of pace for a slice-of-life.
   

Character
A short show like Ano Hana doesn't have the luxury of evolving characters by a great deal. For 12-episode long shows to succeed with their cast they need to have a focus and move there with a good execution and having real impact on the cast. Ano Hana is flawless in here. It gives us the stupid Memna, surely, but the rest of the cast is far more realistic than dozens of other high-school slice-of-life we have.

1. Problems
   Each of the characters starts with their own set of problems, many of them born from the fateful event from their childhood. Some have dealt with it by trying to forget, others by searching for something else to fill their mind, others managed to surpass and move on. When Jinta brings the whole thing about Menma again these characters show their true colors and how impactful her death was on their lives. They were little kids with a very strong bond of friendship, so one of them dying certainly leave scars that can't be easily healed.
   
   Pokémon!
   Regardless of sharing this sad past, the cast has quite decent personalities and a good development. They feel like realistic teenagers dealing with an old problem and meeting again old friends. Anaru even plays Pokémon! Anyway, that doesn't mean they are out of stereotypes, because they have the basic protagonist template, tsundere girl, genki girl, etc. But they not only have a few surprises in their personalities, they also grow out of it in this short series, managing to create a nice level of progression. Sadly Menma can be really annoying and is the weakest link in the show, but you can overlook her cuteness and enjoy the rest.
   

Value
Slice-of-life shows are plenty. We had an arc with a ghost girl in Clannad and probably in other shows as well. The group-of-friends cast is also very common. So is there anything new here? Well, simply put: No. But Ano Hana's execution, superb production values, direction, narrative, and the nice belieavable characters makes up for anything it lacks. It made an impact with its cuteness and drama mix, something that perhaps only previously done with this quality by Honey & Clover. This show also can please a much wider audience because it's not overwhelmed by the japanese default elements such as ecchiness, cute catchphrases, school clubs, etc. It's a tale about a friendship that can have similarities almost anywhere in the modern world (without the ghost girl!).

Enjoyment
Ano Hana is a show made for those who like slice-of-life. It's a cute tale of a sad string of events. So if you're looking for something to move the heart, draw some emotion, make you cry, or whatever, you have found one of the best in these recent years. If you prefer more tragic drama, filled with sadness and without the cuteness, Ano Hana can still have an impact on you, but certainly nothing powerful. Those looking for anything else may find Ano Hana as a nice change of pace because it's short and direct.

Comments
I've watched Ano Hana without any kind of expectation. My niece talked about this show with an absurdly long name, I've downloaded it just for the sake of hoarding more stuff in my list, but wen I've watched the opening I thought: "I'll give this a chance". The first episode didn't impress me, but I put in my mind to watch the next one, and then the next, the next, until it was finished. It's a cute show with sad events and done without the lame stuff that usually plague animes. Well... it HAS bits of those elements, but not nearly as much as other shows of the genre.

Something that left me even more impressed by Ano Hana's strength was the fact that it pleased my sister as well, and she is not into japanese animation. Because of it she started downloading doramas (japanese live action dramas) and found something she likes. So this certainly earn my respect. However, this also is a show of how out of the curve Ano Hana is even for a japanese animation. Its share of seriousness, the cute Memna, the nice teenage characters, the realistic setting, and the supernatural premise all mix well.

This was certainly one of the best shows of these last years, and perhaps because of it I've once again started to watch animes with a bit more frequency after skipping almost everything from mid 2009 until mid 2011.

Anohana is a slice of life / drama / light comedy regarding growing up and leaving the past behind. It basically has to do with a team of friends who had to experience one of them dying. They broke up because of that, years passed and now the past is back to haunt them… Literally. The girl returns as a ghost and tries to bring closure to their sad pasts.

Don’t imagine this being some sort of supernatural horror show. Anohana presents a heavy theme in a light way so everyone can follow it while feeling fluffy inside, instead of being emotionally crushed. It is overall silly since Menma is presented as a completely dumb and cheery airhead instead of a tortured spirit seeking retribution. She also comes off as a cute erotic fascination for Jinta the shut-it, so she is basically a stupid eroge stereotype. They went as far as making her cry and grow older like a normal person when she is otherwise a ghost.

Anyways, the anime is trying to be bittersweet instead of realistic. It’s about old friends trying to rekindle their friendship after many years and leaving behind bad memories. It is not trying to overcomplicate the plot or to even be original. Every single element in it has been done before.
- Some kids playing Power Rangers and losing a friend, which creates a tragedy lasting all the way to their teens? Why be damned, that is the basic drama in Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
- Some delusional hikikomori trying to fix his life? That’s Welcome to the NHK.
- Goofy airhead loli? My, how original…
- Check out KyoAni shows or KeyVisual games.

So yeah, story and plot are barely interesting and it’s extremely easy to predict the finale. It even ends in a rushed, convenient and magical sort of way, thus it’s not even going for a pragmatic resolution. It doesn’t have to do with the characters realizing their mistake and correcting it. It was magic. Essentially a deus ex machina. One that could have been used since the very first episode if Menma wasn’t written like a complete retard. I mean, she could always interact with physical objects so she could always prove her existence. But nah, for the sake of drama neither she nor Jinta thought of something so simple until the final episode. The story is naive and in a way insults your intelligence, so I can’t give it a good score.

The show focuses almost entirely on the mentality of the characters, and in that department it’s doing great. Every one of the teenagers is fleshed out, but not too much to feel complicated and confusing to understand (this is a fluff show; remember?). The result is that you will like them, but you will also not have anything much to remember them for, since they develop only on a basic level. They are vivid up close but don’t stand out in the crowd. That aside, they can easily inflict the average viewer of melodramas with a thunderstorm of emotional turmoil, which in a way is what it was going for all along.

Although it looks great in terms of production values to further bring out the bittersweet feel of the show, it is still quite basic as far as presentation goes. There is nothing interesting about the visuals, other than being detailed. Beyond that, it is yet another everyday place with everyday people. And as usual, everybody looks like a fashion model or a sympathetic comedian because ugly or dull people don’t belong in escapism shows. And that is exactly what Anohana is; a sugar-coated premise about cute kids and silly teen angst. It is indeed very easy to sit down and watch it in one go, but barely something worth thinking about after it is over.

On the other hand it is very good at what it aims to be and the fans of the genre will definitely love it for its simplicity and the direct hit at their emotional side. The great production values contribute to that; average ones would never allow it to work as well. That aside, despite the raving reviews and comments the series got, it is TOO basic and TOO simple and is also full of things you can easily find in most melodramas. It doesn’t stand out that much and it is very easy to forget its existence after a couple of years.

One day a recluse named Yadomi encounters Meiko (Menma), a friend who had died when they were younger. Menma asks for Yadomi to grant her wish, the only problem being that she can't remember her wish.

Ano Hana is an interesting take on a ghost story involving a group of six friends who drifted apart after a tragic accident befell one of them, and how through Menma's efforts, the gang finally comes to terms with each other and their loss. It's a story about moving on that anyone who has lost a loved one can relate to. Despite being a fairly slow-paced series, it strikes a good balance between an engaging plot line and solid character development. This was definitely much more of a mature show than the drawing style suggested.

Be warned that this series has a sad but hopeful undertone, and that there is more crying here than from the sum total of Usagi Tsukino in 200 episodes of Sailor Moon. This series is all about relationships, how they form and change as time goes on. This series is not for everyone; action and comedy fans will be bored out of their minds. This series is for those who like depth of character development and relationships. Despite this being a ghost-based story, it's not meant to be scary.

Animation:
The animation style looks almost a bit childish considering the serious undertone. For the most part, this is drawn in the style of a normal slice-of-life series with usually vibrant colors and serene backgrounds. Characters aren't what I call gorgeous but are decent. Facial animations are well done. You're not going to find any real action or significantly ecchi scenes (relatively speaking). A good portion of the screen time is spent as a flashback, revisiting the day of Menma's death repeatedly; explicating just a bit more every time.

Sound:
I'm not a terrible fan of the OP, as it feels very blase considering the story. The ED is much better, doing a great job of capturing the mood of the series; I particularly like the cinematic fade-in used in many of the episodes. The BGM isn't very memorable, mostly because it isn't there a lot of the time; it consists mainly of piano/guitar solos that may lull you to sleeping.

VAs do a good job, especially towards the end of the show for reasons I'm not going to state here. You really do get a sense that the main character changes (vocally) as the series progresses (less of a hikikomori). You'll definitely hear a lot of crying, both from the male and female cast. The believability is very high.

Story:
Yadomi (Jin-kun) decides to grant Menma's wish, whatever it may be, and soon realizes the only clue to what her wish might be lies with the other four members of the Super Peace Busters. Everyone has changed since their childhood days, and Yadomi finds it difficult to bring the group back together. The story follows his interactions with the other members and eventually their effort to grant Menma's wish.

The general plot line is very linear, but the little details with each character highlight the great execution of the story. They make it really easy to relate to the characters. I also liked the use of the progressive flashback as it just constantly teases you to finish the rest of the show to find out what really happened, and every time they reveal more you realize that your assumptions might have been wrong. Yes there are a few plot and decision holes, but the character development more than covers for this.

The climax is actually a bit of a surprise, as is the actual wish, but the falling action was well executed. Overall the story is very well done.

Character:
Each of the six characters has distinct personalities, and each of them has changed in different ways after having to cope with Menma's death; each one harboring guilty feelings towards the incident. The explication of how each character deals with their trauma is really good and very believable. As the group is forced to work together once again to confront the past, you definitely sense the change in the character behaviors. Best of all, there are actually a lot of hidden relationships that aren't revealed until late in the series (slight foreshadow if you're really good).

The characters here are dynamic, believable, and interesting; triple win. The only complaint I have here is how much of a wimp Jin-kun is at first.

Value:
This series might have been 11 episodes long but I ended up chaining the entire thing in one sitting. Haven't done that with a series in a while. For those who like character development, this is your show. It was an enjoyable, positive surprise that had a very positive message; albeit one that might bring tears to some girlfriends.