Two Eyelashes - Musings on AnoHana

It's been only a few days since I finished watching AnoHana, so I think it's a good time to try to be objective (and spoiler-free) about this anime. I'm pretty neutral about this, slightly on the negative side.

The main characters as they look in modern times.

The premise of this anime was pretty interesting; it was essentially a slice-of-life coming-of-age story. However, with weak characterization and weak plot development, it ultimately fell quite short of living up to my expectations. Despite numerous attempts throughout the episodes to introduce new plot twists, it ended up going down the same road that had been predicted since ep01. More importantly, it became a chore to watch each successive episode, with the last one almost causing me to fall asleep.

AnoHana Ep11 [END]

Given that it's pretty late at night and I'm so tired, I really wanted to go to sleep. But I forced myself to watch AnoHana instead. ...it wasn't worth it.

Some more scenes from their childhood would have been nice...

The last episode of AnoHana dragged on for so long that I had the irresistible urge to skip through it just to get to the end. I stayed with this anime for two reasons: I have an uncontrollable urge to finish things and I wanted to know what Menma's wish was. After finding out pretty early on (though not early enough) what it was, I lost a lot of my willpower. Sadly, I continued onto the end and the forced emotions were quite forced. Wrapping up a story has never been so try-hard.

AnoHana Ep10

This episode was so bland and yet angering at the same time that I couldn't bring myself to finish the post in one sitting. What are they doing with this anime...

That's a lot more powder than I'm used to in my fireworks...

The penultimate episode of AnoHana incorporated a good amount of sadness and crying, and very little resolution - everything that has come to define this series. There was a little bit of hinting at deeper stories - such as Poppo's remorse at having been left out once upon a time, and Menma's secret talks with Jinta's mother about reincarnation - but with only one episode left, I have no idea when these things can possible be properly deepened. After the long stretch to the fireworks at the end of the episode, Menma didn't disappear. Whatever the final episode will do, I hope it'll at the very least reveal her wish.

AnoHana Ep09

This is late only because gg was so slow in releasing their version. Earlier today, though, I really wondered why I was waiting for a specific group; there's very little chance that I'll be archiving this anime, so it doesn't even matter which group(s) I have. With that in mind, I'll pick the first one that comes out next week.

This is really the best character so far.

I'll be honest about it: I didn't like this episode so much. I'm really trying, but I can't sympathize with the overall angst of all the friends. I won't say something like, "They just bottle it in and don't talk about it," because that's wrong; they've been voicing it so far (Yukiatsu several times showed off his obsessive side, Anaru confessed her feelings just a little while ago, and so on). I just don't think I like this anime too much. This episode was the aftermath of the friends finding out that Menma really existed, and deciding to gather to fulfill her perceived dream of fireworks.

AnoHana Ep08

After a laidback OreTsuba, an emo AnoHana was definitely not the route to take. I should have thrown in some Gosick in between...

What an evil little girl...

This episode did what many viewers - including me - have been asking for - nay, demanding since around ep02: it proved to people other than Jinta that Menma the Ghost was around. However, I feel that it was done in poor fashion, keeping with this anime's preference for strange plot holes. This episode wasn't a total waste, of course, since it did advance the plot in assumed ways.

AnoHana Ep07

I've become quite backlogged on my posts, due to lots of time spent procrastinating the working on the blog code (and then some working on the code). The question of why I'm trying so hard does come to mind, since Pearz has announced her intentions to master Flash in order to make things easier and prettier all in one go, but on the flip side, the Banners Page is now fully functional, as intended~

Row, row, fight the gravity~!

This week's AnoHana episode was pretty slice-of-life, as the group continued to attempt to both figure out and fulfill Menma's wish. (Jinta's response to Yukiatsu's question of why he just didn't ask Menma was that it was scary. Sigh.) The little bits of development were interesting to watch, even though the story didn't particularly move forward so much.

AnoHana Ep06

There was no [C] episode to be forced into watching with Rho this week, so I'm sure my mood is much better. Either for that external reason or actually because of the episode's own charm, I found that it was actually much more than bearable.

That's a little disturbing on a few levels.

Like a slice-of-life anime, the pace suddenly slowed, despite the fact that nothing has been solved (so previous episodes' climaxes were kind of just ignored). I don't mind slow-paced anime, although the fact that problems that could so easily be avoided and/or solved are just dragging on is pretty annoying. Nonetheless, it was a good episode to return to the gentle relationships between the former friends. As Poppo said, people change little by little.

AnoHana Ep05

Despite looking forward to this episode since last week (the cliffhanger was great~), I took my sweet time watching this. For one thing, my router here is terribad and it takes special coaxing to even let me on the Internet. For another thing, Gurren Lagann had my undivided attention for all of yesterday. But, anyway, here we are~

At a point, they're just doing it due to popular demand.

The first watch of this episode caused me to be pretty annoyed the entire time. However, I had just watched [C] with Rho (hopefully, the last time I have to), so I calmed down and tried to really see the episode. After a second watch (or skim, basically), I stand by most of my initial thoughts: I really started to see the characters in new lights, have new hopes for the direction, and Menma is freaking annoying.

AnoHana Ep04

I waited all day for this episode~ ...well, not really, since I'm in Beijing and it was subbed by gg by the time I woke up in the morning. But, my point is, I was looking forward to this.

That comparison is so useless but cute.

The first moments of this episode only served to annoy and anger me. Many times, I questioned what kind of nonsense I was watching, and I became slightly disillusioned with the quality of anime this season. Then I realized it might have something to do with the stupidity that is Yondemasu Yo, Azazel-san (which I was watching right before), and so I tried to give AnoHana a chance. After that, this episode didn't disappoint, despite the rocky start.

AnoHana Ep03

I had to wait so long for this to finish downloading - and since Pearz finished first, she watched it without me. Selfish~ Not wanting to bother Rho, sitting in the middle, with the same anime playing at the same time with a few minutes' worth of delay in between, I went off to pack/sleep/eat. Anyway, long story short, here we are~

Don't scare the cat with your crazy shouting!

This episode continued at the same pace that it always did, finally bringing together all 6 of the Super Peace Busters. It also introduced some more about the creepy side of Yukiatsu, who is getting creepier without fail every episode that he's in. This is around the time that some might choose to drop the anime (or maybe one more episode, to cement just how creepy Yukiatsu really is); Pearz had a lot of moaning, groaning, and laptop-closing during this one.

AnoHana Eps01-02

After many things occurred, I managed to get AnoHana back from Pearz. (Mainly, she watched ep02 and couldn't take it anymore.) This was an anime that I wanted to watch because it was just the type of thing I'm usually into; it hasn't really been what I expected so far, but it's definitely something that's interested me a lot.

Such a long name...

For the sake of consistency, I'm covering ep01 along with ep02, even though Pearz has technically done the first episode already. I had thought that I would do a batch with ep03, but there actually is a lot to talk about, so I'm breaking it up. That was surprising~

AnoHana 01 - The Not-So-Well-Hidden Secret

I don't get why everyone is so butthurt about Shaft's head-tilting; they're everywhere.

This is the final new anime airing today that is worth watching, and it's finally subbed. I wasn't expecting much from this anime since I generally don't enjoy slice-of-life, but I found myself liking it. So...there's been two slice-of-life shows that genuinely peaked my interest this season; that's pretty rare. I can't tell if it is my taste changing, or maybe they're actually just getting done better. It's probably a bit of both.