Tentacle-Free Anime: "Anohana" (2011) Review
If there is anything constant in my life, it is my revolving door of “family of friends” I am prone to at some point finding and at some point losing. Though I retain a strong friendship with a few members of said "families", the overall feeling that we are a “family” drifts away after a while. This has happened to me on several different occasions in my life, to the point now where I don’t feel as if I have a family of friends anymore but more of a web of friends the come from different origins. There are pros and cons to this, my connections are wider, but my sense of family is loose. So as I travel through life with memories in tow, what does the world give me? A heart-wrenching series that brings every single memory flooding back in just 11 episodes; a series about what it means to have friends so close to one another you can call each other family and how a simple thread can break it apart at the seams. I’m of course referring to "Anohana".
Anohana is a rather recent anime, but it comes in the wake of a generation where the 'slice of life' genre rules the roost in anime. While slice of life can be great and all, I can only take so much of it until I need something more “weird” and “out there” and fast-paced and not so “real.” But I can enjoy slice of life stories, and I was recommended Anohana by a friend who is in love with the genre. What I got was a thought provoking examination of what we can all take for granted, and sometimes never realize we can also one day lose: our friends, the ones so close to us we call them family.
Why this reminds me of my families of friends over the ages is that close bond of doing everything together, until one day something (even something as simple as time passing) undoes all of that, and you look at one another in the future and go: what happened to you? This group of friends were tied to the hip when it came to one another, and now as time passed they can barely recognize what each other has become.
"Anohana" cast of characters - Tsuruko, Yukiatsu, Menma, Jintan, Anaru and Poppo.
I will say, however, that the story that's Anohana strength, is also its weakness. As someone who has experienced the passing of time breaking friends apart personally, I became more invested in the characters and story and it became more emotional for me. But someone I know, who has seen this recently, couldn’t get that sort of emotional resonance and understanding, because she has had the same set of friends more or less since she was a young child, and she even admitted to that. So she could not enjoy it as much, but she still liked the series as a whole. Half the experience of any story is being able to identify and resonate with the characters you’re told to care about. If you can’t understand their situations that easily, then it is that much harder to invest yourself. 
The cast as kids.
There is another thing the series has going for it, though, and that is it never feels rushed. A lot happens in this show in only 11 episodes, but it never feels slow paced or too fast. It's one of the more equally paced shows I’ve seen in quite some time. Everyone gets a good amount of screen time so that you can get to know them better and everyone gets a purpose. The only character that doesn’t and this is also where the show falls a bit flat is Menma herself. She is obviously the glue that kept this group of friends together and the story revolves around all these people coming together while trying to grant her “wish” that she can’t even remember, so that she can bring them together again and get sent off to the afterlife for good. I say she is the weakness because she isn’t given the screen time we needed to care about her character. I don’t find Menma annoying in the slightest, some do, but even though the reason she has returned is oblivious to both her and the audience for quite some time, she displays the ability to touch things - that could have come in handy early on, when Jintan suffers resentment from his friends for thinking he is lying about her return. If she had thought sooner to prove to them she was there by even picking something up, a lot of the discord seen in this series would’ve went away quicker and there would still have been room to deliver an emotionally packed narrative. 
All good things must come to an end
The animation is solid and the music is A-grade. The animators really took care of this one and made it look both bright and brooding, all at the same time. It's also incredibly full of life, though the whole story centers on a dead character. It feels real and plausible and the landmarks seen in the show come from real life places, which add to its flair. The style is moe but it never feels “too moe” - meaning that I think it never looks too cute. The whole thing about the moe art style dominating, is that the characters look unrealistic, but cute, so that you want to protect them. The character designs of Anohana are an odd brand of moe and the realistic body type style I like more, that interestingly enough works. I feel overall the story isn’t about Menma, but more about her death’s impact over the people, who only felt complete with all 6 of them present and no less. And about the effects felt when suddenly, against all odds, she appears again as a "summer beast", so that they must face the emotions they’ve been running away from for years, so that they all may finally move on once and for all. And I think that is brilliant. I cry every time. Final Score: 4 Summer Beasts out of 5 Have you seen "Anohana"? Enjoyed the review? Let us know in the comments! 
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