AnoHana (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai) - Anime

Well I finished this series a while ago, I did my laughing I did my bawwing and then I forgot to do my blogging.

AnoHana is a cute anime of only 11 episodes, I would call it a drama and mainly explores themes of nostalgia and coping with the trauma from the loss of a loved one.



The quick synopsis
AnoHana is about a group of childhood friend who since growing up and after the tragic incident of Menma's death as a child have drifted apart. The main character Jintan has secluded himself to the life of a hikikomori after these events of his childhood and the death of his mother, his father is helpless in the situation and believes he should choose his own path.

The dead Menma appears in front of Jintan often and wants him to grant him her wish but she does not know her own wish. The show is about bringing together childhood friends and how people change over time. This anime is rather depressing and is done really well.

The ending (Spoilahs)
So as expected, the series ends with Menma being passed 'to the other world' or whatever, in simple terms, she disappeared. The characters all come together to do this ignoring their own selfish reasons for wanting Menma out of their lives. The last episodes holds a few twists/confessions for characters where they all come clean about their desires regarding Menma and specifically Poppo shows his true feelings behind his happy-go-lucky life. 

In the end Menma discovers her wish and that she has already fulfilled her desires. There is an emotional running scene where Jintan attempts to bring Menma back to the secret base before her disappearance but he is too late. The group run out and search for Menma with no luck until discovering a pile of letters addressed individually to each of them. The letters describe Menma's love for each of them and they all tear up and get emotional. The five of them are all emotional and crying and dat song has kicked in (baw time). They do a load of shouting and calling out to Menma and it seems somewhat forced but at the same time is pretty emotional. Menma finally disappears and then we see how the characters are carrying on with their lives through the credits.

My opinion
The end sequence had me crying a little bit, but only after having started to giggle. It was a strange sensation as I began laughing before that song came in with full force and then the waterworks began. A lot of people were saying that the ending was stupid with all the shouting and forced emotion and I agree to an extent, however I still found it quite emotional.

Another issue some people had with the series was the fact that these children around 16 years old were already being nostalgic. A lot of older viewers were thinking that it was absurd that such young-uns would be feeling nostalgic at this stage but I disagree. As a child who had a terrific and fun young childhood before going in to an isolated high school life, would you not look back on those days with fondness? I think that yes, the nostalgia does make sense even though they are so young. 

It's hard to deal with a loved one's death and such an event can change a person dramatically, I think that this series explores this concept well and realistically.


Score
I find it hard to score this series because while I enjoyed it so, I understand that it was overly sentimental, forced and has a very focused theme. However I will score this based on my own opinion, it made me cry, I liked all of the characters, the music was nice, the animation was nice, the theme was interesting. 9/10

Screenshots

"What the fuck is on her face?"

"Where are all the men!?"

Fuck school

"My, what a lovely tree."

"Where!?"

"At least I don't dress up as a dead girl"