Anohana (My Experience)

 This is an article I wrote 6 months back when I had just started watching anime. I wanted to keep the thoughts I had then while watching the show as true as I could, hence this blog post is not edited and can be lacking in many aspects.

Due to my recent anime craze (thanks to Your Name) I’ve been trying to dive into more of this genre. So here’s what I think of Anohana, an anime popular for being highly emotional and tear jerking

The story of this anime comprises of 5 childhood friends, who grew distant as they enter high school and develop their own unique personalities, with one collective trait however, the trauma of the death of their 6th childhood friend while they were still just kids. The anime shows us different coping mechanisms including, but not limited to suppressing feelings and being anti social, that the characters have been resorting to as to deal with death at such a young age, that they still can’t get over as they all in some way blame themselves for the incident that took place with Menma, the girl who died.

The anime is pretty short with just 11 episodes in total and has a reputation of being very emotional, while I get how people can brawl their eyes out while watching this show, especially the final episode, I just did not and that’s not a bad thing considering the alpha male chad I am. An anime out of all things could never make me cry even if my life depended on it.

The anime in itself was a good experience as I vibed with the animations and aesthetic along with the characters and storyline. The characters are one of the strongest points of Anohana and in a way completely depends on them to make the show work as it is infact about how different people cope with difficult situations in their life. These coping mechanisms can be healthy or extremely unhealthy, but none of them are wrong considering the situation that one deals with when they go through something like our characters did.

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the anime, especially the OST it has which is absolutely beautiful, I wouldn’t say it is the greatest anime there ever is, as some people exclaim on the Internet. But then again every anime is the greatest on the net.

The only trouble I had with this anime was with the character of Menma ( The deceased girl) or more like with the ghost of Menma. In the storyline, the ghost of Menma comes to life but is only visible to one of the characters, from whose perspective we see most of the anime with i.e Jin tan. Her presence however is felt by everyone but is often dismissed as nature or cold winds. Even though the ghost of Menma has the body of a high schooler, as she would be if she had not died, her personality and quirks are still that of an eight year old, which provides the much needed comical relief that is needed in every show that is dealing with such heavy subjects. The backdrop of this being her character can be super annoying, to a fact you judge yourself for watching the show itself. But considering all the other aspects of the anime, its worth watching and you take a lot of stuff from it (I know I did!)