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May 8, 2022
Alright, so I actually like this a lot. Not because I think it's a great work of deep art or anything, but because it's comfy, it's easy/quick to read, and it's something I find myself reaching for when I don't feel like reading heavier manga.
The art is fantastic, which helps. The shippy moments are cute. The characters are wholesome. There's not a lot of conflict in this, and I guess to some people it could be kind of boring. But I think it's perfect. Sometimes you just want to lay back and relax and read some really simple cute manga that's nice to look
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at. Shikimori is that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 26, 2022
Unrequited love. Wishing the person you love felt the same way about you. Falling for someone you know you can't have. Channeling your pain into art. The uncertainty of adult life. The pain and guilt you feel when someone has feelings for you that you just can't return.
At its core, this anime is about cherishing the good times with the people you love in the here and now, because someday they will be mere memories.
Honey and Clover is one of the most realistic portrayals of relationships I have seen in an anime. The main characters are all young adults, trying to figure out
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their places in life and navigate their confusing romantic feelings.
There are hard lessons to be learned here, but necessary ones. Sometimes, no matter how much we love someone, it's just not enough, and it never will be. But even if our feelings aren't returned, that doesn't mean the love wasn't there in the first place. Sometimes we don't realize how much we love someone until we are faced with the realization that someone else wants them. Sometimes we know we shouldn't love someone because they are incompatible with us, or don't return our feelings, but we chase those feelings anyway. We try to cut the feelings away but find that they persist.
Honey and Clover captures these human experiences poignantly and delicately. Sometimes the most memorable loves are the ones that live in our minds. Sometimes our greatest loves just aren't meant to be. And sometimes the people who touch our hearts the most are in our lives for just a short period of time, but those memories live on forever.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Apr 15, 2022
“Everything will surely be alright!”
I remember seeing Cardcaptor Saukra on TV when I was a kid, and at the time no part of it appealed to me. Me, being the tomboy I was, would have much rather watched Pokemon. I was indifferent to Sakura's frilly dresses and pink accessories.
Now, as a 30-year-old, I found myself gravitating toward this story and the magical world that has been held in such high regard by fans for so many years. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I started the manga, not really expecting to get into it as much as I did.
Cardcaptor
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Sakura captures the innocence and wonder about childhood that we naturally lose as we grow older. Reading it made me feel like a kid again in a lot of ways. Her friendship with Tomoyo hearkens days spent with childhood besties that live on in memories forever. Sakura is a symbol of childhood and innocence that I think we can all relate to and would do well to remember. There's something about being a young girl – full of innocence and ambivalence, feeling unsure of the world around you but still having a sense of optimism, that yes--everything will surely be alright in the end. From having a crush on your older brother's friend, to navigating friendships and crushes and figuring out your place in the world... to me, it's very much a story about a girl growing confident in herself and finding out that she, too, has power, even though she's small, and even though she's young, and even though she's a girl.
There are a couple problematic relationships between some characters, which almost made me want to drop this series. Ultimately I chose to ignore it (they take up, I dunno, thirty or less pages in the entire series), and I'm glad I did because the rest of the story is great. It would be a solid 10/10 otherwise.
Something this series does really well is its representation of LGBT characters. Being gay is totally normal in this series; characters are completely accepting of each other and themselves for having feelings towards the same gender.
In all, I really enjoyed this, and now I know why so many people love this series. In a lot of ways I wish I had gotten into this series as a kid, but I think it's still impactful now, as a grown woman, to kind of reconnect with all these themes of childhood wonder. I was sad when it was over, but glad that I'd gone through the journey with Sakura, growing and learning and making friends and discovering her inner power. I think about how it felt to be a young girl, and I remember how I was so eager to believe that magic is real. Maybe it still is, if we look for it hard enough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Apr 8, 2022
(minor spoilers ahead)
It has been several days since I completed Usagi Drop, and I'm still thinking about this series.
Despite my relatively low score, I truly think Usagi Drop is a work of art. What makes something art, for me, is not whether it is enjoyable or "good" from an entertainment perspective, but how much it makes me feel and think about my own existence. Usagi Drop did a very good job at the latter two things.
I based my score on my overall enjoyment of the show, however. I do think that it probably deserves its relatively high rating (currently over 8.0 here on MAL), but
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I personally found a lot about the series unenjoyable. I want to say that I'm probably not part of its target audience. I don't have children, nor do I ever aspire to be a parent. I definitely identified more with the child Rin than father-figure Daikichi.
Usagi Drop is as its core a story about the mundanity of life. From brushing your teeth to cooking meals to catching a fever, we go through it all with Daikichi and Rin. Daikichi is an interesting character, because he clearly cares about Rin, and considers himself "somewhat" of a parental figure. The show is basically about how he navigates life as a new "father," and he spends a lot of time comparing himself to other parents in his life, learning from them, and contemplating the life he has signed up for.
For some strange reason, though, at one point Daikichi admits that he doesn't see himself as Rin's father. What is he, then? Interestingly, whenever something outside of his scope of parental capabilities crops up, he relies on the women in his life to help him parent Rin. In many scenes, these women are doing most of the work, while he kind of just sits there and acts like Rin's friend. This is part of my issue with the series - although Daikichi has put himself in a parental role, a lot of time he doesn't act like Rin's parent. Knowing about the end of the manga makes this fact even weirder (and, unfortunately, did sour my enjoyment of the anime as a whole).
Rin doesn't fully act like a child, either. She is markedly less childish than all of her peers, and has a level of maturity far beyond a normal 6-year-old. Some of this could be blamed on her trauma, but I think a great opportunity was missed here with regards character development. Much more could have been explored with her character and her pain around having lost her father, but instead we got a pretty one-dimensional Mary-sue.
In the first few episodes, this series seems like it is going to be a heartwarming, comfy story with not much conflict. And it really doesn't have a ton of conflict. Most of the time I was waiting for something interesting to happen. But it doesn't really have many heartwarming scenes, either, in my opinion. Aside from Daikichi, it seems as though every other adult in this show is miserable. One of the themes explored is the sacrifices parents make in order to be parents at all, and whether or not those sacrifices are worth it. I didn't think the way the show answered this question was very satisfying. Realitsic, maybe, but definitely depressing. For the 5% cute moments we get between the children and their parents, the other 95% of the show is, to put it bluntly, pretty boring and hard to watch. If anything, I found it to be a chillingly realistic portrayal of what parenthood is probably like for many.
Despite all this, Usagi Drop is not without its redeeming qualities. Episode 6 brought me to tears. There were plenty of heartwarming moments that, coupled with its deep themes about life and parental sacrifices, make the series worth having watched. But what started out in the first couple episodes as a seemingly comfy slice-of-life turned into something that dragged on, felt a little too realistic, and left me feeling extremely melancholy. As someone who values anime as a source of escapism, I didn't get much enjoyment out of this one. I do understand why many treasure this series, but it's probably not for everyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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