Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

Jinta Yadomi is peacefully living as a recluse, spending his days away from school and playing video games at home instead. One hot summer day, his childhood friend, Meiko "Menma" Honma, appears and pesters him to grant a forgotten wish. He pays her no mind, which annoys her, but he doesn't really care. After all, Menma already died years ago.

At first, Jinta thinks that he is merely hallucinating due to the summer heat, but he is later on convinced that what he sees truly is the ghost of Menma. Jinta and his group of childhood friends grew apart after her untimely death, but they are drawn together once more as they try to lay Menma's spirit to rest. Re-living their pain and guilt, will they be able to find the strength to help not only Menma move on—but themselves as well?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. reunites the lead production staff of the 2008 anime series Toradora! It was first teased in December 2010 as a joint production of Aniplex, Fuji Television, and animation studio A-1 Pictures under the title AnoHana Project. The series is set in the city of Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture.

The first Blu-ray volume, which went on sale on June 29, 2011, sold more than 31,000 copies in the first week of release. At the time, that first week sales figure was the third highest for a first volume Blu-ray release of a television anime, after Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica (2011) and K-On! (2009). AnoHana received a Jury Selection award in the Animation division of the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival.

A visual novel adaptation for the PlayStation Portable, which diverges from the story of the anime and contains an original ending, was developed by Guyzware and published by 5pb. on August 30, 2012. AnoHana was also adapted into a special live-action television drama, which aired on Fuji Television on September 21, 2015.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai., Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.
Sequel:	Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. Movie
Other:	Meiji x Kokosake & anohana Receipt Oubo Campaign
Side story:	Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.: Menma e no Tegami
Alternative setting:	Sora no Aosa wo Shiru Hito yo

Ohara, Sayaka
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Saitou, Shunsuke

Producer

Saito, Shunsuke

Producer

Nagai, Tatsuyuki

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Aketagawa, Jin

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

	"Circle Game (サークルゲーム)" by Galileo Galilei (eps 1-10)
	1: "Aoi Shiori (青い栞)" by Galileo Galilei (eps 1-10)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Dear Love" by Remedios (eps 1)
	1: "secret base ~Kimi ga Kureta Mono~ (10 years after ver.) (secret base 〜君がくれたもの〜（10 years after Ver.）" by Meiko Honma (Ai Kayano), Naruko Anjou (Haruka Tomatsu), Chiriko Tsurumi (Saori Hayami) (eps 1-10)
	2: "Aoi Shiori (青い栞)" by Galileo Galilei (eps 11)

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Reviews

Jun 24, 2011

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

Archaeon (All reviews)

1539 people found this review helpful

Dealing with the death of a friend or loved one isn't easy, no matter how old you are, and everyone comes to terms with their loss in different ways. Adults can drink themselves into a stupor in an effort to dull the pain, take off on a journey of self discovery, bury themselves in their work, or find some other coping mechanism. Unfortunately the same isn't true for children, and all too often they are unable to truly deal with the emotional turmoil that occurs.

Now it may seem a bit odd to talk about death, grief, and learning to deal with the loss of someone read more

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Jun 25, 2011

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

Ryhzuo (All reviews)

966 people found this review helpful

There’s nothing quite like the loss of a loved one for changing a person. We always feel that death is such an alien concept, it exists but is somehow detached and unrelated to our own little world until it comes knocking on our doorstep. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (We Still Don't Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day), tries to show us just how powerful an effect death can have on us.

The keyword is ‘tries’, and for the most part, AnoHana succeeds. It is one of those anime that illustrates perfectly the idea that the read more

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Jun 27, 2011

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 5

Radzeer (All reviews)

347 people found this review helpful

What do you do, when you suddenly see a ghost of a person that you were close to? Most people would think it's just their imagination or the effect of stress. But what if your mind doesn't play tricks on you and you really encounter a ghost from the past? AnoHana plays with this idea. The story starts out on a usual day for the shut-in Jinta, who suddenly sees the ghost of his childhood friend Menma. Menma tells Jinta she has a wish that she wants to be granted by him. And from here on, Jinta's unusual summer starts.

Story:
The story itself centers around the six members of the Super Peace Busters, which was seemingly disbanded after the death of one their members. At first you'd expect that the story revolves around Menma and her wish but the truth is, the story tries to center around the members' lives and the way they were affected by the death of their friend and the show does a sloppy job with that. Of course true friends wouldn't leave each other in times of need. So why were the Super Peace Busters disbanded? Obviously there are more reasons behind that than the death of their friend.
I personally thought that story would be a coming-of-age story, where the characters deal with the problems of becoming adults and finally dealing with the death of their beloved friend. And boy was I wrong. Instead, the show turned out to be a love story pretty soon and the romance became the major driving force of the entire show. The mystery behind Menma's wish didn't unfold until the last episode and tension has been lifted so suddenly, at first I didn't know how it happened. The story itself moved forward pretty slowly, until the last 3 episodes, where the pace suddenly changed and everything was wrapped rather quickly up in one final episode. Not to mention many questions were left open and many were left unexplained.
The first 4 or 5 episodes were very promising, but after them, the plot went down the drain pretty soon and was dragged out for too long. I think the story could have been told in roughly 6 episodes, and then we could have been spared of all those unnecessary scenes that were dealing with the love polygon between the characters. It's a pity that they wasted 11 episodes on a story that was worth roughly 6 episodes.
The reason why AnoHana became popular is the romance and the fact that you could ship many characters together. Most of the characters rethink their relations to the others and since the cast is half male half female, it is inevitable that some of them play with the thought of starting a relationship with someone other from the Super Peace busters.
The plot wasn't really planned out from the start and it seemed the writer didn't know what to do with the 11 episodes he or she got, the pacing of the story made this obvious. This problem affects most of the original anime shows and AnoHana wasn't an exception either.

Art:
One of the major strong-points of the show. The animation is consistent, the backgrounds are well drawn. This is no wonder, since the anime was originally meant to attract tourists to Chichibu city and I think that AnoHana managed to capture the beauty of the region pretty well and reached its goal with this.

Sound:
The background music fits in the show perfectly, it was very well done. The opening and ending songs are very catchy and perhaps they are the best of the season.

Characters:
There are 6 main characters in the story. The creators could have used 6 episodes to explore their backgrounds and the nature of their problems, but the show wasn't able to do this either. I would have really liked if we could have gotten more info about Chiriko and Poppo too, since they were as important as the other four. The characters aren't any special and there is little to no character development throughout the story. Not to mention everyone is emotionally so unstable, that they can break into crying every now and then. This became very annoying especially in the last two episodes. The conflicts between them feel over-exaggerated most of the time and everyone runs in circles until the very last episode. But the execution of the last episode was so terrible, I can even tell the exact moment when all the problems are suddenly solved. The character interactions are melodramatic and take everything to the extreme. As I was telling earlier I was expecting a coming-of-age show, so I thought maybe the characters were going to discuss their problems and try to find a solution to them, but all the cast was doing was crying and complaining about their issues throughout the story and they didn't even care about the things the others were saying. Without analyzing characters I must say, that they weren't original, the show just managed to re-use some common and popular character archetypes. They are rather easy to forget.

Overall:
This show makes a perfect job on summoning emotions from the viewers and fills the holes of the plot with the tears of the viewer. It started out as a promising drama but failed to live up to its high expectations. But this might be a good start if you're unfamiliar to dramas, because AnoHana heavily relies on the sympathy that you feel towards the characters and takes you on an emotional rollercoaster and sucks you in to the story easily. If you had experiences with dramas before, I suggest you skip the show, because it’s forgettable and has many flaws that might disturb you and the rushed ending basically ruins the tension that has been building up since the beginning. Overall I say that AnoHana is a mediocre show, that had potential, but failed to exploit it, but despite this it became very popular. If you like shipping in general and crying over love stories, AnoHana is the anime for you.

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Dec 15, 2014

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

themegamancave (All reviews)

246 people found this review helpful

"Oh no, here come the tears!"
Anohana was a fantastic, emotional story of loss that struck all the right heart chords. Anyone who has abruptly lost someone premature in their lives can relate to this series. What it does, it does very good in fact... And I really started empathizing with the characters like I knew exactly what tragedy they had gone through. All of the characters and their motives were believable, and it made for one enjoyable experience.

Although Anohana only had 11 episodes to get it's point across, I had no problem understanding any part of the plot. Six kids, inseparable it seemed were devastated when one of them was tragically killed in an accident. Now they all gather back several years later to attempt to send off the memory of one of their best friends by granting an eternal wish. The exact details of Menma's death were never explained, but it was unneeded. The writers did an incredible job of making that information irrelevant. The subject was so sad to even talk about, the characters all got fragile when they started talking about it.

I can't help but think the writer had some personal tie to a similar situation like had transpired in the series. It seemed so gripping and personal to me. Especially near the end, none of the characters wanted to let go of the memory they had of Menma, and often had trouble coming to terms with their own personal guilt. I'll just say it takes a lot to make me cry, but at the end as the closing theme played, I lost it. Incredible, original and emotional storyline.

Like I previously stated, all of the characters in Anohana were believable... and it made the show that much better. The main, Jintan struggled constantly between wanting to move on and wanting Menmas memory and love to stay with him forever. He is obviously stricken by what had happened that day, and leads a very closed off life because of it. However, Jintan opens up more and more as the show continues. I love the growth he had even through such a short amount of time.

Poppo reminds me a lot of myself. He handles grief by putting on a "everything is ok" façade, which the others mistake for him just being a goofy individual. Deep down is more than likely a sad grieving man desperate to make amends with his regret from that day. Yukiatsu kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but his character was still strong and understandably jealous of Jintan. The only strange thing I thought about the characters were how they all filled in a strange love triangle of sorts. I felt it was unnecessary to write in love interests of 10 year olds... And after years later their feelings were all still so strong. A bit odd.

The animation was very good in this series, but nothing buzzworthy. I thought it was a little strange how they made Menma age, but still not quite as much as everyone else. I'm not sure what the artists were going for here. The opening was also alright, but didn't feel as as fitting as the ending song (which I felt was very good). Especially how it was incorporated into some of the episode's conclusions.

I think it's safe to say that after all of the action animes I've seen recently, it was really nice to see Anohana. Even with as blubbery as I was at the end, I felt it showcased the feeling of loss and grief to the best extent possible. I would recommend this anime to just about anyone, especially those who enjoy heart-felt stories. Loved it!

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Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

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Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

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Information

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External Links

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

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Staff

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Ending Theme

Reviews

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