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

In this review I will defend the claim that "Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai" is an absolutely terrible show. It is well known that this show get's a lot of positive attention. At the time of this write-up, it is currently ranked 42nd on the site overall (or, if the site had good programmers, 39th since Gintama 2015, Unlimited Bladeworks season 2, and One Punch Man are above it and have not even aired any episodes), with a weighted score of 8.70. It is often discussed in forums as being a tear jerker. Indeed, there ... were points where I simply couldn't stop the tears of laughter from flowing down my face. This is a spoiler-filled review.

Ano Hana begins with a boy (Jinta) hanging around a house. There is an immature, white-haired girl pestering him. It turns out that she is the ghost of a girl who died in an accident ten years ago. Her name is Menma, and she has come back to earth to fulfill her wish, just as soon as they find out what it was that she was wishing for. His father's non-reaction to Menma's antics, and a visit from Jinta's friend (Naruko Anjou) suggests that only he can see her, but that she can physically affect things. In other words, the only element of her non-corporeality is that she is invisible and cannot project her voice. She is in no other way a non-corporeal entity, and is LITERALLY just a normal human, except not visible to anybody but Jinta. She can pick things up, and she can eat things, and when she jumps on Naruko her weight is felt.

Menma is portrayed as a very sweet, wonderful little girl. Ignoring nitpicky aspects about how annoying she is, let us examine the larger picture. She is haunting a childhood friend until he spends copious amounts of energy fulfilling her unknown wish. To me, this negates any "cuteness" she may possess and makes her a menacing turd.

The above was merely a subjective issue I had with the show. Now, let's get to the biggest objective issue that I have already alluded to earlier: the fact that Jinta can prove his assertions to everybody, literally, by handing Menma any object whatsoever and pointing out the levitating object. In fact, you could show that it's Menma, and not some other supernatural entity, by draping anything over her body that would reveal the shape of her body. You could even splatter her with mud or paint and you could basically be able to see her just walking around. This is a huge issue because he doesn't do this for the vast majority of the show, and the vast majority of the melodrama can be traced to this plot point.

The plot point starts off as a background thing that could more or less be rationalized away in the first few episodes. Perhaps she cannot do physical things unless Jinta is around, but that's not true because of the scene where she jumps on Naruko and her weight is felt. Perhaps she is limited in some other way. Maybe the things that she touches and cooks are also only visible to Jinta.

As the show transitions into it's middle section, these rationalizations become more and more difficult to contrive. It would be one thing if this didn't affect the character interaction very much, but nearly every tension and grievance can be traced back to the fact that Jinta cannot muster up the 2nd grade level brainpower required to prove Menma's existence. The entire time, I was assuming there was some technicality, but situation after situation confirmed that Menma can just move stuff around at will, as she demonstrates by opening a door (and everybody in the room noticing), knocking stuff off of tables, other people feeling her weight when she jumps on them, and her moving a light and then everybody remarking how the wind couldn't have possibly done it. There is even a sequence where Menma tries to communicate with people and is actually able to place phone calls (but her voice messages aren't there since only Jinta can hear her voice). Meanwhile, the old friend group has a long stick up their collective asses about whether Jinta is just outright lying, and large amounts of time are devoted to melodrama derived from this.

There are several times where Menma is in the room with Jinta, reminiscing with somebody else about the wish situation. Hey... hey idiot... just hand her a thing... hand her literally anything... hey... you can remove all doubt by picking up those chopsticks over there, and then saying "hold this"... you can immediately resolve half of the plot... right now.

At this point, you're still holding out hope that the show will ignore it and you have to come up with your own rationalization for it, or that the show will explicate some as yet hidden concrete reason as to why Jinta cannot provide evidence for his claims. Nope. The worst possible thing happens: he finally has her just hold objects to prove his claim. In episode 9. They even try to rationalize it away by using a character to conjecture that Jinta wanted Menma to himself. Then what was the point of his endless pleading for the group to just believe him in the prior episodes? Essentially, the resolution of this simple plot hole takes six of the eleven episodes. I say six because it is not a central plot point in the first two episodes, whereupon it then becomes important, and then isn't resolved until the 9th episode of the show.

Let's get to the second worst aspect of the show: the characters. We have already shown that Jinta and Menma are terrible characters. We also know that the average IQ of the entire friend group hovers around 40 by dint of their inability to devise any experiments demonstrating the existence of a ghost that can be seen and interacted with by one person and can move physical bodies like a normal person. Moving away from the plot hole (which by itself ruins the entire show) the dynamic between the characters in the group (which is called the 'Super Peace Busters' or SPB) is as follows: two of the males are in love with Menma (Jinta and Matsuyuki), one (Hisakawa) is just a chill dude and the only one to suggest that Menma could just hold something, and the two remaining girls are left wondering why two males are still in love with a girl who died when they where about 5 years old. However, this doesn't stop them from wanting to date them.

A prominent theme in the show is the guilt that all of them feel about the circumstances of their group the day that Menma died. Jinta is a broken human because he defensively argued against accusations of a crush and called Menma ugly, just like every 5 year old on the planet. Matsuyuki is still intensely in love with Menma. In fact, he keeps a broom with a white wig in his closet and frequently takes it out to sniff it; and then runs out in the woods in a cross-dressing cosplay of Menma for multiple consecutive nights. The last two sentences were not a hyperbole or a joke. Hisakawa is the best character, the only one who suggests any way of proving Menma is there prior to episode 9, and the only one whose past (actually seeing Menma get carried down the river and drowned) actually warrants the amount of sadness he exhibits (and he is still less sad than the other group members by orders of magnitude). Anjou has a crush on Jinta, and Tsurumi has a crush on the cross-dressing creep.

The plot hole and terrible characters make the melodrama hard to care about, and it's poorly executed anyways. The show doesn't actually show you anything sad. Instead, it has characters cry so that they can beat you over the head with a metaphorical hammer that says "ITS SAD, WE SWEAR! CRY RIGHT NOW!". You can feel the writers using the crying characters because you don't actually feel sad: you have to be told that something is sad. Nearly every scene in the entire show is melodramatic, which means that the characters only speak in lines that are emotional jabs at one another. At virtually no point do we see more than one consecutive minute of logical, level-headed discussion. Nearly every scene of the last three episodes is insufferably overdramatic, and by the end of the series everybody is bawling all the time and screaming out their feelings.

This is my first ever review. Why did I decide to write this review? I chose to write this review for one main reason: it is the most divergent my opinion has ever been from general consensus about the quality of a show. I am in no way the type of person who diverges on opinion for the sake of divergence. In my opinion, if a show is in the top 100 on MAL, it is probably a very enjoyable show. I also believe that shows with higher ratings are generally better than shows with lower ratings. Popular anime is probably popular because it has good elements in it. I was genuinely shocked at the appalling quality of this anime and cannot possibly see why everybody would think that it's even watchable, let alone near perfect or perfect. The only saving grace was the better than average animation, which prevented it from being a 1.

Death of a close friend is always difficult to deal with, mainly because it always comes when you least expect it. It is especially hard to portray it accurately in any medium, let alone anime. When I first heard of Anohana, I was expecting a beautiful story about a group of friends coming to accept the death of their beloved friend and eventually becoming better people. I was sorely mistaken. Anohana is a travesty of writing and I have no idea why this deserved any praise whatsoever.

Story- My first issue is, that Anohana is OVERLY melodramatic. The first couple episodes had me hooked to the ... computer screen, they gave me hope of seeing a great show but sadly I was wrong. Every episode after that is basically a crying contest. In all of the upcoming episodes, a different character breaks down in tears to get an emotional rise out of the viewer. This is not only laughable, but it boils down to poor writing and obvious emotional manipulation.

My second issue is the ghost herself, Menma. Menma is the star of the show, every character in the show loved her and never got over her death. I assume she was supposed to be a plot device to facilitate the development of the other characters, but this never happened at all. Instead of the characters reflecting upon themselves, we got a group of morons crying over a ghost without addressing their own problems. Wasn't that the point of the story? Moving on and becoming better people? I guess not.

Another issue is that many episodes are wasted on trying to prove Menma exists. In the first episode, Menma herself is a semi-corporeal being able to move objects around. Jinta ignored this fact and continued to think that she still didn't exist, despite objects moving around the room. This takes time away from the much needed development of character.

My last issue is the ending itself. Not only was it horribly executed, but none of the character's problems resolved. People were misled into thinking this was a great ending because everyone was crying and Menma, "moved on," but ultimately everyone basically remained the same aside from a few minor changes.

Art- The artstyle was pretty nice, a lot of vibrant colors and scenic backgrounds. Nothing to complain about here.

Sound- I only liked the ED, "Secret Base~Ten years later," it was a very catchy and sweet song. Such a shame that the song was wasted on a horrible show.

Character- In a show like this, the characters are arguably the most important aspect. This, however, is where the writers failed once again. The cast of this show is so unlikeable and idiotic that they failed to get any emotional reaction out of me. First we have Jinta, an NEET/social recluse who never recovered from Menma's death. He is the main protagonist of the show and a poor one at that. Jinta is so oblivious to the feelings of others that it becomes irritating just to watch him on the screen. Menma, as mentioned previously, is a moeblob with the personality of a doormat. Her one and only flaw is caring too much about other people? Isn't this supposed to be a slice of life? Aren't people supposed to have multiple flaws as opposed to just one that can't really be considered one?

Too summarize this all up, basically we have a group of unlikeable nitwits who cry a lot, are selfish, and cross-dress. Now this wouldn't be a problem if they became better people but they never did.

Overall, Anohana gets a 4/10 from me. To me, this is the most overrated show on Myanimelist. Maybe it is because people are suckers for people crying. In all honesty, that is all the show is, just a bunch of losers crying over a dead girl and never getting over it. Am I cold for saying this? Not at all. Many shows have done drama right EX: Kanon(2006) Clannad, Rumbling Hearts etc. and Anohana isn't one of them. I implore everyone who is going to watch this show to look at it with open eyes, do not be misled by the buckets of tears you are bound to see. The show has a poorly mis-managed plot, bad writing and terrible characters. I would not recommend anyone watch this.

After finishing Anohana, I could only think of one thing -

"So what's the point?"

There are many positive things to say about Anohana. Its opening is well designed, featuring the characters in their past and present forms as well as hinting at their emotional problems. The theme ("Aoi Shiori") is not only a great song by itself but also well-fitting with the show's melancholic tone. Its ending is similarly well made, and it is sung by some of the voice actors of the cast.

The animation/art is amazing. It is fluid and never drops in quality.

The show also does a pretty good at demonstrating character ... interaction (for the most part). It's meant to be awkward and unpleasant, given the long period of time the characters went without talking to each other after the death of Menma. And, I do think the characters feel realistic (with some exceptions). They are all deeply flawed and selfish people, which is OK. In fact, it is very refreshing to see this in anime.

The issue is they don't ever develop from their mistakes, or really, develop at all. In fact, it's very debatable whether or not most of them see what they did wrong in the first place. The show doesn't go into them actually becoming better human beings. They end up basically the same as they started, barely able to accept that Menma is indeed dead. There's no catharsis, no growth. The only thing you get at the end of the series is screaming and crying for the sake of it. So what the hell was the entire point of the confessions, the crying, Menma coming back as a ghost- everything? Was the entire point of the show "Haha these people are really bad human beings"?

And this is only made worse with the copious amount of melodrama.

I'll be the first one to say people overuse the term "melodrama". Under stress, or when angered, humans will act in very irrational ways. This is natural. But Jesus Christ, the characters can just put a damn blanket on Menma and 9/10 of the drama could be solved. Jinta genuinely can't figure out a way to prove the ghost's existence. Please, Jinta, make her hold something. Anything. The object will appear to be floating. She's pretty much an invisible person. Hell, just put some paint on her and none of the characters will ever have a difficult time figuring out where the hell she is. It is insane how severely lacking the characters' mental faculties are, and it's genuinely distracting. This wouldn't be that bad by itself, except for the fact that many plot points revolve around Jinta being unable to prove the ghost's existence. The characters argue vehemently about whether or not she exists, even accusing Jinta of being a liar rather than assume he's hallucinating. This goes on for almost half the show and it is extremely stupid. Eventually, the show devolves into the characters crying hysterically together and yelling about nothing for most of the screen time. It's almost as if the show is holding audience cue cards, where the show tells you you're supposed to feel emotion when the characters bawl their eyes out.

In addition, some of the characters' emotional hurdles are very unbelievable. Although I did say the characters are realistic, I say that with a grain of salt. Yukiatsu, for one, is god damn insane for little reason. He dresses up as Menma and obsesses over her, hopelessly in love with what is a walking loli moeblob. It was a childhood crush- they were 5 years old when Menma died, it's been literally over a decade. There's just no way he could still have that amount of feelings for her. It's hard to take his character seriously, which is detrimental to a drama like Anohana. His character is there just to add more drama, and he never contributes anything.

Speaking of not being able to take things seriously, it was difficult for me to empathize with the characters, mostly because the "tragic" event of Menma's death is pretty much just alluded to. It takes very little screen time actually developing this extremely important event. The show's structure is so strange. I genuinely wonder why this show didn't start with their childhood, featuring their reactions to Menma's death, with the rest of the series as a time skip showing with their hatred for one another, their eventual acknowledgment, and finally their realization/redemption. It would make a lot more sense, and the events would have more of an impact on the viewer.

Overall, Anohana is a melodrama that has way too many things wrong with it for me to give it a positive score. Certainly, I am in the minority when I say this, as at the time of writing the show has an 8.52 on MAL, but for reasons mentioned in the review, I don't recommend Anohana to anyone. If you are looking for a coming-of-age story, I suggest you to watch Ping Pong the Animation or Nagi no Asukara, and for manga, read Onanie Master Kurosawa or if you love action, Vinland Saga.

Story: 3 (dreadful presentation of the story events, combined with the massive plothole of being unable to prove menmas existence makes it the lowest category, good concept for a coming-of-age tale though)
Art: 8 (what you would expect from A-1 Pictures)
Sound: 9 (exceptional op/ed, bgs were fine too, unique char designs)
Character: 3 (tons of potential for these characters, but 0 development and little reason to empathize with them)
Enjoyment: 4 (the excessive crying and yelling in the second half was quite annoying, but the first few episodes were pretty entertaining)
Overall: 3 (I believe art and sound are not enough to save this show)

Please leave a comment letting me know if you have a criticism of my review. Feedback would be great.

Do you enjoy emotional anime where characters have to overcome the trials that life throws at them, ultimately becoming better people from the experience?

Then don't watch this.

AnoHana (of which the full title seems to have no relevance to the story) starts off promisingly enough - we are introduced to two characters, Jinta and Menma, the latter of which turns out to be a girl who passed away ten years prior and is visible only to Jinta due to some supernatural phenomenon. The story follows them as Jinta meets up with his old friends who have all suffered to some extent as a result of Menma’s ... death.

In its presentation of the main cast and typical slice-of-lifeness, AnoHana is enjoyable enough.
However, shortly after the full cast has been introduced, everything turns sharply downhill. Rather than telling a story of a group of friends overcoming past trauma (the death of Menma), we get what should have been titled "Crying: The Animation."

While characters crying on screen is not necessarily the main problem, the issue is that everything going on for them is completely unrelatable - unless you happened to lose a friend as a child and not be able to get over it for ten years for some reason. Two of the characters even say that their feelings for Menma (when they 5-7 years old, mind you) have not changed, even though they are now in high school. What. It's quite baffling why they would even care so much about her in the first place seeing that it was shown that she was nothing but an airhead. While the story seems like it should focus on the characters who are alive, the majority of the anime is spent trying to prove Menma’s current existence and fulfill her wish – a wish that is unknown to all of the characters, including Menma, thus leading into many irrelevant tasks that accomplish nothing of value. Without spoiling it, the wish turns out to be the cheesiest thing I have ever seen.

The characters themselves are thoroughly uninteresting, and a lot of the time are downright irritating to watch. Rather than moving on, the characters whine and cry about their problems, and even by the end none of them have really changed significantly.

Visually, the anime is fine, with distinct main characters, good use of color, and nice backgrounds. Animation was not amazing (although it doesn't really need to be), but definitely good.

All in all, the greatest flaw in AnoHana is how completely unrelatable the death of Menma was to them. If the anime was in two parts, the first showing their childhood and the death of Menma, and the second showing them ten years later in high school, their situation would not only be more understandable, but also not so drawn out. However, since it's more focused on crying over an event that is merely referenced, the show fails to incite the emotional reaction that seems appropriate for the situation.

This is quite possibly the least enjoyable anime I have ever watched. I may sound like a broken record with how much I have complained about the excessive crying, but it isn't emotional, it is aggravating.

A few days ago, I'd download every anime that had passable art and wasn't a complete brain-kill experience to watch, because I believed that since people took the time and effort to make it, the least I could do is show my appreciation for their (and the anime characters that I personify as real entities) efforts by watching the anime. I'd feel like not downloading an anime was missing out on a unique experience so I forced myself to watch all of them to the point where watching anime became almost like an obligative burden rather than an enjoyment. Watching Ano Hi Mita Hana no ... Mamae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai has made me realize my mystake in that regard. It was that horrible. Each anime is certainly unique but Ano Hana was "Uniquely Horrible". Perhaps it's my low tolerance of bland, unoriginal slice-of-life plotline set-ups that fueled this review, but I simply hope that this review will reach out to the likeminded people out there in the world (however few there may be) to prevent them from suffering this excruciatingly painful experience. I took up Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai for the hell of it since the ridiculously long trolling name amused me. Unfortunately, it actually did give me hell.

Story (3/10)
Ano Hana is about this guy Jintan who was the leader of a small group of friends back some number of years in elementary school. After Menma, the one girl he apparently had feelings for, died in a car accident, he disbanded the group and everyone drifted apart. The entire point of this anime is to grant Menma, who is now supposedly a ghost that haunts Jinta with childish tantrums, her final wish that SHE doesn't even remember. Great, so we're gonna watch another Yumekui Merry plot with subpar Onii-chan no Koto art that doesn't have a single, clear, defined purpose to fulfill. No thank you. I'm not about to waste what little precious free time I have looking under garbage cans for a plot. Nor am I willing to waste hours learning about the fulfillment of her wish that requires everyone in the old gang to be present (the wish is probably something retarded like "I wish everyone would get along again... BYE GUYS I DIED", "Jintan stop being a hikikomori and go get laid", or "Jintan I love you... *dissolves into particles"). Even looking beyond this boring, unoriginal plot and these cheesy attempts to incite emotions from the viewer, the incompetent character/ structure development is inexcusable. Nearly half way through the first episode, I didn't know wtf was going on. If I didn't read the synopsis on wikipedia half way through, I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't know what the fok Ano Hana was about. All I know was that some girl who was apparently supposed to be dead is sitting on top of this guy. No one else interacts with her or responds to her childishness except Jinta, suggesting that she's a ghost, but in this day and age of anime revolution, who know what the hell it could have been. But seriously, I don't think I should need to bust into Linear Algebra Abstract Inter-Dimensional analysis mode just to find out why a girl is there and what the hell is going on. It's over half way through the episode. We should at least know what's going on before they start flinging cheesy character interaction crap around.

Art (3/10)
The art is truly horrible for an anime in this technological era. On top of that, the character designs are ugly, annoying, and......you guessed it.. unoriginal, just like everything else in this anime. Menma looks like someone blended Isana from Yumekui Merry and a bunch of weird looking K-ON girls with a chainsaw (seriously look at her facial design.. if that doesn't ring the K-ON bell I don't know what would). Anaru is an obvious crap ripoff of Mikoto from Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, and Jintan himself looks like a geeky shemale (what's up with the rubber band?...). I am overall unimpressed with the character design and art.

Characters (1/10)
It would be inaccurate to say that I watched 1 episode since I couldn't even bear finishing that episode. In actuality I only watched about 60% of the episode. Characters... you know I just won't even...I don't even..sigh*. I've only watched 12 minutes of Ano Hana, but I could probably list so many bad things about the characters that it'll take up the entire bandwidth on this site and cause a temporary server shutdown. I'll just leave it with this: The characters are pathetic. Jintan has no backbone like 99% of all male protagonists nowadays. However, the difference between the characters of this anime and some other anime is that usually the other animes have awesome female characters to compensate. Ano Hana, on the other hand, has none. Menma is slightly tsundere-ish, but not only that... she's a DUMB child tsundere. It certainly doesn't help that she spews this utterly illogical and sentimental mushycrap nonsense: " I don't like it that you talk bad about Anaru behind her back!" (What is this suppose to do? Incite a feeling of determination and nobility? That's great, nobody cares what you "like".) " we NEED her", etc ,etc, trying to not kill off more intelligence remembering more of her quotes. Not only her, but Anaru similarly says these cheesy drama phrases "You should be ashamed of yourself!" and Jintan, like a dumb dolt, nods and sulks; doesn't even stand up for himself. Luckily for this review, Jintan and Menma, has created the classic epitome of a cheesy and meaningless conversation at the 11 minute mark:
Menma (Tear): Go ask her! We need her!
Jintan: No.
Menma (Teary and tsundere angry): GOOOO
Jintan *reaction shot! *Surprised *Sulks: OK, let's go.
Dumbass.

I'm not wasting my time to watch an anime where crying angry little girls makes spineless wussy guys do degrading mushycrap friendship things. I can go to school tomorrow for that.

Enjoyment (1/10)
Frankly I never thought I could grade something lower than I graded MM! but life always suprises me... discontentedly and unpleasantly. Unlike MM!, Ano Hana didn't even have art going for it. The characters were sloppily done and the plot overall was bereft of interest and innovation. Although I didn't have high hopes for it to begin with, this anime was seriously disappointing and irritating. If you had hoped for some comedy in this anime, then you'd be woefully unfulfilled. There were times that comical moments could have appeared. When Menma randomly sat on Jintan's lap and Jintan flustered and turned red, I expected a humorous scene where Jintan makes a southpark >.< face and Menma turns around with a dumb and innocent look on her face and says "Jintan! Something is pressing against my butt and it's getting bigger!" Unfortunately that never happened, nor, in my opinion, will it ever happen. Ano Hana will just desperately try, without progress, to pursue that emotion-wrought, endearing sensation, ignoring the classical animation masterpiece techniques of humor, action, suspense, and...of course... fanservice.

Overall (2/10)
Ano Hana was made with an intent of incurring nostalgia, reminiscence and abstract reflection; however, the actual impact and payout of these efforts are near minuscule. There are other animes that do a much better job of reminiscence, and even some that does a superb job combining different entertainment aspects together. Ano Hana is not even close to that league. I will, however, concede one thing. Since this is review is based off of only 60% of the first episode, I understand that this anime could very well achieve the emotionally-purged pathos that it was initially meant to project. For people who think I cut this anime too short and didn't give it a chance: you're right, this review was semi-whimsical and I didn't give it a chance, but what's wrong with that? In life we don't do what's moral and right, we do what we want and what best satisfies ourself.

I'm not usually quick to drop an anime, but I couldn't force myself to sit through another ep of this.

It's horribly melodramatic, but that's not really my issue with it. My main problem is that the writing lacks any basic common sense.

Everyone is way too accepting of the fact that Jinta can see this ghost, even if they don't believe him. Jinta never supplies any proof, even though it's readily available (The ghost- Menma- is literally making steamed bread that they're eating for christ's sake).

Menma even hugs or touches the characters, with Jinta watching. And Jinta doesn't bother to say "oh by the way ... SHE'S HUGGING YOU RIGHT NOW! SHE'S FUCKING HUGGING YOU." Instead he just lets them say "oh I feel chilly all of a sudden. What is this weight on my shoulders?" Get the hell out of here Jinta, you are literally the worst character ever.

No one ever asks the natural questions 100% of us would ask in that situation. No one is even interested. It's infuriating to watch.

Why? why this garbage of a show has 8.5 score?!!

The first time i heard about this anime, was when i was looking for some tragic anime, people recommended this one so i gave it a try

It’s bad, that white haired girl (Menma) is basically the Mayuri(from steins;gate) of Anohana,
only instead of “totoro” she says “i wish my friends gather together again” and that's that for this character there is nothing else going on with her development, the main character doesn’t go to school and is pretty much The typical main anime guy (aloof, stupid, awkward, doesn't have a proper family,…)

Menma isn’t any better, she is ... the weakling between characters, she is weak for the sake of being weak and she is extremely optimistic and naive.

We also have Anjou, a typical tsundere as well who has a crush on main character for no apparent reason

And Matsuyuki (a childhood friend of MC), nothing he does makes sense which makes this anime turn from boring to irritating, Jesus Christ he even dresses up as a girl just because he has a crush!, does the writer of the show has any idea how romance work?

This is a bad anime, waste of time
the only good thing in this anime was Menma’s cute look in some episode but the story itself is boring because characters are boring, none of them is unique, you can instantly find a similar character from another anime for every character in this anime

Romance is cringy, it is painfully obvious the writers didn’t put any effort into making a believable situation, for example at one point a certain girl who has a crush on MC, keeps clumsily falling so that main character can hold her so they can gaze each other like an idiot , this disgusting pattern is repeated throughout the anime

If you want a true tragedy, stuff like death note and code geass and attack on titan are what you are looking for
but if you insist to watch romance then watch angel beats and plastic memory and guilty crown

Soundtracks and openings aren't memorable either, as I said garbage

I will be analyzing Anohana in explicit detail; you were warned.

Introductory information:
I want to preface this review by stating that I seldom write reviews. After finishing this show I needed some sort of catharsis and this is the best I could do. Rather than glance at my overall rating and dismiss my opinion, please take the time to read on; perhaps your opinion of this anime will change.
Anohana was created by studio A-1 Pictures, the same studio that produced Sword Art Online, Your Lie in April, and Fairy Tail (all of which I consider to be pretty bad). Studio A-1 Pictures has an interesting reputation ... among western audiences; in that they’re known for their unceasing barrage of subpar shows that occasionally becomes popular in the mainstream. Anohana is a notable example of this phenomenon. Is every show produced by A-1 Pictures bad? Not necessarily, but this one certainly is. It’s among the worst I’ve seen.

Summary and the primary plot contrivance:
Anohana follows five high school students as they deal with the guilt and pent-up frustration they feel following the death of their beloved childhood friend, Meiko Honma “Menma”. In the years following her death, the group of friends have drifted apart. Unbeknownst to all but the protagonist Jinta Yadomi “Jintan”, Menma has returned from the ether to torment her perceived kille- I mean, ask her friends to help her fulfill her childhood wish. Until her wish is fulfilled she cannot pass on to the afterlife. One problem: she doesn’t remember what her childhood wish is (It must not have been very important...). With that in mind, Jinta’s goal is to reunite all five childhood friends with the common interest of helping Menma pass on. Will he be able to convince them that Menma has returned? Is this a shitty melodrama? The answer to both questions is a hard yes.
The first (and arguably most significant) of many problems begin with the details realized in the premise. While Jinta is the only person capable of seeing Menma, Menma is able to limitlessly interact with her surroundings and leave a tangible effect on our world. Though she does not have a body and she cannot speak, she is capable of touching, grabbing, pushing, pulling, kicking, picking up, and setting down anything she sets her mind to. She’s even capable of eating food and baking confectionary, tasks that dead people generally cannot perform. As it applies to the plot, Menma’s lasting effect on her surroundings is demonstrated in episode one, and she doesn’t utilize it to prove her existence until end of episode eight. Yes, you read that correctly. Neither Jinta nor Menma think to prove Menma’s existence until the end of episode eight. What happens in the first eight episodes, then? I’m glad you asked. Inconsistent treatment of the in-universe logic, love triangles, melodrama, contrived misunderstandings, overblown pathos, gossip, name-calling, fist-fighting, and crossdressing (more on that later). You’re definitely in for a treat.

Characters and Characterization:
As previously mentioned, the primary cast consists of five high school students and dead girl. A few other minor characters make the occasional appearance, but only Jinta’s father and Menma’s mother have a small influence on the plot. I’ll touch on them briefly, then I’ll address the five high school students and Menma.
Jinta’s father takes a passive role in his life. Despite being a single parent, he does not try to guide or teach Jinta. While most other anime going for a realistic tone would characterize this as bad parenting, Jinta’s father is relegated to the role of the wide-eyed, unassuming, oblivious man-child. He likes cute things and occasionally cooks dinner. The father and son never bond, argue, or have a notable conversation whatsoever, presumably because it would impact the plot.
Menma’s Mother is still grieving her dead daughter. She occasionally comments on how Menma behaved as a child and how well Menma got along with her friends. She gives the protagonists Menma’s diary, which proves useful in episode eight. Aside from furthering the pathos and occasionally delivering exposition, she offers nothing.

-Chiriko Tsurumi “Tsuruko”
Tsuruko is extremely judgmental and standoffish toward every character aside from Yukiatsu. She frequently berates and belittles Anaru specifically. Years after Menma’s death, she remains close to Yukiatsu because she has feelings for him. She is somewhat jealous of Menma and Anaru for stealing Yukiatsu’s attention. She secretly took the barrette Yukiatsu had planned on giving Menma and wears it in private. Tsuruko offers nothing to the main plot and she's quite a selfish, distasteful character. Her sole purpose is to pad the story by adding more melodramatic misunderstandings. This anime would have been much better without her, she takes away a lot of time that could have been spent on other characters.

-Atsumu Matsuyuki “Yukiatsu”
Yukiatsu is frequently at odds with Jinta and often threatens violence against him. Years after her death, Yukiatsu is still deeply in love with Menma, to a disturbing degree. He is angered when Jinta claims Menma is still on earth, presumably out of jealousy. He claims he too can see Menma and crossdresses as her late at night. I wish I had made that up, but unfortunately it’s true. The scene in which Yukiatsu is caught crossdressing as Menma is both easily and clearly unintentionally the funniest in Anohana. Yukiatsu does nothing to further the main plot of Anohana, the quality of Anohana would be improved without him. Like Tsuruko, he exists solely to add to the melodrama. Time spent on him could be used to expand on other characters.

-Tetsudō Hisakawa “Poppo”
Poppo is arguably the most sane, realistic character in this shitfest of an anime. Unfortunately, there isn’t a shred of skepticism in the poor bastard’s head. He is the first person to believe Jinta’s outlandish claims and he does so without a shred of evidence, much less proof. He assists Jinta and Menma in every endeavor, and he has a goofy, amicable attitude while doing it. He is the only character that isn’t caught up in an unrequited love subplot. He is the only character that has realistic thoughts, feelings, and memories regarding his childhood and Menma’s death. Poppo’s inclusion makes Anohana a more bearable venture.

-Naruko Anjō “Anaru”
Initially cold and distant, Anaru is skeptical when Jinta claims Menma hasn’t left earth. Despite this, she tries to help Jinta in any small way she can because she still has feelings for him. She is jealous of the now-dead Menma for taking Jinta’s thoughts away from her. While she is necessary for the plot to move forward, her jealousy toward Menma and unrequited love for Jinta are distracting and annoying. Any interactions between Anaru, Yukiatsu, and Tsuruko are uncomfortable and unnecessary. Anaru, like most of the other characters in this anime, is selfish and unlikable. A better show would've given her more redeeming qualities.

-Jinta Yadomi “Jintan”
Initially Jinta believes Menma is a delusion, despite her observable affect on her surroundings. Jinta never once tries to prove Menma’s existence, instead he just claims she’s there and holds one-sided conversations with her. He is a frustrating character to deal with, because he holds the story back for no discernible reason. After Menma’s death, Jinta secludes himself and mopes around in his house. Upon her return, Jinta realizes he’s still in love with Menma, and is sexually attracted to her ghost. Some point before granting her childhood wish, he asks her to stay on earth with him as his ethereal waifu. Jinta is possibly the most selfish character in this anime. His character could be improved by making him less selfish and more relaxed and amicable.

-Meiko Honma “Menma”
Menma is the most difficult character to write about because she has no character. She is unable to ascend to the next plane, but doesn’t know why, or what triggered this period of stasis. She doesn’t seem to know anything at all. Though her ethereal body has aged with everyone else’s, she still displays the mentality of a child. Or, rather, a hack screen writer’s impression of a child. She is nothing more than a contrived child archetype. She displays no personality and the only personality trait she’s given is selflessness, a trait that she (demonstrably) does not possess. Menma is every bit as selfish as the rest of the characters in this anime, or she wouldn’t have returned to earth in the first place. When prompted, she tells Jinta she loves him, not that this admission means anything. She’s dead, she can tell him whatever she wants and he’ll be none the wiser.

Ending of the Anime and Final Thoughts:
While the majority of this anime focuses on melodramatic subplots involving feelings of unrequited love between most of the cast members, the ending isn’t a bad sendoff. The characters realize how selfishly they’ve behaved up to this point and vow to send Menma off out of love, rather than out of their own desires. While the realization and acknowledgement of their flaws is good, the end result is the same, so it comes off as a bit hollow and meaningless. The characters aren’t instantaneously redeemed after several wasted episodes of bickering, but the possibility of them learning from this experience is entertained. Anohana could have ended on a worse note.
Anohana is an awful anime with far too many unrequited love subplots (most of which are dropped), a sparse main plot, inconsistent (and frequently nonsensical) logic, overly melodramatic dialog, major plot contrivances, underdeveloped leading characters (some of which were not necessary), and inexplicable crossdressing. Unless you want to watch this bizarre, disturbed anime to try and figure out what went wrong, I’d recommend you stay far away from this thing.

I see many people liking, or even adoring this show, and I can see why. But, I don't think this show is worth it. And since I haven't seen a lot of negative reviews of this show, here's what I think of it and why.
Since it seems to be a tradition among reviewers, I'll do this point by point

STORY (3.0/10)
At first, AnoHana's story seems interesting: An original story that will deal with the themes of grief, regrets, death and afterlife. It has everything to become a good show!... If only...
Very soon, the story becomes one of the major flaws of this anime: Everything, about the ... characters' backstory, Menma's reappearance and how the characters deal with it, seems childish as hell. This story deals with themes like the grief after someone's death, the passage from childhood to adulthood, the afterlife and of course the power of friendship. It covers these topics, but it does it too superficially: The messages the show addresses are very simplistic (like ''you can accomplish anything with the power of friendship'', or ''if a friend helps you, help him back''), and never let you actually question them by presenting other points of view. In short: AnoHana's story is too simplistic (and the best example of that is near the half of the show, in the ''rocket arc'' (I won't spoil, but if you've seen the show, you'll get), which is something I have seen in most of my childhood shows), though I think it does make it a good kids show.

CHARACTERS (4.4/10)
AnoHana's characters might not be as shallow as the story, but they aren't particularly good either. Although they do have character development, they all seem quite one-dimensional, and this is due to the fact that, except for the 2 main protagonists, their development seemed incomplete, or even rushed. I think some of them needed to have more screen time. Because of that, none of them was likable, except Menma who is by far the best character in the series

ART (7.5/10)
The art in AnoHana is really good, without particularly standing out: Character-designs are believable (none of them is overly-sexy or overly-moe), backgrounds are nice, the animation is fluid, and there are some stand-out points like the change of tone between the main story and the flashbacks.

SOUND (8.3/10)
The sound is certainly the best part of AnoHana. I really liked the voice acting, especially for Menma, since I really like Ai Kayano's voice (it's my personal tastes, though). As for the music, it's simple: AnoHana's soundtrack (including the opening) is one of my favorites. It is simple, peaceful, full of emotions and I always listen to it when I need to relax. Works everytime. I also need to mention the ending, which is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard (it makes me want to cry much more than the anime itself)

ENJOYMENT (3.4/10)
Since I didn't know where to include it otherwise, I'll now talk about what I think is the worst part of AnoHana (this wasn't even the story). This anime tries to be too dramatic, too often, and does too much to achieve it. Let's take an exemple of an anime that does its emotional part well: Toradora (Without any doubt my favorite Slice-of-life anime). In Toradora, the story focuses on the characters, with a touch of comedy, and make them likable, with a light-hearted story. The emotional climax kicks in only very late in the show, and that's what makes it so powerful: When you get attached to the characters, see them smile and have fun, it hits you right in the feels when you see them cry. AnoHana does exactly the opposite: There is a dramatic scene in almost each episode (and I'm not even talking about how these scenes are exaggerated), and the characters seem permanently sad and depressed. Add to this that, as I said, these characters aren't especially likable, and you'll understand why I'm saying this show is a failed drama

OVERALL (4.0/10)
If you couldn't tell even after reading my review, I really didn't like AnoHana. It isn't a bad show strictly speaking, but with its childish story, its meh characters and its failed drama, I definitely can't recommend it. Instead, I can recommend you other better animes of the same genre:
-Toradora, as I said before, is my favorite slice-of-life anime
-Angel Beats, dealing with similar themes, but done much better, with a lot of likable characters (it has some flaws though)
-Shigatsu wa kimi no Uso, I just finished watching it, and it's a damn good drama (with awesome music)

Keep in mind that I'm still open to discussion, so if you disagree, leave a comment, I'm interested in your opinion

The fact this show was ever popular is probably the saddest thing I'll mention in this review, and that's entirely because of the lack of material. If I could only say "this shit is boring" and call it a day, I would but turns out, MAL review mods believe the review system has some sort of legitimacy, so here we go.

Anohana is a show about overly cutesy, barely grown up looking Menma, who you learn rather early fucking died, and Jinta, the main character needs to fulfill a wish nobody will ever know about. As a premise, it stands amongst the laziest I have ever ... seen, and I didn't need to look at the original mangaka's bibliography to know that they're a complete beginner at storytelling. But who knows? Maybe I'm just cynical, 2011 was a different era, and a lazy premise can still make something enjoyable if executed properly.

How? This premise begs a slow burn, so no flashy drawing can improve on such a dull concept. And speaking of slow burn, there's no way you have enough content out of something this dull to last 11 episodes, so expect the middle section of the anime to be filled to the brim with nothing.

Are the characters lovable perhaps? Menma is a child in the body of a teen (or basically just a taller version of her child self) and as such is extremely annoying. Jinta has the all so relatable problem of being useless at the age of 15. The female cast's struggles are all about love (Oh boy! Early anime writing of female characters! I'm not a feminist and I find this annoying.), the Vegeta to Jinta's Goku is... unhinged? Overreacting? Eh... he was alright I guess. And Krillin had a grand total of 15 minutes (slightly exaggerated, it's probably even less) dedicated to his struggles, and yet he's standing a great chance at being the best written character in the show.

Then what does this show have? Honestly nothing, watch it if you have time to waste, or if you're easy to impress. Anohana is like, baby's first cryporn so if you've never experienced a negative feeling in your life, feel free to watch this and tell everyone about how Anohana is secretly a masterpiece.

This is by far one of the worst of all the anime I’ve watched. An overly saccharine show focusing on emotionally unstable teenagers that have apparently been wallowing in teen angst since elementary school. Yeah, it’s sad, you’re perfect little loli friend died in a tragic accident, but jesus christ, it’s been years. You’re high schoolers now. It wasn’t even anyone’s fault. Not to mention the loli ghost girl is the most annoying moe blog to date. She has absolutely no personality aside from “cute” and supposedly she’s grown from when she was in elementary school but she still looks like a prepubescent child. like, ... it’s totally gross seeing the main character crushing on this flat-chested little kid,who gets her jollies rubbin’ her butt on said protagonist’s junk. At the worst, shes a self-absorbed little chit who “wants to make her friends happy” by torturing them even further by her sudden ghostly appearance and making them fulfill her “last wish”, or at best, shes totally dense and doesn’t realize the reason everyone is suffering is because of her. People say the finale was the most heart wrenching emotional moment, but in all honesty I’ve felt more emotional in crack anime like Baka and Test than this forced out over dramatized piece of crap. If you want to watch something really heart-wrenching, I suggest you try something more like ToraDora or if you need something in the same vein as this, Kanon.

I started watching the series because it sounded similar to a story idea that I had previous to hearing about the series. Honestly, if it had turned out to be exactly the same as what I had imagined I might've enjoyed it more, but as it seems they were two very different ideas. The concept of a friendly ghost within a series is always pretty intriguing as it can be used as a very good way to flesh out a character who feels "haunted" or perhaps literally is haunted. Anohana was the latter, and the protagonist was being followed around by a childhood friend of ... his who, in case you haven't realized it, died when she was young. The girls name is Meiko and she has returned because she has unfinished business and needs help figuring out what needs to be done in order to grant her wish and let her enter the afterlife. The series must cover some pretty sensitive stuff and touch the audience's heart in a very emotionally connecting way, right? Not really.

Anohana set itself up to fail as a series that makes Meiko out to be "the girl that everyone loves", "every girl wants to be Meiko", "every boy wants to date Meiko", among other ridiculous things. This wouldn't have been so bad if they had at least explained WHY everybody liked her so much or at least toned down a bit. It seems as if they assumed the audience wouldn't have been sad about a child dying unless they stress how popular she was, which isn't really true. A simple "our childhood friend died and it all upset us because she was so young and we all cared about her" would've sufficed instead of the dragged-on parade about how great she was and how jealous everybody was of this literal toddler.

When a character like Meiko gets set up to be the greatest human to have ever lived, it's kind of like a pie in the face when you are actually introduced to her. She isn't that great, she is very annoying, and it is hard to feel bad for her when things go wrong because of these things. However, Meiko isn't exclusive to being the only annoying character in the series. All the other characters except for Tetsudou seem to be malicious for absolutely no reason. Like at worst if you bring up a dead loved one, the surrounding people will either get quiet, maybe get a bit angry or ask you to change the topic. No, these characters go as far as pranking the protagonist into thinking she is still alive by dressing up as her and wandering the woods for a few days JUST BECAUSE they are "so angry" with the protagonist for bringing her up after all those years. In case you happen to be new to this world, that is what we call "over the top" and "not very believable". Honestly the scene was supposed to be sad but I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous it was. But it doesn't end there.

Romance seems to be thrown into the series randomly which, not to be blunt, shouldn't have been a priority in a story that starts with a group of 6 year olds. In fact, the reason Meiko dies has something to do with romance that is once again hard to believe and not that sad. There is a subtle romance between every guy and Meiko, and a jealous fit between every girl and Meiko that I personally didn't care about. At all. The amount of times characters literally say "I wanted to be her" is unsettling and obsessive to a point where I can't really say I liked any of the characters. But referring back to my main point, the romance was wishy washy, pointless and I would've preferred literally anything else in its place.

After an enormous amount of time getting the characters to all sit in one room together without explosive amounts of drama, they get together to accomplish the one wish that Meiko wants. It takes a lot of time, money, effort and quite a bit of screen time but they eventually finish it and find out that it wasn't what Meiko wanted. But luckily, the characters grew closer as friends because of the bond they rebuilt making this big waste of time and are now all friends again....WRONG. They once again go back to bickering. It kind of makes you wonder if they would've stayed friends anyway regardless of if Meiko had lived or not. I won't give spoilers but the series ends with everything all wrapped up and everything is fine again, but a lot of the series gives off the vibe of "was this all worth the effort?" to which the answer was usually "no".

To wrap up a big review I'll just say this series, in my opinion, was much like Meiko. Advertised as the literal greatest thing to have ever walked the earth... but ended up being annoying and played out for too long.

The show starts off pretty strong. It does a good job of setting up a melancholy and dreamy mood. As the episodes progress, you start to realize that this mood is extremely artificial. While forcing a mood is a common practice, in Ano Hana, it was overdone. Like anything made by A-1 Pictures, it's overdramatized, drawn out, and includes plot points that don't make any sense. It almost seems as if they expect us to fall for the same tricks over and over again.

While a show like Your Lie in April had similar problems, YLIP still had redeeming traits such as the amazing ... production value, decent characters, and occasionally well-made dramatic elements. While Ano Hana does have decent production value (still not nearly as good as YLIP), the characters and dramatic elements are probably the worst thing about this show. The show rides on the expectation that you empathize with the characters and feel bad for them. However, this is very hard to do because none of the characters are actually likeable. As someone who thinks that characters don't have to be likeable to be considered good characters, I can say for certain that the characters aren't well made either. In fact, they are probably one of the worst set of characters I've ever seen in a show.

The characters are very stereotypical which isn't much of a problem for me. What is a problem, however, is how the characters' actions don't support their personality whatsoever. Almost every action that takes place is merely for the convenience of the plot. What makes things worse is the fact that there isn't much of a plot to begin with so basically anything action that is taken by the characters is for the purpose of making things more dramatic and eating up more time.

Going back to the point of how there isn't much plot, it surprises me that they were able to stretch about 4 episodes worth of story into 11. Besides the fact that they dragged the content and added unnecessary things for dramatic purposes, the reason that the story was able to go on for so long was due to one major flaw in the story: Jinta and Menma were unable to prove Menma's existence for 10 years. Yet we see in the show how easy it was to prove her existence. This is a huge plot hole but compared to the rest of the show's problems, it's honestly pretty excusable. Usually I don't find garbage or nonexistent plot to be much of a problem, especially if the shows's purpose isn't to tell a compelling story, but considering that Ano Hana is a drama, there should be a decent plot and decent characters but yet it delivers neither.

The one redeeming trait of this show besides its decent production value is that it is pretty emotional, but only at the end. It tries so hard to get you emotional and the fact that it only succeeded once is pretty hilarious. Nevertheless, this is probably the only reason I gave it a 2 instead of a 1. And to be honest, I've gotten more emotional on shows that weren't even focused on the emotional aspect. This goes to say how much of a waste of time this show is.

TL;DR: Garbage and nonexistent story, horrible characters, not enjoyable at all, but can be emotional.

Anohana - an emotional rollercoaster but the catch is that you only felt either disgust or disappointment.

Form the title of my review, you will found this either a hate or just plain bullsht. But actually, both lol.

Okay let me start about the good points on this anime; sound and art style

The only thing you'll like on this anime, for me at least, is that, it has an impressive art and good ost, which is contrast to its actual content; the story.

Story - 2

Anohana fans should at least praise me for giving a 2 on the story even it has an incomprehensible and insensible plot. ... Like seriously, my mind and eyes really hurts in the process of watching it. I'm actually surprised i bare that feeling and finished the series. I had high hopes for this anime when i heard it was compared to some of the most emotional animes in this medium but "my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined" - reviewbruh. Okay I'll tell you what and where this anime fails on its story. First of all, what is actually the point of this anime? If they want me to be moved, like clannad or your name for example, then you fail really, really hard. Imo, drama/slice of life is the most fragile genres on anime. If the execution is bad, then all will follows. Anohana revolves around this two main protagonist, a ghost and a boy. In regret that the girl died, the boy need to find the ghost's dream or its unfinished businesses. This is where they failed. The concept alone was poorly made. I mean I've Seen alot of stories like that, it's cliched as f. Seriously, who the f genuinely liked the show, or even moved by it? Are you retrded or your taste are just so low? I'm sorry if i offended anyone but men, seriously? They want to tell us that death is equals sadness, which is true in most part, but the adaptation of it on anohana is just sickening.

Characters - 1

The characters are the most unlikeable characters you'll ever encounter in your anime life. To be fair, i actually still remember their names but it's because of how bad these characters are. You have a necrophile whos running with a moe dress. They think it was clever that they pull that of but it's not. He has the most bland reason of doing it that's why it disgusts me. The male protagonist has this lowkey harem ambiance but it doesn't give at least bit of material to spice up the development of the story. The remaining ones are just props actually. Just to have a so called "group" lol. And let me tell you the ghost. Of course she should be the one that will lift this show right? Wrong. In the first place, what is her purpose exactly? Just being present there as a ghost doesn't made you significant character. She isn't even a waifu material tbh. But my point is that, this ghost character is just painfully executed on the story. And i almost forgot, these "emotional scenes" are just cringey as f- . The momeny they cried, it so shallow and flat. I does absolutely nothing to do on having us(or me.at least)To join them. Let see clannad for example, clannad, imo, the most emotional anime I've ever seen. The mainstream anime like your lie in april doesn't even come close to that. There was this when the father and son have their very first emotional encounter. It does really caught our hearts and wanting us to cry with them. Anohana in the other hand, they think when they cry, it is emotional, but actually its just pure cringe. They cry for absolutely no f-ing reason at all, even it has, it should be the most unreasonable reason to cry then. Just watch it if you want to die on cringe.

Disclaimer: i dont give a fk about your opinions haha so feel free to comment. All of the reviews are purely subjective so dont get butthurted mfer. ^^

If you have read other reviews before mine, you are now under the impression that Anohana is the greatest thing ever created since sliced bread.However, if you would like to hear me out, I have a few gripes with this anime. It's not that I want to hate this anime to sound different. I don't hate Anohana at all, but the praise heaped over it always confuses me. So here are my unfettered thoughts about Anohana.

Story-5. The story was, according to me, a so-so one. It mainly deals with the loss of an old friend, how the characters deal with it and how their lives ... are affected by it. Just one problem. How do you keep grieving over a death which occurred ages ago like it only happened yesterday? What I look in an anime is its storytelling.And whether you want to believe me or not Anohana sucked at story telling. I had to drag myself to see each episode. There was nothing stimulating that I could find or anything remotely exciting. What I mean to say it's boring.That's it.

Art-8 Well I can't say anything bad about the animation if you forced me to. From background to the character models, everything is well made and sweetly animated.Moving on

Sound-6. Both the op and ed are hardly memorable. Next

Character-3 My biggest complaint about this anime. I swear I never saw such deadbeat characters. Every freaking episode you have this unremarkable hero brooding and looking dull as fuck. It's like a massive vacuum popped out from his tatami mats and sucked out all of his soul. It's true that death does affect you badly. But I wonder why couldn't his retarded father take him to a psychologist or so. I pride myself on remembering all the characters even after a year of watching a show. But its only like 3 or 4 months after watching this anime and I see myself struggling to name all the characters. Menma is annoying. That it. She is your typical klutzy girl who gawks and apes at everything she sees and behaves as if she was born yesterday.Rest of the characters are hardly worth mentioning.

Enjoyment-3 None whatsoever. By now I would be put inside a shredder by the rest of the anime community. But I will speak my unreserved thoughts. Well to be honest Anohana isn't something which is meant to be enjoyed. It's a commentary of how death affects a person. But it felt completely flat if anything else. I didn't try Anohana for giving me thrills and chills, but I didn't ask for being bored either.

Ending- Here's where a stone cold motherfucker like me wept like a poor child. The ending was really sad and poignant. The final moments of the anime were enough to make Kim Jong Un take a tissue and wipe his tears.

Overall- By now I probably occur to you as a guy who wants to look cool by thrashing a popular anime. But before you hit the Not Helpful button with gusto, let me say this. An ending makes or breaks an anime. Anohana, having a beautiful ending managed to manipulate the viewer's emotions into thinking it's an amazing anime. But rewatch it and you might just get what I am trying to say.

Many an anime often deal, whether as a core theme or as a struggle, with a character needs to overcome, with the concept of pain or loss of someone dear. Who am I kidding, this is a common element in FICTION in general. Seriously, it's such an overused trope that the joke of making fun of the trope is as old as the actual trope.

Depending on its execution, it can either be an endearing scene that can pull at a viewer's heartstrings, a scene that comes off as generic and uninspired or worse yet, a cringey, edgy scene that accomplishes absolutely nothing except make ... the viewer stare in boredom...or in extreme cases, have the opposite affect and make them laugh their heads off.

Ano Hana generally is viewed as the former by most people...and the latter by myself.

Let's not drag this out and get to the meat of this review, shall we?

The story is exactly what the premise says it is; a girl died 10 years ago, friends are now separated and now she returns as a ghost. While not necessary specifically like this, if you've been exposed to fiction in general then you've probably heard something similar to this premise.

Before I jump and bash it too hard...to its credit it does flesh out certain aspects that add to the overall narrative. For example, we get an idea of what it would be like if the ghost, say, grew up, or a limited (but still in my opinion rather shallow) view on how people would grow further from one another if a common tragic event happens.

The soundtrack is very pleasant and clearly fits the tone of the show, portraying a nostalgic, sad yet hopeful tone. In fact, I frequently listen to several tracks from the soundtrack from time to time even now.

I cannot say the same about the abysmal voice-acting, none of which sounds human and all of which sounds extremely forced. The yelling in particular that occurs over the course of the show sounds irritating and over-the-top, and not a single shred of drama in this show comes off as well-acted.

Have I mentioned just how bad the yelling is? Seriously, did the voice actors take drugs before recording?

Artwork is relatively decent, though nothing particularly special from usual A-1 Pictures fare. It's impressive if this show is one of your first anime ever, but if you've seen at least 2 other A-1 Pictures shows, then this show is nothing special in terms of character designs especially, which look exactly the same as almost every other recent A-1 Pictures show. Backgrounds look visually impressive, bringing life to the show; a lot of the scenery shots are clearly influenced by real life locations, which is always a nice touch.

Animation quality is standard fare from A-1 Pictures; pleasant to look at, has its fare share of sakuga moments, but otherwise is nothing special. It's decent and it never really drops to a level where it's intolerable to look at, but it's not a mind-blowingly great looking show either.

Now, let's get to the meat of the show; the story and characters. For convenience's sake, I'm fusing both parts into one for this, since this is supposed to be a character-driven show.

The characters are, quite frankly, plot devices. None of them feel like they behave like real people would actually behave, they're irritating and annoying; people in my eyes simply do NOT act like this. I cannot relate nor do I feel connected to any of the characters, and their behavior as well as reasons for their behavior are either incredibly basic or make little to no sense.

Speaking of that, that's ultimately my main issue with the characters; they're basic. They all feel like the worst versions of their respective archetypes, never advancing past that into becoming "people". Yes, I'm fully aware this is fiction; characters do not strictly need to act like people, but the fact this show masquerades as a character-driven show means that I do need to take that into consideration. And, in my eyes, it fails.

I do need to point out, however, that the entire show only works on a superficial level; the more I think back on this show, the worse it gets. It doesn't have any particular complex themes, resolves itself in the most basic way imaginable and ultimately bets everything on pulling in the viewers heartstrings (or, for those of us who like to use meme terms, "feels").

The issue is, it has no real merit in case that doesn't work, and this is where my views on the show and most people diverge. The show feels...empty. I didn't feel invested in it, the characters are mundane and uninteresting, the interactions feel like fluff to get to the dramatic parts without taking into consideration how to make either the interactions or the drama actually work and the story and themes are too basically presented for me to care for.

I didn't enjoy this show in the slightest, and I hold no real issue against you if you did.
You can take my opinion with the smallest pinch of salt possible.

Thank you very much for reading my review; any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Anohana was incredibly disappointing. About half way through i sat back and went “oh god im going to be a contrarian again” but I can’t for the life of me understand why this show is so beloved. This show was incredibly shallow, having nothing to really say about grief, or loss, or even really something as simple as “friendship.” The characters are sad because their childhood friend died, but their grief or ways of processing it doesn’t really go much deeper than that. Characters might state a way they’ve processed it, but it’s all tell don’t show, the only thing the characters do are thirst ... after each other before going “I’m sad also by the way :(“

I enjoy slow burn stories, honestly I got really excited when I realized if menma existed was going to be the main mystery of the show. It’s a really interesting plot device… that they don’t do anything with for three quarters of the series. The eight episode slow burn is instantly resolved with no actual payoff. The honest to god excuse for why it took eight episodes for anyone to even try and prove menma’s existence is “Menma is stupid and Jinta is selfish” which is such a lame payoff and basically means nothing when all of the characters have gone through their arcs already.

Speaking of characters, everyone is unlikable and poorly written. The women only ever obsess over the men in this show for basically no reason, and the men are just terrible people for no reason. Nobody has deeper motivations they leave unsaid. The one exception is Tetsudou, he was decently fun to watch most of the time. But even Tetsudou basically boils down to “the good hearted spiritual guy” which while kinda lame and generic is at least more interesting than “pretentious dick” and “generic shut in.” There’s no attempt to give characters chemistry or show romance, they just all have crushes on each other because it adds more drama I guess. It’s lame and annoying to watch.

The show isn’t sad. I went in thinking this was a tearjerker but because the plot was lame, characters unlikable, themes non existent, and writing uninspired I ended up not feeling enough of a connection to anything to make me cry. It’s sad because she’s dead, but that’s it. The emotional climaxes have such little impact that I couldn’t force myself to cry at a single moment. This is all to say, I like crying at stuff and cry easily but this show couldn’t get a single tear out of me. Disappointing.

3/10. Disappointing after hearing so many good things. There are a lot better shows worth your time.

Anohana was initially recommended to me by people who also recommended Angel Beats. Having seen (and been largely unimpressed by) Angel Beats, I should've assumed that this show would probably be average at best. That isn't to say that I was turned off to the idea entirely, just that my expectations weren't very high to begin with so it's not like I boarded a hype train for a series that didn't live up to the bar set by the community. Angel Beats had already thoroughly broken the pattern for tear-jerking hype.

But having gone through a hard time recently, I actively sought out a tear-jerker, figuring ... it might redirect my sadness into something a bit more conducive to ending my cycle of grieving. My point is that I was ripe for crying and this series couldn't do it. I got more out of watching Pikachu cry for five seconds in the first Pokemon movie than I got out of this 11-episode series, which is being pushed as a tear-jerker. Yes, really.

And to clarify, I am not one to turn down stories for being perfectly trite. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, flirt, awkward confession, whatever? Nah, it's cute. I can get behind cute.

Anyway, I digress. Let's move onto what makes this anime such a disaster.

STORY (1/10):

Unfortunately, it's difficult to avoid spoilers here, but I will do my best. What we have is a character, Menma, who is at the absolute centre of every occurrence in the anime. This would be all well and good except that she is unforgivingly annoying.

To be clear, I have watched anime for actual decades by this point. I am used to people throwing around the word "annoying" when talking about any character that has a high-pitched voice or is more energetic than a dead car battery, so trust me when I say that I don't use the term lightly. Menma jumps on people, hits people with minimal provocation, throws things around, talks incessantly while other people are talking, talks ad nauseum when the other character is clearly not interested in engaging, whimpers or cries at the drop of a hat, makes other people do everything for her, and overall, her mannerisms become actively distracting. Somehow, this is supposed to be endearing, but no.

Wait, we were talking about the story? Okay, so, as mentioned, this character is at the centre of everything. It all starts with a wish that she can't remember. I won't drag the amnesia concept for being over-used (I'm sure there are enough reviews already doing this), but I can't imagine that someone would go through all of the trouble of re-entering the life of someone they haven't seen in years only to forget what the wish is the second someone doesn't use scrambled eggs in their ramen. It feels pointless and contrived. They try to wash away multiple series discrepancies in this way, using being "absent-minded" as an excuse. Absent-mindedness is a thing, but the issue compounds when the character that she's paired with has all of the exact same blind spots. This results in melodramatics that could've been easily avoided, which makes the melodramatics seem actually pointless after the fact, and makes it difficult to invest in anything to come later in the series.

What this amounts to is Menma running others around to try and figure out what she wants (instead of, you know, figuring it out herself), manipulating them (try telling me that "maybe that's my wish" any time things aren't going exactly her way isn't manipulation), and reveling in watching the drama unfold because she's trying to bring five largely incompatible people who are clearly at different stages in their life now back together.

It gets worse.

So much of the early story build-up emphasizes that their complete reunification is a prerequisite for her wish to come true. Guess what? This ends up being entirely meaningless once you find out what the wish actually is. Literally, only one person was required for wish fulfillment. All of that screaming and crying for nothing. This series practically trains you to cry for no good reason using shouting and crying characters. I'll go back to watching the two Pikachu from Mewtwo Strikes Back slap each other. Thanks.

CHARACTER (1/10):

This brings me to the second part of the review. I believe I've said all that needs to be said about Menma, so I'll move onto Jinta.

Jinta exists in-world as an ideal. Basically, everyone who knows him immediately associates him with who he was when he was younger, which became incompatible with his current reality over time. This causes a lot of anxiety on his part, which makes sense, but it also leads to weird romanticism coming from other characters, including characters who openly put him down. The reality is that as a character, he isn't anything special. He presents as a hot mess that at least one girl gets hot over for seemingly no reason and he gets hot himself for a dead girl. (And don't lose any sleep. The writers didn't forget to point out that dead girl's boobs hadn't developed. Classy.)

Anjou, despite providing the basis of what could've been a lovable darling of a character, doesn't make any sense when held up to the slightest scrutiny. The story initially tries to take her drama in the direction of others sexualizing her inappropriately (ironic given all of the crotch shots the animators decided to include of a girl going through puberty), leading to someone attempting to assault her, then someone else attempting to take advantage of her. This might've had the opportunity to go in the right direction, but instead, we're treated to a backstory where Anjou is jealous of someone else's beauty. She's jealous at the beginning of the story and she's jealous at the end. She has an opportunity to explore or build her character during one interaction with Tsurumi, but that never goes anywhere. The resolution seems to be that she wants someone to call her out and patronize her for being easily influenced. I still don't know what she wanted that to achieve or how that would help her grow into a more confident character, but okay.

Matsuyuki is creepy. Before I continue, if you want to see a non-creepy version of a man cross-dressing as a dead woman to process trauma, I would recommend Fushigi Yuugi. You're welcome. No, Matsuyuki isn't creepy because he cross-dresses as a dead woman. He's creepy because he actively sexualizes her. Note also that by this point in the series, he's a teenager and she was a young child when she died. His experience of her is entirely in his attempts to possess her and not some well-meaning but misguided thing he's trying to do because he believes it's in her best interest. He keeps a wig that looks like her hair and smells it. He dresses up in her clothes and runs around, which... I'm not even sure what that was supposed to accomplish. The boy seems to recognize that he's not well at least, but you think it stops him from picking on others who have also been negatively affected by her death? Of course not. Matsuyuki walks his line through the whole series with next to zero consequences for his bullying and jealousy. The one time Tsurumi attempts to give him a consequence is entirely selfish in nature and we aren't lead to believe that it amounted to anything other than maybe a few girls being less interested in dating him. Big loss. He never had to atone for anything, which made him entirely scummy and irredeemable. Yuck.

While I wish I could have something positive to say about Tsurumi, I really don't. She is perhaps one of the least relatable, sympathetic characters next to Matsuyuki. She acts like she's on a pedestal, looking down her nose at others while enabling bad behaviour whenever things don't go her way. She is not above using blackmail to manipulate and if she can't do that, then she'll use it to set a fire and watch the flames. She doesn't have shame for what she does and mocks Anjou while being subject to all of the same pitfalls, including being easily influenced and catching a case of petty jealousy at every opportunity. This would be all well and good if she wasn't portrayed as being part of the protagonist group. Her laundry list reads more like it was meant for an antagonist, but she's yet another character with a stick up her rump who is cool with burning things down, then doesn't have to face consequences afterward. Cool.

Hisakawa is probably the only somewhat redeeming character in the main group in that he's probably the only one not exhibiting a case of "I want to bone him/her, but I'm mad/jealous because I can't." Which is what the rest of the characters amount to. Hisakawa still frames his outlook as being selfish since he wants to act to clear his conscience of guilt, but if you watch the series, you'll quickly notice that he is fundamentally different in that his "selfish outlook" centres Menma's needs! What a concept. His selfishness is by far the most sympathetic and forgivable.

HONOURABLE CHARACTER MENTION:

Atsushi Yadomi, Jinta's father is a gem at the bottom of a barrel of pig feces. I wish more characters were portrayed as being understanding of their depressed/anxious youth. If I were judging by just this character alone, the character rating probably would've been a 9/10.

ART (6/10):

Nothing about the art left me with anything negative to say. It's an okay style, not my favourite but easy on the eyes, and the animation is fine. With that said, it wasn't exactly memorable either.

Sound (7/10):

Again, no complaints. The voice actors did their job, the music was very nice, and the SFX were all well-placed.

OVERALL (1/10):

Why so low? You have what is supposed to be a tear-jerker with a bunch of characters who are either annoying or acting on petty jealousy. The characters have barely any chemistry whatsoever and the story is banal. I normally don't show up to drag anime through the mud, but I sincerely don't understand why this one got so popular.

If anyone asks, I will tell them to find something better.

If you're looking for suggestions, this one isn't exactly a tear-jerker, but I would still recommend the movie When Marnie Was There.

3 Things I Liked About This Show:

1. The soundtrack was pretty darn good.

2. Anaru looks cute. Hm, that's more like half a point. Um, Menma hugging her brother was also cute?

3. The final episode finally allows the actors to act for the first time and they do decently for around half of it.

10 Things I Hate About This Show:

... 1. Every character has at least three names they are consistently referred to by: the first name, the surname, and the nickname. This makes keeping track of what character is being referred to annoyingly difficult at best and frustrating at worst.

2. Despite this, I had to look up everybody's names whenever I referred to them in this review. They somehow picked the 15 most forgettable names I've ever heard.

3. There is no defined goal or path to that goal. The main guy wants the ghost to go back to heaven. Why? How? What does this mean for him? How does this change things? None of this is addressed until the final episode, and by then it's too little too late.

4. The characters are awful people, except for Menma, who never interacts with anyone in any meaningful manner, and Tetsudo, who is constantly upbeat and tries to encourage everyone at all times. For this, everybody treats him like trash and the show makes fun of him.

5. The show tries way too hard to lean into its drama and the pain of losing a loved one. Yeah, that's hard, and can screw up your life even ten years down the line, but because the show never puts any sort of spin or moral center on the idea, it gets old remarkably fast, and without personality, charm, or humor as a focus to land back on, watching further episodes gets progressively tiring.

6. Maybe don't have your main character the one who is emotionally distant and disconnected if you don't know how to write characters like that. Mob from Mob Psycho, Saitama from One Punch Man, Roy McBride from Ad Astra, Jack Harper from Oblivion, Kousei from Your Lie in April, these are all excellent examples of how to write a main character who lacks emotion due to repression. Jintan is unlike any of these; he is no active force and never is pushed into being one. Every single confrontation he finds, he runs away from. I got so sick of watching him do the same thing scene after scene after scene with no emotion, no care, and no progression.

7. Jintan's dad is a terrible parent and a terrible example of proper parenting. I don't care how much he smiles and talks excitedly, any father who lets their child sit and do absolutely nothing and doesn't care whether they go to school, work, get into trouble, or sit around all day doing nothing and mooching off them, they either don't love their kid or aren't fit to be a parent. This is a person that needs guidance, help, and a swift kick on occasion, and there is nobody to give him this. Despite that, the anime goes out of its way to show what a loving, perfect father he is. It upsets me to no end.

8. Why are all these six-year-olds in love with each other? Why do they all retain this exact infatuation ten years down the line, even when they go years without seeing each other?

9. Why does everybody have the same alignment and goals but their individual relationships are complicated beyond reason? Why did the writers draw name out of a hat to determine who would have what feelings towards who? "Jintan is in love with Menma, but hates everyone, including Menma, oh, Matsuyuki is also in love with Menma, and also Anjo, but Matsuyuki hates Jintan, but not because of the love rivalry, but Anjo is in love with Jintan, but hates Menma, but not because of the love rivalry, but Tsuruko is in love with Matsuyuki, but hates Anjo, but not because of the love rivalry, and Menma loves everyone!"

"What about Tetsudo?"

"Who?"

10. This is an 11-Episode series. It takes nine episodes - NINE, before three of the main characters believe Jintan about Menma's ghost. And it's not like its hard to believe or that they kept their disbelief a secret, or like Jintan and Menma weren't around when they were being accused of lying and drudging up painful memories. And here's the thing: Menma isn't like a regular ghost. She is treated the exact same as a normal person, just invisible and inaudible to anybody except Jintan. But she cooks food, sleeps, plays games, and interacts with the outside world regularly. There is no reason whatsoever she couldn't just slap the disbelievers, or, if she wanted to be nice about it, pick up some rocks or something and show off an invisible force moving them around. Or Jintan could tell Menma to do something, like, say, turn off the lights, and she would do it. Almost half of the first eight episodes are spent on nothing but people trying to figure out if Jintan is telling the truth or not, and it all could have been solved in less than ten seconds. It is unbelievably aggravating just how stupid these characters are.

There's more, such as subplots that are never explained, arcs that are never finished, and a heart-to-heart that, while quite good, needed to happen in the first few episodes instead of the very last one. Narratively speaking, this is one of the most unfortunate experiences I have ever had with an anime. There is so much out there that accomplishes everything this tries to, but does it in a quarter of the time with ten times the effectiveness. There is no reason to watch this mess.

oh boy, oh boy...where to start? Flat out the worst anime i've ever watched. This anime tries to show the trials and tribulations of getting over the loss of a childhood friend. Nice idea right? I thought so too...i was never so wrong. The characters are pathetic which totally ruins the story and the enjoyment of the series. ALL of them are a bunch of crybabies who can't get into a concenssus and keep yelling their childish thoughts at each other. Instead of trying to get over and go on, they actually keep trying to stay in the past. This was supposed to be a ... masterpiece emotional story which makes you connect to the character, but it's more close to: child fairy tale with no depth and real meaning whatsoever. The characters don't get any develpment as the series go on(unless you consider individual crybabies joining to make a big group of crybabies development¬¬) and continue to be boring and uncharismatic for the whole anime. Do not expect a real maturation and growth for the characters as the series tries to fool you on the beginning, won't happen. If you are the average anime watcher you might enjoy it, but if you are a complex analyser who knows how to distinguish a real masterpiece from a wanna be master piece you will lose your time watching ano hana. People are different so i understand if anyone likes it, but i'll give you an advice. If you are not a very sad person who indentifies your self with childish suffering beings, this show is probably not for you.