You know this is not the review I wanted to write. After finishing and loving the first season of honey and clover, I wanted nothing than to watch, and write a review of why Umino Chika did the unthinkable again, and managed to keep the spectacular quality of last season, and her other work, 3-gatsu no lion. Unfortunately, this is not the review I will be writing right now, I will try to portray my honest impression of this season, and how it managed to be an interesting disappointment.
On the positive side, this series definitely had some strong aspects. The relation between rika and Mayama actually works quite well, forming the stronger emotional aspect of this season. It is kind of easy to understand why both characters start to get so attached to one another, and how both develop as people, because of the other. Mayama starts dropping the appearances of maturity he so eagerly displayed in the first season, managing to defeat the fear of looking juvenile in the eyes of the older woman he deeply loved, to actually taking action, doing what she needs the most despite how pathetic he may look when doing that. Rika’s case is even more apparent, her terrifying past made her unable to move on with her life, stuck in an endless cycle of regrets and sad memories, and even getting her apart from her friends and family. It is through seeing how much someone like Mayama really cares for her, and through confronting some memories of her past, with his encouragement, that she finally manages to take the decision to start facing forward, and trying to live her life again. If only the other characters in this show had this good of resolution you would not see me giving a single complaint of this series.
I would still argue the best aspect in this show is how enjoyable it still manages to be. Acts like Nomiya support and endless wisdom, acting like such a bro, will always be very endearing in my eyes. The same can be said of Miyawako cheerful and playful attitude. And really just the characters in this show can just be so loveable and adorable at times, I cannot get enough of them, no matter how clustered unauthentic and even baffling this series becomes with the drama and subplots, the mere idea of seeing this characters I love on screen, is just enough for me to still get some satisfaction, out of it.
It is probably better for me to explain why the character’s work much better in the first season and not as much here though. What always strikes me about the character writing in the first season of the show, was not how complex or well developed the characters were (even though I would argue some them really were), but how the series finds the perfect balance between idealization and realism. These characters were never what I would call realistic representations of people living this period in life, they are noisier cheerful, and way more optimistic than anyone I know this age. But there is also this important aspect of realism to them, they always had some sort of character flaw and the issues they face tell so much about our own issues, their search for meaning, their fear of rejection, their difficult to let go of their past and actually make progress in life, to the point anyone watching it could relate to these characters in some way. This is what always made me see watching this show as a magic time, the characters were never bogged down by excessive realism, which would make them unpleasant, like per say something like 13 reasons why, but they were never so idealized, I could not relate to them, and see them just as some idealized fantasy for escapism. This show in its first season managed this balance perfectly, I could get happy and consider those adorable characters a special group of friends I loved, with all the amusing comedy and interactions between them, while still getting my needed dose of character drama, pathos. Half of what made every emotion feel so genuine and well presented in my eyes, was that this style of character writing really was perfect for the turmoil of emotions, this show wants to portray. This season changes that a little, by choosing to have a bigger focus on drama, the realism becoming more relevant than the idealism. Dropping that balance, for the realistic spectrum of things, did not add much to the show, only made it lose the magic, the endlessly sentimental tone I loved about the first season.
Perhaps the most egregious aspect is how it handles the resolution for morita’s character though. Throughout the first season, the most well established and important quality he had was his emotionally distant approach to his friends, since he could not let go of an issue with his past and really be with them. How do they handled said particular character conflict here? Just make he not really care for the issue he was facing, it only being really important for his fucking brother. Yes, the biggest character flaw morita had, was just the fact he was trying to please his brother with some fucking plan he was coming up, without really caring about it. This is fucking brilliant. Actually scrape what I said above, what they did with hanamoto was way worse. They took one of the most adorable relationship in this entire series, which was previously compared as exactly like the one between a little brother and sister, and made it so, he now has some weirdly romantic infatuation with Hagu and is fighting for her with guys half his age. People who thought that rei and hinata to get in a relationship was weird, should come and see this bullshit. Also it is sad to see how takemoto has absolutely nothing to do or importance in here. As much as I love the man (which I really do) his participation in this story ended with his development last season, and his rejection by Hagu. Actually I would argue this whole I want to find meaning in a never happening love conflict, is a character regress with the answer he got from last season. His impact in other characters and the way they solve their issues is also almost nonexistent. Hagu’s character arc probably has the best closure in this. Her resolve to actually let go of love to achieve her goals, and be able to assert her will, even though she knows this might be selfish on her part is great. The way she underwent and manages to overcome the fear and stress of losing the only thing she was really good at, and capable of doing, with the help of the connection of those around her and with determination and self-discipline, is awe inspiring to say the least. Outside of Hagu I cannot think of a character who truly had good closure. When I was praising how Honey and clover handled the theme, of the difficult of changing yourself, I did it, because I believed by the end of the characters would still develop and solve their issues. This is a story after all, just conditioning a good closure to a theme is simply not worth it. I kept thinking, well the character development is obviously not coming in this early stage of the story, because of the themes it was trying to portray, but surely by the end of it every main character will have achieved solid catharsis and development. Only Hagu, and Takemoto early in the story got that. Yamada being the worst offender in all of this, which had the capacity to spent 37 episodes building a character arc that ends in the exact same place by the finale of the show. So great work again Umino Chika?
This season this does adds something considerable in terms of themes. Although briefly touched upon in the other season, the theme of talent takes the upstage in this one. The Morita backstory, and Kaoru entire participation in this show have as primary importance to tackle this theme, having several parallels throughout the story. Talent is in no way correlated with happiness in this world, both talented and untalented people suffer a like. The untalented had to solve with the difficult find meaning in their lives, their actions are in no way unique and can easily be replaced by someone else, never being able to compare or compete. They are torn with envy of those who are really capable. The talented also suffer a lot as well, both because of the resentment of those who lack their capacity, as well as with the guilty whenever they feel they are not using the ability they have, which other people would die to have. So far so good, talent as a theme may be overused in fiction, but this series is actually exploring it a little differently. What it never did was to actually solve any of the conflicts such duality brought. How did the characters solve the difficult feelings it come with this disparity in capacities and with their own limitations, and abilities? Actually they did not, they just moved on with their lives with the help of their friends I think? Because that was how Kaoru did it btw. There is the whole talk to your brother and try tell him, how you feel, try to make him understand you, speech by Hagu, but we never see this understanding between these opposites happening in the series or if that ever happened. Is Takemoto hard work supposed to show even the untalented can make meaningful things putting effort into it? In the end I am at a loss at thinking if this got any resolution, so I got nothing here
If you payed attention, in all I wrote above the idea of this being a lacking resolution is a constant one. This season did not need to do much for me to really like it, I do love this series special just for being a fun time if these characters. All I really needed out of this season was an okay conclusion to most of what was being built previously, while still maintaining the previous charm. Unfortunately, this failed both as a conclusion and both in maintaining the familiar charm, I love about this work. Perhaps I should call the whole thing a failure and score it low. Which I am not going to do, even if I cannot in good mind call this a success from Umino Chika, I still find her writing and works far more entertaining and interesting to think about than a lot of people successes.
