Hana to Alice's story starts off in a very mild manner. Tetsuko, one of the two main protagonists of the movie, had just moved with her mother to a new house and transffered to a new school. Like almost every new student, she has problems of fitting into the class collective, which seems to her as rather weird. Soon enough, she finds out that a year ago, one of the former students has been murdered. As she tries to understand the situation a bit more, a connection between the victim and Hana, Tetsuko's neighbour that doesn't go to school, leads her in front of the scarry Flower House. And so, Hana and Tetsuko (now nicknamed Alice) meet for the very first time and decide to solve the mystery behind the murder.
The story of Hana to Alice, is where the opinion of people differ the most. Like I already said, despite the mystery tag, there is not much of a mystery really going on. Not only isn't the murder the main point of the show, it's investigation takes a background place for most of the time, in order to let the slice of life parts of the movie shine and lead. Frankly, instead of making the mystery and it's conculsion as much complicated as possible, the movie rather focuses on building up chemistry of the characters, which then enables the revelation to feel satisfying. It also does a remarkable job at making things simple and not over-exaggerated, like many other mystery movies do. Instead, it puts both girls into, maybe random, but certainly believable situations, which make it feel very realistic.
Talking about realism, that is propably the thing I liked about the movie the most. Not only the mystery itself, but also the mindset of Hana and Alice seem incredibly believable. Before deciding, they ask themselves several times if they really want to go solve things out. Frankly, their attempt does really feel like something a teenager would do. From the very beginning, they don't have much of a belief that things will really work out, and every decision they make feels very spontaneous, not like it was all written beforehand.
Hana and Alice themselves feel very realistic too. Especially Alice. That is because the movie focuses a lot of it's time at showing random, daily events from her life. Now, I know that somebody would't find that very appealing, however I thought it was a positive contribution to the movie overall. Some of the scenes, especially at the start, can maybe feel meaningless, but they only add to the fact that Alice is just a normal girl living her own life. There are scenes where she chats with an old friend, meets her father or just practises balet in her own room. They may be a bit dragging, but are essential to the overall atmosphere the movie builds up and to the ending, which only contains a short dialogue reflecting that these two girls are just normal students.
I don't tend to brag about art all that often, but in case of Hana and Alice, I need to make a bit of an exception. The overall art could be viewed as very messy. The backgrounds look artistic and abstract, but the CGI animation of the characters doesn't bond very well with that. However, even if the art itself isn't the best, the movie doesn't change it's main intention. And that is to animate the characters as much as possible. They are constantly moving, their faces are constantly changing, every step they make is a bit different. Their movement feels like that of a human being, and despite the art lacking quality wise, I just couldn't stop watching the incredibly realistic character animation. All of these things make the whole movie feel very much alive, which is a thing uncharacteristic of anime, and is a welcome change.
The OST is also of a very good quality. It has strong pieces, the one I particualry remember was a violin/piano composition playing somewhere in the middle of the movie, which take some slightly touching scenes to another level. That is not saying that the whole OST is that great, but it certainly had it's high peak moments. The thing that I found lacking was however the voice-acting. The main duo was fine. But some of the side character voices really missed the mark to me. Most of them sounded plain bland and uninteresting, and even way too chill at times. Frankly, it wasn't that much of a problem, but I have to critisize the movie about something ya know.
And saying the word critisism, I think I need to clarify some things right now. As of now, I've pretty much praised the movie for everything, but it needs to be said that it also has some shortages. Like, for example, the art. Sure, like I said, the character movement was excellent and it made me to watch the movie with pleasure, but the overall art quality was just not very high. Also, while the story wasn't bad and I mostly liked the things it bringed, it also wasn't very captivating either. The same could be said about the characters, because Alice was very good, but Hana felt somehow left out. It just feels like even though the movie does most of the things right, it also doesn't do anything more than that. In the end, it's just a movie for warm evenings, when you make yourself a tea, lie on the couch and watch a chill movie, that is good overall, but doesn't blow your mind with anything.
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Hana to Alice is a simplistic, yet impactful movie. It tells us a story of two girls becoming friends and going through lifetime experiences. If the mystery stayed behind the curtains for most of the time lies beyond me, the slice of life parts were enought to make it worth my time. And it was a pleasure to watch.
