Three Reasons for Why AnoHana Is an Awful Series

At some point before Christmas, I had the idea to write a point-counterpoint article for this blog on the subject of a certain anime's quality. Unfortunately, the other party never got back to me with proper counterpoints, so I'm just going to put this out here as a general discussion of why it sucked. I encourage anyone reading this to come up with arguments on why I'm wrong. That means addressing my points specifically rather than bringing up things that the anime got right; I acknowledge that not everything in it was bad.

The anime in question in Ano Hi Mita no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (usually shortened to AnoHana for reasons of maintaining sanity).


Here’s ANN’s synopsis:

Five childhood friends grow apart after the death of Meiko Honma, close playmate of them all. Jinta Yadomi, leader of the group when they were kids, neglects high school and lives as a shut-in when he unexpectedly starts seeing the ghost of Meiko, who can only interact with him and no one else. She has returned to ask Jinta to fulfill the forgotten wish she made as a kid.

This article probably isn't going to make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen it, but feel free to take it as a general discouragement to watching it. Also note that there will be spoilers.

This isn’t easy for me, you know. I quite liked AnoHana to begin with. Based on the first few episodes, I was declaring it the most promising series of Spring 2011. Even at this point, I think the series has some redeeming qualities - as well as a number of other, lesser criticisms.

1. Let me begin with the obvious – AnoHana is laughably melodramatic. The series starts off on a very tolerable plane of sentimentality, but quickly devolves into something stupid, with silly soap operatic antics like Yukiatsu dressing up as Menma and running around the forest at night (a matter that is pretty much ignored afterwards). From a certain point on, not a single episode passes without someone breaking down into a blubbery crying fit. The ending is just outrageously over the top, involving a scene of two characters bursting into tears in perfect, hilarious unity and only getting worse from there. On my part, I didn't even find the mind-blowingly sappy game of hide and seek at the end amusing anymore – it just made me angry. The whole series is tainted by its banal brand of forced emotionality.

2. Menma is an awful character and disproportionately important to the plot.

Now, obviously, Menma's over-the-top cutesy moe mannerisms are extremely obnoxious, but really, that's the least of my concerns and a somewhat subjective matter to boot. The real issue is that her bland perfection makes her aggressively uninteresting. There is no substance to the character, no attributes except vague niceness. Her only flaw, as far as I can recall, is that she puts others ahead of herself too much. (I'm serious!) As a result, every other character loves and adores her to an exasperating degree.

There is an argument to be made here that Menma isn't even supposed to be an independent character and is only there to be an idealized symbol/plot device to facilitate the development of the other characters. If this was the intention, the writing staff could not have failed harder, seeing as Menma's presence completely overtakes everything else in importance. Why is this a problem? Well, because there was ever only one way for Menma's “character arc” to end: passing on into loli heaven, or whatever. The real meat of the story was always supposed to be settling the personal matters and rekindling the friendship of the five living friends – yet all this is shoved aside in favour of gushing about Menma and, finally, long-winded goodbyes. Everything not relating to Menma is forgotten, making for a very unsatisfying climax.

3. Last but not least, the entire plot is stupid and mismanaged. It comes down to a simple fact: the writers really shot themselves in the foot by making Menma's ghost a semi-corporeal being. Throughout the series, she's shown to be able to manipulate physical objects, sort of touch other characters and even eat. The viewer is left wondering whether every other character is a complete moron when they fail to notice things like a blanket floating in the air on top of an invisible ghost. Jintan, especially, comes off as a brain-dead dolt for not pointing this out to others.

Complaining about this minor issue seems like a nitpick, but it opens the door to a lot of time-wasting nonsense that ultimately cripples the pacing of the entire series. So many episodes are spent arguing over whether Menma really exists or is only some kind of delusion of Jintan's that character development falls to the wayside. The plot keeps going in circles and the end result is that the finale resolves basically nothing. Although the underlying conflicts between the main characters are now out in the open, they've gone nowhere at all, making the happy fun time montage in the credits jarring as fuck. The series simply fails – and it all could have been avoided if the writers had dared to let go of their stupid moe mascot at the beginning.