First impressions - 6.5.05Today, I watched eps 1 and 2 of Honey & Clover, which I downloaded on a whim and had heard absolutely nothing about. I am already totally hooked. This looks to be the anime of the season for me. I went into it with no expectations, and finished episode 2 longing for more. It’s a simple shoujo at first glance, but brilliantly funny – not just in a zany, insane way, but also warmly and wittily funny. It’s the story of the lives of several students. The two main boys are the sweet and quiet Takemoto, who I’ve taken a real liking to, and his mad sempai (upper-classman) Morita, who is endlessly entertaining!
The first half of the episode is a genuinely hilarious sequence wherein Takemoto tries to wake up a seemingly comatose Morita in order for him to attend a class that will allow him to graduate. Poor Takemoto tries everything, with the help of his friend Mayama, but nothing works. In the end, Mayama takes a photograph of Takemoto with a clock in the background as proof that he TRIED, which will, according to Mayama, ‘fend off at least 30% of his curse’ when he wakes up. Brilliant. At college, the boys are introduced to and immediately fall for the adorable Hagu, a doll-like 18-year-old who looks more like 10. She’s very cute, but the more teenaged-looking Ayumi is the more interesting girl.
But, aside from a very weird claymation opening sequence (reflecting the fact that these are art students) and a rather dull ending one, this anime is stunningly beautiful. People raved about the way AIR looked, but H&C is much more aesthetically pleasing. The characters are beautiful, but not in a saccharine or distorted way (except maybe Hagu’s first scenes), the animation is smooth, the backgrounds look like lush watercolours and the music is superb. Best, though, the characters, while interesting enough to be engaging and very funny, are also real enough for me to care about them, and wonder what is going to happen to them. Best anime of the season so far, without a doubt.
Final Thoughts
Hachimitsu to Kurovaa, or Honey and Clover, is something a little bit different. It’s a romantic shoujo story, but not saccharine, nor full of wish-fulfilment. It is not even told from a predominantly feminine perspective. Like many naturalistic shoujo stories, it could just as easily be live action, and I hear that a live action version is actually in production, though it’s doubtful that the charming prettiness of the show will remain intact.
Takemoto is a somewhat naïve and extremely sweet-hearted boy attending an art college, living with his peers in student accommodation in Tokyo. One day, his teacher introduces a new girl, the cripplingly shy and awkward Hagu, who looks more like a prepubescent child or a doll than the 18-year-old she is. Takemoto sees how vulnerable, how nervous, but how incredibly gifted she is, and falls in love. However, Hagu, in her own quiet way, seems to be more interested in Takemoto’s crazy, unpredictable, but also remarkably gifted roommate Morita. Meanwhile, their classmate Ayu is deeply in love with Mayama, another of Takumi’s housemates, but he is devoted to another, older woman. These two difficult love triangles form the basis for the dramatic structure of the show, with much melancholy yearning, plus plenty of unrequited feelings and embarrassment. However, to balance this angst, there is a liberal amount of quirky humour, lots of warm-hearted scenes of friendship and devotion, and a healthy amount of Japanese culture. In summary, it sounds limited, but the atmosphere of the show sucks you in and the humour is genuinely funny and bizarre.
The only things I found irritating were minor – a propensity to draw Hagu too much with her expression of stylised shock, the somewhat difficult to swallow idea that some of these art school geniuses are already making big changes in the world, the sometimes heavy-handed poeticisms of the character’s inner monologues, but overall this show was utterly charming, elegant and moving, and I find myself wishing for a second season.
(originally written 12.10.2005. The second season has since aired.)
No comments:
Post a Comment