…that Menma isn’t just a figment of Jinta’s imagination, step forward. Whoa, not so fast there, Anjou and Yukiatsu.
As excited as I was about the previous episode — that Menma’s existence is now out in the open — the latest Ano Hana episode disappoints me just as much. If pain was a disease, then a couple of the key players in the story just had major relapses. Both Anjou and Yukiatsu have an inferiority complex, each to Menma and Jinta respectively. Instead of exploring new grounds, however, the anime spins its wheels and revisit old wounds this week. To be fair, neither Anjou nor Yukiatsu ever resolved their respective issues. It’s not as if Yukiatsu ever got over his feelings of jealousy just because his friends all “found” (I still contend that he wanted get caught) him cross-dressing. Likewise, Jinta has yet to do the friend-like thing and have a heart-to-heart with Anjou about her feelings toward him. On some level, therefore, it makes sense to bring these B- and C-plots to the forefront again (just for clarification, fulfilling Menma’s final wish is the A-plot).
As a result, I’m not as exasperated with Anjou’s bouts of insecurity this episode as I am with Yukiatsu’s story; her tearful confession is still fresh on the mind. It makes sense that Anjou is still vulnerable when she sees Jinta practically ignoring her for Menma. What bugs me, however, is the anime’s deliberate attempt to string out Anjou’s plot by (1) interrupting any chance of a one-on-one talk between her and Jinta and (2) having it intertwine with not just Yukiatsu’s issues but Tsuruko’s as well. Either (1) or (2) makes it feel as if the anime is stalling: “We’re not far from the end so let’s just cram the anime full of missed opportunities and misunderstandings.”
Granted, Anjou may fear further rejection and thus lack the courage to confront Jinta again, especially after working up the courage to confess to him last week. Even if she did, however, having her confront Jinta again wouldn’t necessarily be a stretch of the imagination. Few viewers, I think, would cry foul that the anime is being “too unrealistic” if this happened. On the other hand, the benefits of Anjou resolving her issues with Jinta now rather than later serves to expedite the plot. After all, just how many episodes of “I didn’t measure up to Menma then; I don’t measure up to her now” do we need? If we’re going to continue with Anjou’s angst, at least put a twist on it.
What truly bothers me is the intersection of her story and Yukiatsu’s. First, Yukiatsu’s trauma was revealed relatively early and this gambit by the anime could have be interpreted in two ways: (1) the anime is daring; it isn’t afraid to drop major revelations now because there are more to come or (2) the anime played its ace card far too early. From the strength of the early episodes, I leaned toward the former interpretation but now, I’m not so sure. The problem was that Yukiatsu’s plot faded into the background too suddenly after his secret was out. After a long hiatus, his story rears its head again and instead of being intrigued, I’m just bored: “This again?”
Worst of all, there are a few too many convenient moments throughout the anime that just didn’t flow organically. Yukiatsu wants to communicate with Menma directly, but she discovers that she can’t write on just any piece of paper; she can only write in her old notebook. Unfortunately, Menma doesn’t realize this until the end of the episode, long after we revisited Yukiatsu’s tired jealousy plot. Maybe there’s a profound reason why Menma can only communicate through her diary, but I doubt it.
Continuing with this train of thought, nothing felt more contrived than Tsuruko eavesdropping on Anjou and Yukiatsu’s conversation, especially the part where Yukiatsu — out of nowhere — asserts that he was serious when he previously asked Anjou out. Of course, Tsuruko appears to be devastated by these turns of events, but the appearance is not credible. Yukiatsu has always been obsessed with Menma, a fact which never seemed to visibly bother Tsuruko too much. Oh, we know it’s killing her inside; there’s a reason she continues to hold onto that discarded hairpin, after all. Nevertheless, Tsuruko has always been a cool customer about everything. Why, then, does it bother her so much to see Anjou and Yukiatsu talking at a distance, a talk that includes a kick (albeit a playful one) from Anjou to Yukiatsu? Considering how well she knows Yukiatsu, does she honestly consider that there could be anything serious between the odd couple? The Anjou and Yukiatsu relationship is so underdeveloped aside from a single conversation on the train way back in the fifth episode that the sudden possibility of an Anjou/Yukiatsu pairing feels at the moment like a cheap attempt to re-involve Tsuruko into the plot now that the series is close to wrapping up.
Finally, there’s the matter of Jinta and Menma. Jinta might finally be coming to terms with his true feelings for Menma, but I just don’t care. Before anyone accuses me of disliking their relationship simply because of Menma’s appearance, it’s not (mostly) about that. I’m not going to lie and say that Menma’s child-like behavior and appearance doesn’t give me the wrong vibes, but let’s put that aside for now. The main reason their relationship bores me is simply due to the fact that Menma is one-dimensional. Up until now, Menma worked as merely a plot device — something to tie the larger story (of a group of friends learning to cope with a friend’s death) together. It was easy to excuse Menma’s child-like behavior due to the fact that she died so young, but if the anime earnestly begins to explore the idea of a deeper relationship between her and Jinta, her deficiencies as a character become all too glaring. I’m no more emotionally invested in Jinta and Menma as I am with Jinta and a dakimakura or any other inanimate object.
Stray Observations
• Anime characters always, always look the same but man, the one look that sticks out like a sore thumb to me is the ‘black-haired girl with glasses’ character. It feels like these girls almost always have the same demeanor as well.
• Animation quality dropped again for this episode. Maybe there’s a correlation between the aesthetics and the poor narrative choices.
On the contrary, Tsuruko looked happy when she saw Yukiatsu and Anjou talking. If I’m not blind or anything, I’d say that she smiled near the end of the scene. She probably was glad that Yukiatsu sort of was coping with the whole Menma-only-talking-to-Jinta thing. Plus, it’s kind of nice that Yukiatsu and Anjou found comfort with each other, they were both rejected after all.
And though I disagree on Tsuruko, I have to admit that I was disappointed with the decision to bring Menma in as a love interest for Jinta. I mean, come on, she’s dead.
She looked happy to you? Eh… I just quickly rewatched the scene and I don’t see it.
I do think the anime felt cheap at the beginning of this episode. I mean, there’s even a glint from Tsuruko’s glasses at one point! But, to me, the Yukiatsu/Anjou pairing seems more natural since they can relate to each other. As for Tsuruko, I think her dislike for Anjou shown toward the beginning of the series plays a part here. That, and Anjou is alive, unlike Menma.
A few stray observations of my own:
— What was up with Poppo’s interest in who Menma liked?!
— I don’t think we’ll get even one episode without someone crying.
— I just realized they’ve been emphasizing Menma’s bare feet several times, while they keep showing her sandals adrift in memories of her death…
I just don’t buy Yukiatsu/Anjou because they’re hardly ever seen together alone except for literally two scenes, one of which we just saw. If they are truly kindred spirits coming together, the anime didn’t handle it naturally. Hell, I’m more inclined to think that Yukiatsu is up to something than the fact that he actually cares about Anjou.
As for Poppo, maybe he sees more than he lets on. Maybe he knows what drove a wedge between Yukiatsu and Jinta, but he personally never brought it up because — hey, look at the guy — he’s so cheerful.
I actually felt like Poppo’s interest was more personal, but that may have been my mistake. And I will grant you that we’ve hardly seen Anjou and Yukiatsu together — however, the latter has been relatively carefree when they do show them.
Going back to your post, I’d also say that Yadomi has been quite consistent in avoiding serious issues (even if it only serves to lengthen the plot) and that I didn’t find it weird that Tsuruko would check up on Yukiatsu when he left the group. Besides that, Yukiatsu’s conversations with Anjou seem to follow a familiar progression of subjects: going from Menma and Yadomi, to Anjou and Yukiatsu.
Oops, sorry for the new thread. I’m on my phone…
If all the guys really have a stake in who Menma likes, assuming she is even the type of personality to entertain the idea of romance at such an age, then the anime is really, really jumping the shark. I dunno — maybe it’s just me, but if that were to happen, my opinion of the series would go down a ton.
Weird wouldn’t be the word I would use to describe Tsuruko eavesdropping on her friends. As I said, it just felt contrived. Like “we need another conflict… how this would be convenient.”
Stray observations:
As much as there is to complain about I still get 2-3 solid surprises out of this show each week, which is pretty remarkable given how hokey the overall premise really is.
The part in which Yukiatsu asks Jinta if Menma’s hair is still long was by far the funniest thing for me in this show.
This episode had the closest to actual filler so far. Most of it seemed like a hamfisted attempt to give Tsuruko some more characterization, presumably in advance of events to come. I don’t think it worked all that well, and just seemed out of place.
Tsuruko’s reaction didn’t seem out of character to me, but I interpreted it a bit differently. I took it as her seeing a tangible example that if Yukiatsu were to get over Menma he might become interested in someone else instead of Tsuruko, with Tsuruko feeling incredibly stupid for not having really taken that into consideration. It’s too soon to see if that’s too generous to the writing staff.
Menma’s 1-dimensionality is a bigger deal now that she’s actually real, at least imho. It’s always been annoying, but when her existence was ambiguous it was potentially some kind of symbolism relating to Jinta’s stunted maturation. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not it winds up being used for something useful in the final two episodes.
Not having 1-on-1s with Jinta is feeling pretty contrived, but thinking it through it seems hard to engineer a 1-on-1 with him that wouldn’t also feel contrived at this point. It’s hard to work with having the others (a) know about Menma but (b) be unable to tell if she’s around or not and (c) still feel guilt towards Menma. Even if Jinta says Menma’s not around they’d still feel uncomfortable, and under the circumstances it’d be gauche for them to ask Menma to leave the area. Still a bit lame not having them.
In general even though this episode slipped a bit — and had some of the most obvious filler — at the structural level they’re definitely keeping up the effort in terms of including parallels. There’s the scene in which Tsuruko and Yukiatsu run into Jinta and Menma walking home at night nicely parallels the analogous scene in the first episode. There’s a nice compare/contrast between Yukiatsu’s tumbling fall in the woods (when he’s running from the gang) with Jinta’s tumbling fall (he’s running to Menma). Jinta coming home to an empty house and running out again to find Menma parallels the sequence at the end of the first episode. IIRC Yukiatsu’s prostrated begging of Menma’s mom recalls Jinta’s prostrated begging of fireworks guy. That’s not enough to make or break a show, but it’s nice to see that they’re not slacking that far.
I’m going to go through your points in reverse for no particular reason whatsoever.
Yeah, I liked how much Yukiatsu and Jinta are mirror images of each other and yet Yukiatsu sees Jinta as a mortal enemy. The parallels, however, don’t add up to anything narratively substantial for me yet other than “Oh, that’s neat…” Not that the anime can’t make these incidences meaningful at some point, but I’m not drawing a whole lot from them at the moment.
Anjou/Jinta suffers from the same problem as every other plot in the story: the anime is too short. Within twenty minutes, we’re supposed to deal with her issues as well as Yukiatsu’s, and then the sudden bridging of the two. Oh, not to mention Jinta/Menma taking up the last few minutes. The anime feels like it’s stalling and rushed at the same time, if that makes any sense. The newest and freshest bit of development in this episode are Jinta’s feelings for Menma, but even that has been alluded to for the last eight episodes so it doesn’t really come across as a revelatory. On the other hand, the anime has to re-introduce Anjou and Yukiatsu’s issues, and with such a time crunch, it felt like they had no time to really take those plots anywhere except for “Hey, maybe we should try that going out thing again” while Tsuruko is conveniently listening in.
Just to make the point crudely, honestly, how different is Menma’s characterization from that of an easily excitable pet? That’s all the depth If the anime continues to go down this route without expanding her character, which seems doubtful considering how much time they have left, this is going to be a disaster.
Tsuruko’s reaction doesn’t bother me so much as it felt like… “Well, we haven’t really done anything with this character since Yukiatsu’s cross-dressing reveal… let’s make her jealous since we’re running with this jealousy thing!” The whole scenario felt forced.
I think we basically agree: right now the show’s on a tightrope, starting to teeter-totter, and down below is M Knight Shyamalan.
The main dangers at this point are Menma and Tsuruko.
I think we agree in general about Menma. My point was that as a hallucination her pet-like character wouldn’t really be a problem, b/c it would’ve worked with what her being a hallucination would’ve likely been about (Jinta’s immaturity). As a “real” character she has issues there doesn’t seem to be time to address, and that seems to pose a real threat to the show’s ability to accomplish its goals (whatever they are) in the two remaining episodes. Due to this line of reasoning I was a little surprised at how airtight the show has established her reality.
Tsuruko is starting to seem like she’ll be the one with the most concrete reason to feel guilt over Menma’s death, and will thus play into the finale somehow, but other than that she doesn’t really fit into the storyline at all so far. Hence the hamfisted attempt to give her some more characterization this episode; any later and it’ll be too late, but there wasn’t any room for her any sooner, either.
FWIW the parallels are how I tell the writers haven’t totally checked out. They love putting them in, it’s not clear what point they serve, but there’s tons and tons of them (too many to be accidental). If they *stopped* putting them in I’d be worried, but more b/c it shows they stopped caring than b/c they’re adding much useful at this point. Perhaps it’s just writerly ocd?
It might be cynical, but I bet the writers figure that as long as Menma’s cute, we can ignore that she really has the personality of a cardboard. In the end, maybe she and Jinta deserve each other anyway the way Jinta is so singularly focused and selfish that he can’t even see that his friends are falling apart around him.
I get the feeling that as we look back on the series as a whole, the show focused too much on Jinta. Too many monologues about who Menma is, what she needs or wants, how he feels about her, etc. All of this came at the cost of character development elsewhere, most notably Tsuruko. If they weren’t going to use her properly, she should have just played a Poppo-like role, i.e. a minor supporting character.
I wouldn’t say the parallels strike me as accidental, but rather as an unnecessary wink and nod at the moment unless the finale pulls off something miraculous.
That kind of “they deserve each other” ending (or similar) is the kind of ending with which Menma’s “character” is compatible but would be a big downer. That said, it’s getting harder to come up with a non-sucky ending scenario at this point, which is troubling.
The parallels might also be evidence that most of the plot was constructed to hit a few key scenes, and filled in backwards to justify those scenes. Not an uncommon strategy, that, but the huge amount of parallels may be evidence of a lazy approach in their working backwards.
Cynicism about Menma isn’t unwarranted. That said, if you think through how her scenes would go with a less pet-like Menma I think you’ll see you wind up having to rewrite much of the show. That’s not a defense of characterization, just an explanation (she started as plot device, can’t easily be made into something else without a big new plot, and sadly the plot’s emotional heft will partially hinge on a plot-device character) .
Well, with whatever number of episodes left, we’ll just have to see if the anime has written itself into a corner with Menma.
Yup, we will. Stuff like this makes me particularly afraid they have: http://i.imgur.com/u0mvU.jpg . Will be back when next week.
I disagree with your take on Tsuruko.
Tsuruko wasn’t that much bothered with Yukiatsu’s obsession over Menma because she hoped that sooner or later Yukiatsu would get over his infatuation with a DEAD girl. OTOH Anjou is a very alive and hot girl, so she feels threatened.
You said that the Anaru x Yukiatsu relationship is underdeveloped but that’s a viewer’s perspective. Tsuruko just saw the man he loves happily flirting with another girl, of course she would be disgruntled. And by the way her reaction was just a frown, not an hissy fit. I think it’s perfectly in character and very realistic.
As if being dead ever got in Yukiatsu’s way before. Considering the anime’s development, I don’t believe there’s any reason to believe Anjou’s a real threat to Tsuruko.
Using that logic, there could be a group of ninjas assembling totally outside of the viewer’s perspective and thus it’s no big deal for ninjas appear in the next episode. See, my criticism isn’t about realism; this is about storytelling. I don’t care whether or not the relationship is possible vis a vis the world of Ano Hana; the fact that we rarely see Anaru and Yukiatsu alone together makes the recent developments jarring from the only perspective that should matter: storytelling.
Finally, I never said Tsuruko was throwing a hissy fit.
Yukiatsu was a great character for the first six episodes or so, but now whenever he appears, it’s either to “lose his cool” or to talk crap to Jintan while everybody else points out, “he’s talking about himself, isn’t he?” It’s great that they’re trying to emphasize Yukiatsu’s personality, but I’m sure there are less repetitive ways of doing it. They could also focus more on Tsuruko, that one character who stands with the other characters and hasn’t really been characterized well.
That said, I think Anjou is a very strong character. Her actions are believable, and I agree that even a second confrontation with Jintan wouldn’t be a stretch. I actually liked the Yukiatsu-Anjou subplot. It gives a different way to look at Yukiatsu and it puts pressure and focus on Anjou to do something interesting. I agree that this feels like a dumb way to involve Tsuruko, but at least they’re trying to use her!
Just too many love polygons, y’know? We already knew that there’s Menma and Jinta, with Anjou and Yukiatsu on the outside. Now Anjou and Yukiatsu may have a little something something with Tsuruko on the outside. And what’s next? Poppo going to start confessing that he likes Menma too? Love polygons are not just played out in anime in general, they’re played out in this very anime. In American TV shows, they go on for seasons and seasons so the writers run out of ideas and just have the cast members all take turns screwing each other? It’s like Ano Hana is doing that all within a single season of anime and it just feels so goddamn silly.
I just read The Lovely Bones (Nothing involving the Peter Jackson movie) and I do hope they won’t make the last few episodes similar to possessed girl/main character sex scene.
It will just sound disturbing.
It’s anime. They won’t even kiss on the lips. Hell, they’ll make some epic moment out of a forehead kiss with doves and a piano solo. The universe would have to be on the line for the shounen to kiss the girl on the lips.
Is it just me, or do they hardly even *hug* in anime? Not specifically referring to AnoHana, but there’s been plenty of emotional scenes that have fallen flat due to lack of physical contact, I’d say…
Hugs? H-Hazukashi~ (*´Д`)
I agree with ya, Josh. It’s like every dramatic anime’s default sign of affection is staring. XD