Anime: Hachimitsu to Clover

I very nearly gave up on Honey and Clover after the first episode. The plot was empty, the presentation uninteresting; mostly, the series seemed quite simply boring. By the end, of course, I was in love with it; I think this is the first time I've ever resisted watching the final episode of a series because I don't want it to end.

What made me give the show a second chance was the promise contained in the very end of said episode, a line about "seeing the exact moment someone falls in love". Something about that resonated with me, and that turned out to be a harbinger of much to come. Because Honey and Clover is, hands down, the most true-to-life work I have ever seen, in any medium. In most anime love is, for the viewer at least, a side issue; even say Clannad, frequently placed in the same category, is something very different, with love providing the conceit, the background to make a show around. Here, love, in all its myriad forms, is the show - and it captures the pain of heartbreak with a skill that's parsecs ahead of anything else I know (certainly the portrayal in any harem show - even a respectable one like Shuffle! - pales utterly in comparison). The characters are overwhelming in their humanity, their realism - and we feel their pain as our own. It's all the more powerful when you realize no-one is being stupid - there are no convenient mishearings, no arbitrary conditions, just the tangled web of genuine, deeply held affections getting in each other's way. I get the feeling the bizzare opening sequence - initially quite offputting - may exist solely to allow a bit of lighthearted playfulness into what is overwhelmingly a sad, even depressing, show.

The sadness colours one's perceptions of the show - and as we see in the series itself with the grading of artworks, one's impression will likely depend greatly on how one thinks of it. The animation is somewhat undersaturated - but what could easily seem drab, washed-out instead came across as soft, delicate, and in keeping with the mood (and in its defence, the animation is certainly technically well-detailed for its time, particularly the character designs). Likewise the music, which is mostly various rearrangements of a very small library of songs - perhaps four or five, including the opening and ending. It sounds like too little, but it works; the same songs cue us into the same emotions, felt by different but similar people in different but similar situations. Such analogies seem to be a running theme in the show, with one of the main romantic situations concerning two people alike in their feelings of unrequited love (the realization of this forming a powerful emotional moment), and the conclusory "journey of self-discovery" being remarked upon and assisted in by many older characters who in turn had undertaken such things themselves.

One flaw that I can't excuse is the pacing; attempting to cover an entire three+ years of university in 24 episodes leads to too much time compression, and the resulting slow pace of relationship development stretches credibility to breaking; the same stories would work much better told over the course of a single year. In fact at all points where the outside world intrudes, the plotting seems weak; the portrayal of life as an art student is sloppy at best, and the exploits of slacker Morita, while providing some welcome comic relief, are too far into slapstick territory, and clash badly with the serious romantic plotline he eventually takes part in. But if not excusable, these problems are at least ignorable, because the plot - at least the "external" plot - is never the point of this show; that honour falls to the characters. Perhaps the most noticeable problem is the occasionally inconsistent voice acting - most pronounced in Hagu, one of the leading ladies (unusually, this series has only two major females - and theirs are the voices which have trouble staying distinct, wheras the large male cast are always clearly acted). But these minor niggles do nothing to dent the wonder that is this show.

Undoubtably not everyone will share my experience - Honey and Clover resonated with my own life, and watching it around my own graduation certainly helped. Nor, truth be told, was it an enjoyable experience as such - while it was profoundly moving, the tears I was close to at several points were from sadness rather than joy. But it was an experience I have no hesitation in recommending; if you feel even a tenth of what I did, it's worth seeing.

A serious anime catching various aspects of life as a college student, H&C brings about one of the best anime experiences I have been offered in the long time since I've been watching anime.
A perfect blend between a college comedy show and a drama spectacle, this anime is just a few steps short of perfect.
It's not a series that prides itself being a story-driven anime, it's a character-driven series. Normally, I would consider this to be a gamble on the anime's side but this time, H&C executes it so perfectly that I really cannot find many flaws, perhaps just in my perception of the characters.
But, each elemet at its own time...

Animation
H&C is one of the best looking anime in the entire anime industry. Beautifully crafted backgrounds, carefully detailed and worked on, support a set of equally pleasant characters that, for once, fit in those afore mentioned backgrounds, as a natural extension of them. That, and the palette of soft colors used make this series into something that one would even watch for the shear image poetry that it represents.

I've mentioned earlier the characters. One of the overall positive attributes of this anime is its characters, both from an evolution and personality point of view, as from a graphic stand point. Each character is beautifully drawn and the general graphic style permits them to morph from a visual comic style (chibi forms at times) to a more serious tone without looking out of place or seeming annoying.

This series is about art students and as such, "art" is the only word that would do justice to how this anime looks. "Stunning" and "magnificent" simply are not enough...

Sound
The only thing that I can find to be wrong with the sound of H&C is the opening song that literally made me sick to my stomach. It may just be that I don't enjoy playing with my food or something but the opening sequence I found to be really awful. But once you get over this, the rest of the musical score that accompanies the anime is absolutely brilliant. Each scene is played out perfectly with its musical theme.

The VAs did a great job at bringing their characters to life. I can't find flaws in their performance and that's major plus for the characters.

Story
I'll just combine the story and character sections since they are heavily connected in this series.

As I believe I've previously stated, H&C forges its story from its characters, whose lives we witness for duration of several years. This is an aspect that the anime manages to put into scene very well by always showing the most meaningful moments in those years, from the winter holydays (personal note: I adore winter episodes in any anime) to the end of the year projects for the different characters. The anime plays very well on the fine line between comedy and drama, each fall into one of those being nothing less than pure works of art from the producers' part.

As it rarely happens, this series throws at us not one, not two, but more than 6 characters that are both interesting and intelligent...and most of all, humane. As such, you may come to love some, you may come to despise some but no character may be called a bad character. There is no such term in H&C simply because each character is developed very well from start to end, after 24 episodes you may very say that you know their hearts inside out.

Each character is unique in its own way and each one may offer something for each viewer to identify with. The cast in this anime is simply wonderful by any and all accounts. Be it Morita's outbursts of...whatever it is he does, Mayama's indecisiveness, Takemoto's worries, Yamada's stubborn feelings or Hagu's...umm...loliness, each character will make you feel for them, each character is a world that is explored in detail.
Speaking of Hagu, her role in story is minimal and I found it hard to swallow the age that the producers gave her, simply because she doesn't look or act that age, a thing that I found most annoying.

A bit on the downside is the fact that at the end of the series not many things are concluded, expecially from a feeling stand point. But life goes on and that is exactly what the anime conveys to us, in simple terms even.

All in all, this is a bitter sweet experience. You will feel for the characters, you will care for what happens to them as you come to know them more and more as the episodes pass. There are many more things to be said but I believe this is enough. This anime needs to be seen to be appreciated. I've said it before, I say it again...this is one of the best anime experience that has been offered me to me and, with no doubt, I recommend it to others.

Value
I will rewatch, I most definetly will. I am hoping for a second season to an anime that has made this year rich. Until then, I await the bonus episodes in spring next year...more Morita I hope...

I think this show is overrated
Maybe I am cold-hearted son of a gun but I felt bored during many of the episodes. Almost towards the end I just wanted to finish it and start on something else. I did't want the time invested to be wasted. I must say that I like the second season lot more and it made the whole series better.

Animation and sound were really good as the other reviewers said. The OST is fantastic and I love their inserts of songs during the middle of episodes.

Story and characters are what I had problem with. There really wasn't much of main story that I saw. Yes the characters are in love and you want to see what happens but I didn't care because I did't care for the characters. Hagu looks like a little 6th grade hampster who really doesn't know how to do anything and who have no clue as to what is going on. When Hagu is introduced I first thought that she must be a 13 year old child prodigy who made to college because her artistic ability. I did't see what her beauty was. Only character I liked was Morita just because he was so funny. I could kind of relate to Takemoto in searching for his path.

Only thing carried the show was little bit of love triangle, its comedy, and soundstrack. But overall I felt it lack a real story.

Honey & Clover (I will use the English name here) is an anime that you remember long after you watch it, still pondering (and hoping) for a solution in your own head - thank goodness for Series 2. Hopefully it will wrap it all up.

I basically downloaded and watched it because it was a top 10 in just about every anime website (anidb, animenfo, etc) and it came up on boxtorrents.com and I thought "If everyone likes it, should be reasonably good".

I started watching it and though after 4 episodes that I would never trust a forum review score again. I almost gave up on it and watched the next two, thinking that I would give up if it didn't get better. Suddenly it started weaving the story and taking me in.

I think Hagu-chan starts off being this cute love object with little personality to speak of, but I'm assuming her development is the big centre on which the developers built the series, it's just that it takes some time to get to that point. With Hagu-chan, it avoids Ecchi etc, which suits this series. The animation is classy (more to come), therefore the way they portray things needs to be too. Her development is the real joy in the series. The other storylines are brilliant too, but seeing her develop emotionally is what makes this series so great to watch.

Sound is awful. Sorry. Last song is okay, the first song sounds like someone's cat on the fence, yowling over a mouse it caught. The in series music is okay, but after twenty-something eps of miaow at the start, I can't help but rate the sound average at best.

Story is superb. As mentioned above, Hagu-chan's development is the key, but all the little side plots are used to really develop the characters, and I think that Takemoto-kun's bike trip is the icing.

Takemoto starts off being the centre of comic relief (via Morita's jokes at his expense), drifts through the middle, being a character that you don't really sympathise with, on the basis that the subplots all involve others, then finishes off the series being far better developed.

People have described it as boring, and his indecisiveness and cowardice can be perceived as irritating, but at age 20-22, his trepidation is normal. You go from having a life fairly structured on your behalf, to one where you make your own path, and that can be scary in a way. At this point in life, you ask yourself "who am I, what am I doing?", and the way they portray this is good. I think that the automatic assumption is that the "main" character/s have to be dominant, and I think that having a less dominant character allows for the personalities of others to shine, and stops the story careering to a predictable end.

Animation is brilliant. The opening sequence, whilst sounding awful is visually impressive. The animation through the series is really great. I tend to be a lover of the stereotypical style of anime, so the cute girls look cute etc, so it took a while for the animation to really grow. But this series isn't about excessive soppy romance, fan service etc, so the classy animation goes with the classy storyline. Besides, why have an anime about artwork, with average animation, which is an artform itself.

I enjoyed this thoroughly. If you find it hard going (aka boring) at the start, persist and this show will suck you in. At the end all you can think of is "more please". Thank goodness for Series 2.

I have a confession to make. I have watched Will and Grace of my own free volition. I have read trash romance novels and wept from masterful emotional manipulation. As a man, these are not things I am particularly proud of, and this is how I relate to the stigma established in Japan where a grown man reading shoujo manga is about as ludicrous to consider as a man playing with Barbie dolls. It's a shame, because shoujo like Honey and Clover provide real insights into interpersonal drama. It shows how vanishingly slim the difference in shoujo and shounen is in a well-written story, since story arcs like Takemoto's bicycle journey fit exactly into the coming of age saga so common in young men's literature.

Which is all the more astonishing given the absolute ludicrosity that's pretty much omnipresent throughout Honey and Clover. Morita's entire character. Hagu's appearance and her rather overbearing guardian. Yamada's rather mysterious appeal to apparently all men. Nobody is making the mistake that Honey and Clover is a close approximation of reality, yet these hyper-distorted extensions of character cliches all too often convey accurately the angst we all experience, in ways so acutely ridiculous they pierce through even the most jaded viewer.

On a different level, it is downright fascinating to watch the emergence of college dramas, with the attendant college angst. These simply did not exist fifteen years ago and says a lot about the changing demographic of Japan and education in general. They represent a different space than the high school life drama so often idealized in anime, with characters who have taken over all the roles expected of them as adults, yet not quite mentally mature. Probably a natural extension of all the high school aged characters who are shown as forced to be adults through circumstance. There's the sour irony that Takemoto's "Tower of Adolescence" was named by his mentor and as such completely appreciated by the two old fogies reviewing his thesis work. Raises some real questions about the target demographic, wouldn't you say?

Even more astonishing, for all it's power, Takemoto's journey towards adulthood is just one leg of the essentially separate stories told in Honey and Clover. The other two are the lopsided relationships of Yamada, Mayama, and Rika. It's quite telling that the eldest is the only one referred to by their first name. One-sided love is seldom told so poignantly, and it is something we can all relate to.

Did you know? The Japanese, when they describe love, often explicitly say whether it is one-sided or returned. An astonishing cultural difference, which implies they consider one-sided love to be equal to a returned love in terms of significance. That insight explains a lot of the treatment of love given in anime and I believe to be one of the key differences between anime and Western media. What does this mean? This means that Yamada and Mayama's insistent pursuit of their loves is more admirable and less creepy. Because well, Rika is just the very definition of damaged goods, after all, and if she doesn't have Mayama, what does she have? It's another step away from the high school drama too, in that the one-sided loves here are confessed and understood by all involved between friends. Those moments where Yamada is semi-drunkenly confessing her love to Mayama with him repeatedly acknowledging it with a "I know" are particularily incisive.

That particular love morass aside, I ask you, have you ever seen a less aggressive love triangle than the one Hagu, Morita, and Takemoto are in? How bizarre is it that the exuberantly immature Morita is the only one mature enough to be in a relationship between the three of them?

All that super dramatic bullshit aside, Honey and Clover covers the comedic aspects well, sometimes brilliantly. The twister episode? Absolutely classic. I wonder sometimes though, what exactly is the meaning of a super-deformed Hagu-chan?

And even THAT aside, Honey and Clover asks some real insightful question about the meaning of art.

Pedantic pet peeve of the day: A love triangle only exists when each character of the triangle has a meaningful relationship with the other two. As such, Mayama, Rika, and Yamada are about as far away as you can get from a love triangle since Rika and Yamada have virtually zero interaction.

Animation

Along with the unusual palette and distinctive animation, it's uncommon for an anime to be so subtly driven by animation as it is in Honey and Clover. Color has a great deal of meaning, such that it's almost as if it was designed by someone with synaesthesia. They can just be so vivid at times.

Sound

The insert songs for Honey and Clover are AWESOME. They employ a lot of older songs, and for the more recent ones...I mean, how do they get these bands to play sappy shit like this? At any rate, they almost always fit the animated sequence perfectly, with their heavy reliance on guitars accompanied by melancholic male vocals. And well, that opening stop-motion animation is worth seeing for anyone. Those shrimp at the end could give people nightmares.

Honey and Clover is amazing.

I'm not going to mince words here. This series is one of the best slice-of-life anime series to date. H&C is all about college life for a few students (and post-students) at an artsy college. The series perfectly captures the controlled surrealism and zaniness that all college students know and experience.

Summary: How can you summarize this series? It's college life. It's doing art projects, it's trying to graduate, it's trying to find a job, it's falling in love, it's falling out of love, it's trying to stay in love, it's working, it's suffering, it's living. Every character grows, every character hurts, every character loves.

Animation: The animation is artsy. This is not the classically absolutely neat style people may be used to, and that jarred me for a while. But when you realize that it just makes Hagu look even more delicate and Takemoto even more conflicted and Morita even more zany...it adds to each and every character. The style fits.

There are two unfortunate downsides to the animation, however. First of all, the first intro animation is a bit weird and while it fits the series, it's really not all that good. The second downside is that the artists have a tendency to dark-out or white-out characters' eyes a LOT. Seeing Hagu-chan running around like O_O and Morita like =_= all the time is a bit much.

Sound: The sound is terrific. The OP is good if a bit whiny, but both EDs fit the series well. The best part of the music in H&C is how they evoke mood and feeling so well with it. They have quite a few vocal songs spaced partway into the episodes, meaning that you don't have to hear the OP or ED in instrumental fashion over and over and over again like some series do. The voice actors are all very good, very very good. Yamada and Mayama especially.

Story: There isn't a major central story, but there are two love "triangles". The first one, involving Yamada and Mayama and Rika is pretty standard, each one of them loving someone who won't or can't love them back.

The second triangle is more telling. Takemoto and Morita both love the tiny little Hagu. Both of the men are too afraid to tell her. She's supposedly too naive to know how she feels.

Or is she? The series explicitly stated who she seems to love, but does she really? My opinion is that she has a crush on that one, and it's the other who she would truly find herself in love with, but that's just me.

Character: The characters are wonderfully human, and wonderfully young. There's the solid but shy Takemoto, the delicate and naive Hagu, the kind but withdrawn Mayama, the crazy but conflicted Morita, the strong and suffering Yamada, and the wise-almost-old man Sensei Shuu.

Each character is believeable. I have to give special credit here to the characters of Mayama and Yamada, once again. Their scene in the rain near the midpoint of the series is absolutely wonderful. Takemoto, being somewhat of the focal character, exhibits a wonderful amount of growth by the end of the series. Morita is the weakest character, however amusing he is, simply because his zaniness completely outweighs any of his other facets.

Value: 24 episodes? Please give me more. This series is definitely worth any price. There seems to be a sequel in the works, but I somehow doubt that it's going to continue with the same characters.

Enjoyment: It's very enjoyable. This is not an anime you want to watch all at once! You should watch this over the course of a week and savor it. For those of you who are too young for college, watch it because some of it will be true for you. For those who are in college, watch it and marvel at how absolutely plausible it is. And for those of us who are past college, watch it and remember. That's the way it should be.