Tag: Chica Umino

Analysis

Honey, Clovers, Sweet Osmanthus

 [source]

Honey and Clover fans would be familiar with the ubiquitous Ferris Wheel and weathervane symbols from the anime adaptation, but there are several less explicit symbols that aren’t telegraphed in the OP/ED videos. I noticed while reading the manga that the sweet osmanthus–apparently a common flower in East Asia–features prominently in Yamada’s narration. (The flower’s orange colour and Ayumi’s hair colour is probably a coincidence, but it’s a fun coincidence at any rate).

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Review

Chica Umino no Yuutsu

I’ve always maintained that tone and atmosphere can trump plot given the right author’s touch. This was more or less the case for Chica Umino‘s first manga series, Honey and Clover, which successfully finds the middle ground between subjective narration and a show-don’t-tell approach to character development. It’s an odd but effective style that results in characters that range from translucent to opaque depending on the time of day.

Her follow-up series, March Comes in like a Lion, hereby referred to as Sangatsu no Lion or 3gatsu, is similar. Its plot is a departure from Umino’s previous manga: it follows the life of a teenage Shogi pro who also happens to be an orphan (or the other way around as the story quickly implies). Unexpectedly, the plot is roughly the same as every other slice-of-life or coming-of-age anime, featuring lonely protagonists interacting with an upbeat cast to discover a less lonely world.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Analysis

A Thematic Analysis of Honey and Clover

honey-and-clover-analysis

When I was still little…one day, riding the green bike I always used to ride, I thought: “how far can I go without turning back?”

Life is like a lot of things; a quick google of the phrase “life is like” is enough to demonstrate that. One of the many things that life is analogous to is riding a bike: traveling forward into the unknown as fast as your legs will pedal you, unsure of what awaits on the rode ahead. The anime Honey and Clover tells a fairly simplistic and wholly relateable story of a group of art college students that are doing just that – crawling, walking, running through life, still ignorant to many of life’s ups and downs. Like a Ferris Wheel or a weather vane or the wheel of a bike, life continues to revolve while they search for the ever-elusive key to their happiness. It isn’t a battle for the fate of the world, or to win the heart of the local silent glasses girl, but it’s a battle in its own right, and it’s something that every human being must struggle with in order to find their own path. This is a story of that battle, that search, and of the bittersweet feelings that came and went over those few years that they spent looking for their four-leafed clovers.

Navigation
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Takumi Mayama
Page 3: Ayumi Yamada
Page 4: Hagumi Hanamoto
Page 5: Shinobu Morita
Page 6: Yuuta Takemoto
Page 7: Conclusion

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Pages: 1234567