Tag: Honey and Clover

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).

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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.

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Editorial

Anime and the Changing of the Seasons

[zuta]

When you saw this post in your feed reader or Anime Nano or what have you, you probably assumed it was just another meta post on the upcoming season of anime. Perhaps I would ramble on about why it’s bad to drop shows after one episode; maybe I would say that it’s important to watch a multitude of shows, including ones that normally wouldn’t appeal to you.

Actually, the “seasons” mentioned in the post title refers to something completely different. I’m talking about nature.

Wait, don’t close the tab yet – I’m not here to preach. I enjoy my skyscrapers and carefully planned city parks as much as the next person, and probably more. However, I’ve always felt a strange connection with the use of nature in anime as a visual, stylistic tool. Nature can grant the most sublime motifs and emotionally evocative art if it’s used appropriately, and yet it’s something that can so easily go unnoticed.

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #1: The Memories That Revolve Forever

2009 has been an interesting year, though it was probably more interesting for me than it was for anime. Between finishing up some personal projects, broadening my scope of anime and media consumption, and delving deeper into my selected niche of visual novels, the distance between my last Christmas and this one is vast. Of course, aside from all of the personal growth that I could go on and on about, there was something quite significant that occurred this year, and it’s the only thing befitting the number 1 spot.

It goes by the name of Honey and Clover.

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Editorial

When Subjectivity and Objectivity Clash: Looking Back on Hatsukoi Limited

Hatsukoi Limited (2)

When 99% of the population consumes some form of creative media, we do it from our own perspective. When we think about what we liked or what we didn’t like, our own personal opinions are likely to hold more sway over the quality of the work itself, and our final opinion is usually somewhere in between the two extremes. Since anime bloggers are not professional critics trained to ignore their opinions for work, we usually do the same.

As you can figure, though, this can lead to trouble. J.C Staff’s Hatsukoi Limited was praised quite a bit while it was airing in the Spring, and I don’t deny that it has its own unique charms, but try as I might,  I can’t seem to change my opinion that something didn’t work for me.

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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

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