AnoHana review

A group of six children are really good friends and have formed a group called Super Peace Busters (Chou Heiwa Busters in Japanese) to protect peace. But one day Anaru asks Jintan if he likes Menma and he says he don't like such an ugly person. The second later he runs out and hopes to tell Menma he's sorry the next day. But tomorrow never came. For Menma, that is. The friends start becoming more distant and in the end their group splits up.


A couple of years later, a grown up Menma suddenly appears before Jintan while he's playing a game. Or actually, she is more like pestering him. But Menma didn't come back just to pester Jintan, she has a wish she wants fulfilled. She just doesn't remember what it was, but everyone is needed for it to be fulfilled...


This is Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai, or AnoHana for short and "We Still Don't Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day" in English. The eleven episode long series is a journey through memories and emotions. As my emotion manifests in tears in most cases, it was literary a cry-fest for me. And, without a doubt, this is the best anime of the 2011 spring season batch. And I still have to watch some more of this batch.

The reason for this opinion of mine isn't because this genre is fit for me. I prefer dark and twisted shows in general, if you really want to know. But this show still does take that first place, even if Deadman Wonderland for instance would have been the one I'd bet on. No, the reason is the flow, the story, the characters, how emotional it becomes and how it actually did have not too many nor too few episodes. Lately a lot of anime has been rushed into twelve or thirteen episodes when they should have been better off with maybe 20. But every now and then you can find one or two shows that are properly done.

Jinta Yagomi - Jintan - has since Menma died become a hikikomori - a guy who doesn't go to school. He only plays games, sleeps and eats during the days. And his father lets Jintan do as he wishes. He was in love with Menma and when she suddenly appears, it's a huge shock for him. He tries to tell himself the trauma from not apologizing for calling Menma ugly and the summer heat together with stress is manifesting in a hallucination as the form of a grown up Menma.

Jinta playing a game and Menma pestering him.

Jintan feels really bad about not apologizing and it keeps haunting him even years after Menma's death and he decides to try to fulfil her wish, even without knowing what it is. He tries all what Menma says could be her wish, and even tries what the others of the group says. But after a while he stops thinking about what it means, because she doesn't want Menma to leave.

Meiko Honma - Menma - is a ghost haunting Jintan and she doesn't really know why she is there. She assumes it is because she has something to do, but she doesn't know what it is. Menma's mother hasn't been able to come over her daughter's death and thinks Menma perhaps doesn't realize she's dead, but Menma is aware of it. If she's aware of the fact she drowned isn't clear, though. She used to tell her younger brother to protect the house, since she was part of the Super Peace Busters and had to protect all the world, when he wanted to come to the secret base with Menma. Her brother does remember that, even though he has very few memories of his sister.

Menma can lift and move things, as well as write while she's at the secret base, to show she's there. To communicate with others, besides Jintan, she writes in her old diary. This is what makes them all sure Menma's actually there, and visible to Jintan.

As time passes, Menma slowly starts remembering her wish, in the midst of all the fun she has with Jintan. Jintan's mother said that she didn't mind being reincarnated, but the only thing she would feel bad about, was that Jintan didn't show how he felt. This led to Menma promising to make Jintan cry, but her plan backfired while she still was alive and then she drowned.

Jintan's dead mother's altar. Menma prays every now and then for the mother.

Naruko Anjou - Anaru - has always had a crush on Jintan, and that hasn't changed. But she plays cold to him even though she's worried about him. She admired Menma as a child, but also detested that Jintan only looked at Menma. During the show she's described as someone easily influenced by others, and it almost leads to her being forced to have sex. She was luckily saved by Yukiatsu.

Jintan, Poppo and Anaru celebrating Jintan and Anaru catching all the Nokemon. Poppo thought it could have been Menma's wish to get a rare Nokemon game and them playing it together.

Anaru's the one closest to Jinta, as she is in the same class as him when the show starts, and drops off their summer homework, even though she did so just a couple of days before summer break was ending. She does though feel ashamed for actually being relieved when Jintan said he didn't like Menma, when she asked him about it as a child and she thinks she's a really horrible person because of that relief and the crush.

Atsumu Matsuyuki - Yukiatsu - is obsessed with Menma ever since her death. He's so obsessed that he dresses up as her as well as saying he can also see Menma, which leads to confusion, as Menma think's it could be her ghost. But when he says Menma doesn't want them to bother with her, she thinks the other Menma could be fake, as she really wants them all to be together. When he's caught he stops dressing up as Menma, but keeps being tormented by her appearing in front of Jintan.

Yukiatsu being caught dressing up as Menma.

Yukiatsu has a maniplative side driven by his inferiority complex to Jintan and his love for Menma, and he blames himself for Menma's death because he confessed his love the day she died.

Chiriko Tsurumi - Tsuruko - goes to the same school as Yukiatsu, which also is the school Jintan failed the entrance exams to. She's in love with Yukiatsu and is jealous of Anaru, because she believes Anaru would be Yukiatsu's backup if things didn't go well with Menma. Tsuruko is extremely serious and logical, and she wants Yukiatsu get out of the past and live in the present, because Yukiatsu's irreplaceable and she doesn't want him to suffer.

Yukiatsu suggests that Anaru and him becomes a couple.

Tetsudou Hisakawa - Poppo - believes in Jintan as soon as he hears about Menma's ghost and he is the first one to try to talk to Menma without seeing her and tells her he will make her wish come true. He is grateful to the group for taking him in, as he was an awkward child. He admired Jintan as a child, and somewhat still do as a grown up. Whenever he's not travelling with money he got from part-time jobs, he lives at the secret base, but the reason he travels is because the image of Menma floating further and further away won't leave his inner eye.

Super Peace Busters from left to right: Jintan, Poppo, Anaru, Menma, Yukiatsu and Tsuruko

The Super Peace Busters believe that Menma's last wish might be to send a letter to God, so they decide to do as the planned back then - making a rocket out of fireworks. Menma thinks it's a good idea, since she still isn't sure about her wish. When she doesn't move on it's a huge shock for all of the friends, and they hold a secret meeting and all of them blurts out their selfish reasons to why they wanted to send Menma off.

As I said, this is an emotional journey, which takes about 4.5 hours to watch in a go, and they are well spent hours. As Menma is a very lively girl you get caught in her happiness, but moments later you feel really bad because of the group fighting. So, despite it not being my favourite genre of anime, this gets 6 out of 6. A must watch, in other words. After all, it deals with shame, guilt, jealousy and the loss of someone important, and it's does it good.