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Apr 17 2012 08:18 PM
one of the best shows in recent years with an ORIGINAL story. a sad, beautiful and gripping story with no filler episode or useless moeblob.

definitely a 10/10.

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Aug 12 2011 07:52 AM
thanks for your effort

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Jun 29 2011 07:26 PM

I agree 100% with your assessment


It really captured all the realistic emotions even down to Menma's parents/family

10/10

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Jun 26 2011 10:31 PM
For me, this one definitely ends up being the best show of the season. While the ending was a little cheesier than it needed to be, the show was a complete package from start to finish. Building the series around the stages of grief was a great way to make it universal and touch on many concepts that everyone experiences at some point in their life. Also important, all of the characters felt human and were different enough to have their own shape...no excessive archetype use, real thought was put into making the characters unique individuals.

What I liked the most was the pacing. It felt smooth, but didn't contain an obvious formula that made it obvious how much was going to happen each ep. I really dislike the "one event an ep" method with a hasty conclusion that ends up being the norm for formulaic filler shows.

I kinda want to give it a 9/10 based on the excessively cheesy last ep because I think it coulda been done a bit better, but that would be a cop-out for a fantastic show. When I think about it, I think this would be near the top of the recommendation list, and as cheesy as the end was, it did make me cry a little so I can't say it wasn't good. 10/10 from me.

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Jun 26 2011 02:22 PM
Ano Hana...my god and I thought Cross Game was perfect. Ano Hana really takes this to the next level in terms of drama, beating out even the likes of Clannad and ef in my book. This going to be a lengthy review

To start off... Ano Hana is a relatively realistic setting. The only catch is and similar to ef, you have a dead girl wandering around effectively as a ghost who can't rest in peace. The plot involves granting Meiko Honma's (Menma) wish so that she can supposedly "go to heaven." Sounds dumb right? The one thing that pull many people back in the first episode was the dramatic impact and surrounding of the mysterious Menma, i.e. the long broken friendship among the 5 remaining members of the Super Peace Busters since her death 10 years ago. The plot seems obvious at first: get the group of friends back together and be happy go lucky again. Effectively this is what happened, but the amount of backstory and depth involved in this series regarding each of them was absolutely astonishing. There are many ways to do this, but for some strange reason, Ano Hana managed to do this nearly perfectly. Each member distanced themselves because they each blamed themselves for Menma's death on a different basis. Tsuruko and Poppo had the least development out of them all, but the reasoning behind their actions throughout the series and certainly very logical to the extent that I was rather impressed.

The only big eyebrow I would raise to this show is Menma's revelation to the group of her "existence" back in episode 8. As many people have reasoned out, it does make the first 8 episodes feel very wasteful. Aside from the character development moments in each of those episodes, it simply felt as if the show had made 0 progress until that point. As I stated back in episode 8, if the show was unable to bring out a strong final 3 episodes, this show would really be hitting a rock bottom. Surely enough, episodes 9 and 10 were bittersweet...that is until episode 11, and thus finale finally came around to basically blow the fish out of the water. All I can say to the episode is AMAZING! Emotional like no other with supportive evidence of actions and nearly flawless execution overall. It was hinted a while back what Menma's "wish" was and there is now a bit of controversy of why she didn't disappear earlier since Jinta had certainly cried prior to this episode.

Animation was rather wishy-washy from A-1 Pictures. It's not a high budget show. In fact, more along the lines of J.C. Staff's Toradora! quality a few years back, which doesn't quite surprise me since the entire staff (director, series composer, etc...) are all here for this show. While certainly no the prettiest show out there, it was sufficient for a show like this.

Music was great. Secret Base is easily one of the best songs this year and I loved how both the OP and ED themes and lyrics meaningfully tied in with the actual show itself. Voice cast was also astounding as was bgm (though little bgm to begin with). Also, Haruka Tomatsu

Enjoyment? I'll start from the PVs. I disliked the first PV. It wasn't impressive and looked very boring. Second PV became really interesting when they began to reveal the plot...it essentially got me hooked to this show and guaranteed that I was going to have high expectations of it. Lastly, the first episode sealed the deal for me that this show was going to be epic. Indeed it was with each episode week after week essentially leaving a valuable cliffhanger giving me a need to watch the next episode. In addition, the episodes themselves were solid overall except say episode 6 or 7 when things slowed down a little bit. Nevertheless, they were still well above an average episode for any normal show.

Overall, the Toradora! team has done it again! They have once again brought us a new drama series to frame, exceed even that of Toradora! itself. Sure the concepts of this show have been used before, but what made this different from everything else is the amount of depth it goes into moreso than your average show nowadays, especially in the span of 11 episodes. Also, kudos to the team for bringing out not only an incredible show in 11 episodes but also an original work at that...and by original, I obviously mean no prior source material. I'm really going to miss this show. Obviously no chance of a sequel and it should stay as it is.

Preliminary Score: 9/10
Final Score: 10/10

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Jun 26 2011 02:16 PM
A really good ending but with one negtive aspect, the lame, absurd, useless, stupid and lousy wish to make a boy cry. Seriously that took the series down a lot in the end.

Except for that a nice ending which wrapped up everything about Menma and the rest of the SPBs.

Overall a pretty good series with a few flaws.
8/10 from me. (-1 because of the wish)

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Jun 24 2011 04:46 AM

Final episode I'm afraid. Its short and its on the noitaminA timeslot, the next anime to occupy the timeslot will be Usagi Drop and No. 6 on 8th July(2 weeks from now).

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Jun 24 2011 03:40 AM
This is the best anime drama that I've ever seen. I like the twist of the story especially from episodes 10 and 11 (: My eyes got all teary. Is this the final epsiode? or there would be episode 12? (:

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Jun 23 2011 09:50 PM
Lolz, I think it was a good call on my part of putting off episode 10 for a bit because I just got to watch both episode 10 and 11.

A really really good series, I liked it a lot and the characters very well but a little bit sad that we will probably never see Anaru again.

I mentioned about Poppo travelling a lot because he wanted to escape his "past".

Making Jintan cry....a pretty good promise, show his true emotions and not bottle them up like he had done for so long.

I'm happy for Tsuruko that she finally got the "my love" hairpin from Yukiatsu and its nice they're a couple.

Jintan, re-connecting with society and eventually will be going out with Anaru.

I'm not sure about what Poppo was reading, maybe he's decided to go to college to earn some qualifications.

Its great that the Super Peace Busters are back to being friends again...and more as well.

I'm going to rate this series a 9/10 rating, I knew it was good just from the first minute of the series but I'll probably not watch it again.

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Jun 22 2011 07:06 PM

I think it may be symbolism for how its hard to look her in the eyes? You could be on to something, though.