Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day: Tears Worth Falling

Before jumping into this review, here’s a speedy summary of the anime.

The story follows a secondary school drop-out named Jintan. The anime begins when he starts to see visions of his youth crush, Menma, who passed away after a terrible accident near a river when they were very young. Several years later, she returns to the living and discloses to Jintan that she can’t be resurrected. (Buddhism is slightly hinted in the beginning and the end of the series). She can’t leave earth because her dying wish has not been granted. It’s up to Jintan to reunite with his old beloved companions who have gone their different routes in life since Menma’s passing and satisfy her desire.

First off, The Flower We Saw That Day has a basic and generally reasonable plot. It’s straightforward and easy to comprehend, which will enable you to watch this anime effortlessly. Regardless of its sad themes, it’s still exceptionally engaging and amusing to watch. Themes showcased in the anime can become confusing at times and take some time to really grasp. But, once you get over the little hump it’s easy to enjoy.

When making a drama anime about teenagers dealing with friend’s death, you must do it in a particular and careful way. You don’t want to overpower your audience to the point of no return. Typically, in a these types of animes, each character is egotistical, imbecilic and grim. This makes the anime less entertaining, and possibly agonizing to watch.

For this series, it displays this topic pretty good. We get to watch what real teenagers do and feel on a daily basis. The characters themselves are difficult to identify with at the very beginning, but the further you get, the more relatable the characters are. Each character has there own way of dealing with their friend’s death and how it affected them long term. The characters express and feel an assortment of feelings, much the same as any ordinary person would. The show additionally gives the group of anime fans time to appreciate every character and their lives. This makes the anime that much more interesting and  easy to watch. Though the characters are pleasing to watch, it  doesn’t go unnoticed about the inconsistency of each characters story arc. I really wanted to like each character equally but letting certain characters have more screen time and more story depth made me more drawn to those characters instead. This can be slightly distracting.

What’s incredible about the music for this anime is exactly how tranquil it is. Of course, other passionate soundtracks all have snapshots of serenity in them, however this one is simply loaded with them. It uses the piano to great effect with the occasional tracks adding in the acoustic guitar and a string ensemble. It’s not about the moderate enthusiastic pieces either. It’s about the few tracks played in the scenes that demonstrate silly youth with that kind of energetic inclination. Everything is quite soothing actually. In any case, I do feel at times the music could be a little more impactful. I felt the emotion of the scene by the plot and the characters, but I just wanted the music to show it that much more.