There are two anime in my life that I will look back on for the rest of it.One is Neon Genesis Evangelion. The other is Honey and Clover. I am so close to this show that writing about it is actually difficult. I want to convince people to watch itI want to find the code, the string of words that will get people to pick up the box set, watch it on Hulu, download it from iTunes.I beg you, a new audience, to bear witness.Sit through to the end. Honey and Clover is about you.
Honey and Clover is a masterpiece. The design, the characters, the music, the direction; its touching, dramatic, poignant, and funny. And above all, charming. The series follows six major characters through university. Theyre art students, design professors, taking and teaching classes on sculpture, architecture, painting. Theres no clear protagonistthis is more of a mosaic, viewed up close so that each tile is interesting.
Most of the action revolves around a particularly gifted student, Hagumi Hanamoto, and the two men who are interested in her: the quiet and hungry Yuta Takemoto, and Shinobu Moritawho is cursed with being dashing, clever, and self-destructive. But tertiary characters receive just as much, if not more, attention. Honey and Clover doesnt take the easy route to a straightforward narrative; you learn as much about everyone as you do about the each person, and that includes the narrator, Takemoto.
The show is melancholic, melodramatic, plain, bold.Yet the emotional range of the show isn't forecast by its first episodes. Initially broad, the show tightens until delicate.As much as I don't want to compare it to something else, I'm desperate to get you to try it. So: Honey and Clover recalls BBC's The Office. What made the British original spectacular was not only its vision of comedy, but the longing and pity that tempered the whole. Life is a mixture of emotions: Pain, love, joy.The greatest works of art capture all of these in some measure.
Our time is too short to waste on people who are afraid to experience the full range of our condition.If you look at these screen-shots and say, No way!That looks gay, then we're never going to have anything to communicate about anyway.Our conversations would be lost across a chasm of differences.For those willing to cross the divide, to give the show a shot, I commend you. You are real.You exist.
Preview it on Hulu if you need to. (Watch it subtitled, whatever you do).Honey and Clover may be colored in hues too pastel for some, but I promise you, the palette of its relationships is universal.
score 10 out of ten
verdict Honey and Clover is a masterpiece. The design, the characters, the music, the direction; its touching, dramatic, poignant, and funny.
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