Shelf Life

Flowers for Fujiko

Jinta "Jintan" Yadomi thinks he's hallucinating when his dead childhood friend Menma's ghost leaps on him one summer. At first I worried that Menma was the ghost of Jinta's dead sister, which is another show I wouldn't want to see.

The only person who can see Menma is Jinta, and it takes Jinta several episodes to admit to his group of former elementary school friends, “The Super Peace Busters,” that Menma's ghost is among them.

Menma can touch objects and appears very solid. However, we never get to see the objects Menma is manipulating from outside of Jinta's perspective, so we don't see things floating through the air.

I was hooked by episode three. One of the Peace Busters, Tetsudō "Poppo" Hisakawa, claims to have seen Menma's ghost near their old hideout in the woods. Caught up with the excitement, Menma wants to help the friends ghost hunt… for her. A ghost's ghost? Episodes two and three were so funny and lighthearted that the series completely won me over.

The Super Peace Busters haven't just drifted apart, they were all messed up by Menma's death. Jinta has practically dropped out of school, Naruko "Anaru" Anjō hangs out with gal-like semi-delinquent types, Poppo lives in the shack they used to hang out in and works part time jobs around the world instead of going to high school, and Yukiatsu and Tsuruko have their own Menma-triggered hang-ups. No one has mourned properly and no one can move on.

Menma doesn't know why she's appeared back on earth, and she doesn't know how to pass on to the next life either. She thinks she had a wish when she died that she's forgotten, so the characters spend a lot of time anticipating that wish (did she want to find a rare Pokemon?) and trying to grant it so Menma can move on. In the process, the Super Peace Busters are forced to reunite.

For being dead, Menma can be hyperactive at times. In a poorly directed show, she would've been annoying. Menma was practically the perfect little girl when she was alive—a super-cute, selfless kid. All of the male Peace Busters were totally in love with her, and the girls, Anaru and Tsuruko, were jealous. Menma was almost too good to be true, and all her friends knew it.

This is a very different show from most contemporary anime series. The characters have depth! They are real characters who grow and change! Plus anohana never resorts to clichés. Menma never follows Jinta to school like you'd see in another series. In fact, I was impressed at the amount of time Jinta (and Anaru) spend skipping school. Maybe there aren't truancy laws in Japan like there are in the U.S.

It's even well animated! My only complaint about anohana is that the ending is dragged out. It's about an episode and a half too long. The extra length is indulgent -- it's not fanservice exactly, it's more like, let's say, “human service.” That is to say, since death is often unpredictable, we as humans rarely get the chance to say goodbye to friends or loved ones exactly the way we'd like. In that regard, the end of the show feels like a kind of human wish fulfillment.

I almost wish the ending was more cruel, although I know that makes me sound like a horrible person. I think there's a trend in “healing” anime as a sort of sub-genre. Anohana is the only thing I've seen that might count as healing that I'd recommend to other people. Don't miss it.

The included artbook translates Jinta's T-shirt collection, but isn't too exciting otherwise.[TOP]