Learning to let go from Honey & Clover
I’m not sure what first gave me the idea to watch it, but it became apparent almost immediately that it was a good idea. Everyone I talked to seemed suddenly seized by a compulsion to rewatch at least some episodes (in ghostlightning’s case, the whole damn thing in 2 days). No one seemed to have so much as a caveat for me, let alone actual misgivings.
I’m not going to go too much into why it’s made of awesome and win — many have seen it, plenty of blogs praise it even if they don’t agree on the methods, and most people already know lots about JC Staff’s occasionally brilliant skills of execution that can make something as rote as Hatsukoi Limited into a winner and something well written into animated gold. The true strength of Honey & Clover is not its humor, underplayed dramatic moments, or unwillingness to insultingly explain key points to you out loud; it’s the writing, plain and simple. As a fan you’ve probably spent at least a little time justifying why anime isn’t kids’ stuff, but you’re often repaid by archetyped characters bouncing around a high school and crying a lot. Honey & Clover is your true reward. Even the theme that I most wanted to talk about is a little more “mature” than what you normally see: That’s letting go, one of the series’ many central threads that runs throughout. I’m picking ONE because apparently I can write almost 2,000 words about it, so to take on the whole thing would be extreme fucking insanity.
Something atypical for me: I try to leave them out normally, but there will probably be big spoilers.
What do I mean, specifically, when I say “letting go?” Easiest way to explain is through the characters, and how their ability to “let go” is directly proportional to how much they grow as people.
Rika and Shuu. Rika’s pretty easy: she is still hanging on to her dead husband. In a way, Shuu-chan is hanging on to him as well. They both lived a depressed life, feeling half complete without their counterpart and unable to even be around each other. Rika fully planned to off herself after completing their last joint project, which seems counterintuitive to me (seems that finishing that would be the last thing she needs to move on, but she’s taking “move on” in a very different way). She’s the only person who’s somewhat unclear at the end of the story: did Mayama really open her eyes to the kind of love that can free her? Not sure. But she did get the benefit of a very shock-treatment method of therapy when they visited her childhood home. Shuu of course, freed himself by admitting his feelings about Hagu, — he’d already been dedicating himself to her, but to truly live for her was his way of finally facing the future.
Kaoru. He’s the next simplest to explain. Though his father specifically told him not to pursue a grudge, he dedicated his life to just that. Was it about redeeming his father, reclaiming the company, or revenge on the villain? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t even sure anymore, and besides, everything he did from a very early age was colored by his envy of Shinobu. He couldn’t stop his hanging on to the past until the deed was done, and then he was left without a purpose for quite a while. Clinging to something, especially a grudge, for so long causes you to really lose sight of everything and get serious tunnel vision.
Yamada. Speaking of which. Boys from her childhood, good looking suitors with successful careers, even a better job — they all existed outside her narrow field of vision that encompassed only Mayama. What was it that finally broke the spell? More than likely being around Rika and throwing herself into her work had the largest effect on her, but of course cool guy Nomiya’s clumsy and vulnerable persistence finally opened the door. She might be the most cartoony of the characters, like a shoujo heroine (Kotoko from Itazura Na Kiss, anyone?) who just can’t stop. But when she became free, it happened in a realistic enough way: not a snapping realization, but a gradual stepping into the light.
Mayama. Here’s the flipside of that equation. What is there to talk about? Mayama’s hangup is obvious. It’s Rika. Wrong. At least, not all the way right. Yes, he had a serious problem with his one-way feelings for Rika, but that (sort of) paid off in the end. The moment when his folly ended was when he loosened his iron grip on Yamada, the poor, beautiful bench warmer. Even he wasn’t 100% sure whether he was keeping an overly big-brother hold on her or if he really was keeping her on the back burner, but neither one was healthy. He found it very easy to blame her until Nomiya went on the offensive and he stopped bemoaning his own situation long enough to realize how badly he was fucking her up by maintaining his hold.
Shinobu. The younger Morita seems to have had the opposite problem of everyone here; instead of clinging to something that’s holding him back, his unwillingness to cling to anything is what stopped him for so long. His feelings went unexpressed, responsibility was an ignored nuisance, and he even tried to bring Hagu on that train of irresponsible apathy with him. In that way he’s actually like Takemoto gone unchecked, but more on that in a second.
Hagu. For most of her life, until college, drawing was her only escape. And when she was told that she was better at art than most people, she reacted in a way that infuriated her “fans.” But Hagu’s desire to move back to the country and spend her adult life painting the forest and the mountains shouldn’t be confused with a clear-headed decision or an adult way of thinking. She just hung on to that life from before, and the more time she spent in Tokyo the more she seemed to block out her own opinions and keep her focus on that goal that she might not even want. Combine that with being unwilling to trouble her beloved Shuu-chan, and by the time of her injury she wasn’t even sure what she wanted and what she was doing for others anymore. Morita put a stop to that with his selfish but caring request that she just stop her art and be with him. Paradoxically, she was able to feel her love of drawing again just by being told that she didn’t have to do it. And that same paradox freed her.
Takemoto. Poor Takemoto. It’s easy to think of him as Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club (RIP John Hughes), the nerd who went through the same (actually, more effective) journey of self-discovery as the rest of the crew but who didn’t get the girl and ended up writing everyone’s report for them.
Takemoto was cursed by his own self-awareness. Every year since Mayama’s graduation was progressively more sad, and it became harder and harder to hold on to his memories of carefree days filled with the love of friends and dominated by the image of Hagu. For Takemoto, even the very literal journey of self-discovery brought him only to realize the value of the things and people he wanted to come back to. I thought sure he’d wind up replacing Shuu as a teacher, his attachment to the school and reluctance to commit to the future were so great.
At the end of the first series, it was in debate whether the naïve and crying Hagu was confused about her feelings or just plain couldn’t return his; by the middle of the second series the truth was heart-wrenchingly obvious. And that, long past the point of unequivocal defeat, was really hard for Takemoto to stop clinging to. It partially served as a reminder of how much different this is from most anime: as with Yamada, just working hard to win over your unrequited love won’t necessarily change anything. It just makes you lonelier and less tied to reality. But more importantly, this is about how the things that were holding Takemoto back were tied together. When he finally cut the ties to both his college life and his unrequited love, he could rest. Hagu let him do that with her trip to the train station and her goofy bittersweet sandwiches. And when Takemoto was finally able to cry and let it go, we the viewers finally got the chance to be free as well, left with our own bittersweet taste.
Close to home (do you remember love, and how it ruins everything?)
Putting aside the flowery talk that always sounds better in your head than in print, how does this contribute to me, my viewing, and the fearsome oyaji hate machine that is Honey & Clover? Simple, on one level. It makes for a story that someone like me (a bit older, out of school for quite some time) can not only identify with, but be hurt by in a way that more juvenilely focused plots (no offense) just can’t deliver. While that KeyAni gut punch is swell at first, it fades quickly. For the feeling to really sink in and last through time and repeated viewings, it has to resonate. There must be identifiable pain in your own life behind it.
I suppose that’s why Takemoto’s character creates a dull ache in my heart. He’s the reliable but not-too-sexy dude who doesn’t get the girl and can’t quite be okay with growing up. Eventually I did get the girl, but Honey & Clover showed me that I still haven’t quite shaken the Takemoto-like desire for things to just “stop spinning” for a while. That’s painful, as it refers to mortality, which is an even more agonizing subject than unrequited love — you cannot go back, no matter how much you want to. But even that realization is a beautiful thing.
And it means that for all those marvelous characters, great humor, and tasty music, the thing that really sets Honey & Clover apart is that it has the power to hurt, help, and look inside its viewers. You don’t see that too often. It also apparently has the power to end all the usual irreverence in my blog posts, so I apologize for that. Back to dick jokes and Macross references next time.
But that resonance was important for me to get across, and I know plenty of folks love the series for different reasons so I ask this: did Honey & Clover hit you very hard personally, compared to other anime? Was there a character that you identified with particularly, as I did with Takemoto? And might H&C help you move on from something?
Goddammit, you awesome people and your awesome posts. PEER PRESSURE MOUNTING AS WE SPEAK, URGE TO REWATCH AND REBLOG H&C IMMINENT etc.
I am a Morita IRL, from the not-being-friends-with-many-people part to the eccentric-disorganised-genius part to the internalises-lots-of-things-and-runs-away part, and was quietly pining for a girl with equal amounts of talent (albeit in another field) when I watched this. That was 3 years ago.
Still a Morita, but I think I can identify with, oh, just about every one of the cast now, Yamada in particular! That’s brilliance for you–something that you can revisit which now has a deeper level of significance.
aw you’ll make me blush. But do write — as Jen says (see trackback), let a whole new circle jerk begin.
That point is something I suspect, but hope to actually validate myself someday by rewatching. There’s no way I’ll be able to do it soon, but it’s the first series I’ve seen in a very long time that made me want to see it again, to pull all sorts of new insight from it.
I hated these people. I mean, the show is so good that I care so much to hate them.
No I don’t mean I hate them like I hate eating okra, or liver. Show ▼
Nomiya, I can’t hate; he’s cool.
No I never identified with Takemoto, it’s Shuuji that really hurts to look at.
Shinobu has this ambivalence about talent that colors my own views about it: Show ▼
I don’t know if this show helped me move on about anything, since my wife and I watched this practically just after our honeymoon. It was a pretty happy time not spent thinking about unhappy ghosts. Rewatching it now, with ^9000 more self-consciousness and reflection, I can say no. It doesn’t help at all. Quite the opposite, because it makes pain feel delicious.
The thing about Shuu, to me, is that he’s Takemoto (from before the ending) gone unchecked, unevolved. Because Takemoto didn’t have it either. He had execution, but not ideas or real talent. I kept thinking that Takemoto was going to look at him one day and say OH SHIT. But he found his own way to move forward.
I can’t help but feel you’re looking at a glass half-empty view of the series, which is fair — like I said, there are many points to it and that can create a very different perspective for different people. All of your subjective statements are true, but at the same time, isn’t the end result a little more positive than just delicious pain? (Although there is certainly lots of it). After all, that’s the name: bittersweet. To me, the sweet delicious pain coming from the same type of feelings is 5cm Per Second; H&C has more time to work but covers a much more full and “real” spectrum.
Holy crap. You just nailed it. Hnc was the first real anime I watched. Takemoto’s questions are my questions even today as a 31 year old. HnC was the show where I needed a break after watching it, the show that changed everything, the songs that still bring a tear to my eye when I listen to my “anime” iTunes playlist.
I’m so glad you wrote about this – I’ve had my own sandwich moment driving away from
dropping a “loved” one off and crying letting go, knowing I’ll never see them again.
Thanks for writing! Best post ever.
Thanks a ton for the comment. It was kind of a hard one to write, I don’t usually throw a lot of personal feelings in, and though I don’t have many anecdotes or specifics it still bared a little more than I normally want to. So I’m glad that someone shares my opinion/feelings. I think more than most, H&C is an anime built for people closer to our age (I’m a year younger than you). I’m glad I didn’t watch it too early on in my fandom, it would really have cast nearly everything else in a much more pitiful light.
[...] to otou-san for writing this awesome H&C post. Eternal, too, though that’s one monster of a post I vowed not to read until I’ve [...]
Honestly as I sit here a 20 year old college student having rewatched this show 4 times in the past 3 years I can’t help but agree. I love this show to near death and despite the 200 some odd series I’ve watched this stands in second place. (First tie between FLCL and Gurren Lagaan) It was one of the first few animes I watched and for some reason I’d figured oh well I hadn’t seen much so it just seemed better with little to compare too. But I’ve kept rewatching (and with the finally released manga rereading) And that just isn’t true, it stands there still at the top.
As for why I feel it’s superior is what you mentioned though there are romance comedies with identifiable characters though KyoAni/Key can make series that can be very emotional there isn’t a connection. You watch series and even if you are that character your not really attached to them. And that’s what HnC does to you. You feel like you either are one of the characters or know one or possibly even wish you did. I mean Takemoto’s reference to getting on a bicycle and wondering how far you can go was something i wanted to do about the age of 15 before even having known about anime at all.
And Takemoto’s plight is what makes the series, while the triangles of love and hurt is all interesting and all really good. It’s that unknowing normal guy that has himself an unrequited love that unlike ever series doesn’t end happily. And this is true of the other characters as well. It ends with them failing and finally with having to move on. It is life essentially, not a happy reality but real because in life everyhtign doesnt work out perfectly for everyone. HnC is a great series because of the writing, because of the artwork, the zany opening, but mostly it’s because HnC is like a mirror you look into as it plays and messes with your heartstrings, your self-image, and your perception of love, and Chica Umino has really brought something great into this world.
I say this and I am not lying but out of all the books, movies, tv, or anime I’ve seen in my young adult life to present has ever brought me to tears. Because that’s what happened at the end of HnC. I cried because Takemoto didn’t get the girl and to move on past his bittersweet love, and I cried because HnC was over and I doubted whether I would see anything as good.
I resoundingly agree with all that. That mirror that H&C holds up to you defies the standard concept of anime as escapism (which, for those who know what I’m talking about, might actually be part of what Zaitcev meant when he asked “what is anime about this anime”).
yes on Takemoto as well. His journey through the series is a greater slice of character growth than you’re usually treated to, and it happens fairly naturally. Anime usually hits you with a single, giant, melodramatic bombshell that causes characters to “level up” quite quickly, but he did it like the bike ride: one bit at a time.
As to whether you’ll see anything that good again, well, we can hope can’t we? At the very least, Maybe Umino will top her own work.
Oh it’s tempting to wear the goggles of redemption and drink from a trick glass for this series.
I do maintain that it’s just as powerful if not more so to experience the show as a slow procession of failure: the stillborn loves chocked in the womb by the inertia of cowardice and laziness. That, ennobled by the innocence and intensity of feeling of some of the characters.
Delicious doom.
It’s tempting to see and relish in the pain in everything as well, no? It’s funny, it speaks a lot to where people are in life and how they stand in their relationship with art. At times, I see the damnation in everything, but this time around I went straight for the hope.
I’m with Owen on this one: nothing excites me more than the thought of seeing more H&C posts like this. Spectacular job.
On the topic of moving on, I think you’re right in saying that it was only one theme of the story, though it was definitely an important one. I think my only problem with the “moving on” angle is that we don’t know how happy the characters end up in the future, and we can’t really say that their decisions were right or that they led them to happiness. Their decisions did, however, allow them to escape from the complex web of pain that was holding them back, and I guess that’s what matters. It might very well have been out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, but I guess that’s what life is.
As for the relateability angle, it’s always a little funny for me because I’m still younger than the cast, but I found things to relate to each time. I first watched both seasons 3 years ago – soon after season 2 aired, I guess – and I remember feeling Ayumi’s pain in the most literal way possible. That was what first drove my enjoyment of the show: the fact that fiction could actually deal with unrequited love properly, and not invent some sort of side character or cheap plot twist to take them out of the picture and focus on the “winning” couple.
Now, though, I attached myself to Takemoto entirely. I don’t think I’m too similar to any of the characters in terms of personality, but Takemoto’s sensitive, self-conscious side was something I could identify with. I don’t share his aimlessness (not yet anyway), but I can feel his hesitant approach toward love and inability to find what really makes him happy. Sometimes I feel like he did at the end of the first season, with that buzzing in the back of my head as I talk about anime and write stories and try to avoid the fact that I have few close friends and no girlfriend, but hey, I guess that’s life. I think that’s why I, and many others, have fallen for the series: because no matter who you are, there’s something in it that you can relate to, and there aren’t any unfair or blatantly escapist answers. The only truth to life is that there is no definite answer or solution, and in a way, I think that’s what the characters were fighting with.
If in fact the characters ended up in a fire, so to speak, I think their experiences have made them more equipped to deal with that. If they could extricate themselves from what you call the web of pain, they’re more prepared for what comes next.
I think most folks identify with Takemoto, and though supporting characters are given a better treatment than in most stories, in the end they all mirror some aspect of Takemoto’s character. Ghostlightning might feel like Shuu-chan, but Shuu is just the logical conclusion of where Takemoto would be had he not made some of the decisions that defined the latter part of the series.
That gives Takemoto a somewhat universal quality, and probably contributes hugely to what you’re saying about all kinds of folks identifying with H&C.
Agreeing with most here, I too have held H&C in one of those “top” spots and rewatched it accordingly.
I think that the “letting go” aspect plays into what everyone really likes about H&C the most: it’s about older people who are still young. There aren’t many anime that hit on that late-college/grad-school period in life, or at least do it well. In a way, it provides aspirations for the young viewers, realization for those at the similar age demographic, and nostalgia for the older audience.
Also, I rewatched this while I was studying abroad in Kyoto, and it inspired me and a friend to take our own bike trip: we spent one week cycling around Shikoku and visiting temples.
Absolutely. But of the two things you mentioned, focusing on a late-college/grad school timeframe is less important than doing it well, which is really what gives the viewers those aspirations/realizations/nostalgias.
I’m envious of your bike trip, I hope I get to do something akin to that, even in my home country, at some point.
[...] shameful otaku learns to let go through watching this show (otou-san [...]
[...] Otou-san wrote about the things that each character has to learn or has learned to let go of. He asked whether there is one among the characters that his readers identified with. This made me think back and immediately. There’s this little tug in one’s heart for realizing that whatever it was, it still lives deep in the recesses of the core. [...]
I cried watching this series especially the ending. The characters were very real!
So much of it matched my life back when I first saw it: I was studying in an art college, struggling with paying the fees, part time work, don’t know who I wanted to be and not to mention, the endless drama.
I’m glad that I watched Honey and Clover. It lifted my spirit to move on.
I went to art school as well so it probably contributed to my enjoyment and ability to identify. But I agree all the way — it has something to show us and proves that a good story can really help us in real life.
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