it provides aspirations for the young viewers, realization for those at the similar age demographic, and nostalgia for the older audience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That’s brilliance for you–something that you can revisit which now has a deeper level of significance.

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.

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.