September 7th, 2005
This episode gives us a glimpse into Mayama’s work life with his co-workers - his boss Nomiya and two co-workers, Yamazaki and Miwako, together with Miwako’s talkative dog Leader. Mayama’s been dreaming about Rika despite not having seen her for ages - it doesn’t help that he’s working at the architect’s firm she used to work at with her husband - and is getting antsy about living with Takemoto anyway. A near-miss meeting with her gets him thinking about her again anyway, but the other side of his love triangle gets a little more complicated when Nomiya starts to take an interest in Yamada after the pottery she made for the firm last episode sells well.
Yay, new characters! While Nomiya is pretty much just going to be a rival in love (or whatever it really is Mayama feels for her) for Ayu, Yamazaki, Miwako and Leader are already awesome enough to make me feel right at home. While Garten and some others at this point in the series were regretting the shift away from focusing on “the gang” as a whole (what with Mayama being at work and Morita being in America), this sudden focus on Mayama is exactly what I wanted to see, having felt that there’s been a lot of focus on the Takemoto-Hagu-Morita side of things recently. Besides, anything that brings Rika back into the series has to be a good thing in my opinion!
Posted in Honey and Clover | No Comments »
September 3rd, 2005
The OP changes to something a bit more relevant to the series with swirly paper images from the show and so on - it’s quite nice, although nowhere near as odd or immediately grabbing as the original one.
More importantly, this episode introduces ED2 - Mistake (The Band Has No Name) - a slow, thumping indie rock track which doesn’t feel quite as right for the show as Waltz did (particularly in an episode as melancholy as this one) but is still decent enough.
Part A deals with the immediate fallout of Morita’s departure to the States, with an investigation of his futuristic room and Hagu falling into working obsessively to avoid thinking about it. Her feelings, however, are not exactly what Takemoto was expecting, possibly giving rise to hope for his chances with Hagu (I’m rooting for Takemoto all the way, so I hope so!).
After Hagu breaks her squeegee as she paints, Yamada takes the initiative and invites her and the rest of the gang to a fireworks festival. Yamada’s mum and crazy aunt undertake the arduous task of dressing Yamada and Hagu in sexy yukata (face it, trying to make Hagu sexy is like trying to teach a fish to play the piano), which is all the more important because Yamada is trying once more to win Mayama’s heart. Of course, it doesn’t work (we knew it wouldn’t, because there’s an educational botanical metaphor rammed down our throats too) and she ends the episode crying as the fireworks go off around her.
No real developments in any of the relationships, but then that was to be expected really, and it was all good fun (although there’s a return to the “impossibly skinny arms” syndrome that crops up in the character designs occasionally in this episode). Next episode looks to bring Rika back into the equation (if I’ve read the next episode preview correctly) which could be exciting - but then again, since the relationships in HachiKuro are generally fairly static (although never dull) I don’t think Mayama’s going to be giving up on his infatuation any time soon.
Posted in Honey and Clover | No Comments »
July 12th, 2005
It’s sakura season, and Takemoto’s allergies are playing up - for some reason, this makes him reminisce about Hagu. Then again, I’m sure that for Takemoto, somehow filling in tax forms would remind him of Hagu, so this isn’t a big surprise.
Anyway! The gang heads off to a sakura festival where we FINALLY find out what on earth Morita does for all his money (no, I’m not going to spoil it, but… zu zu zun donzuko donzuko…) and why he treats Hagu in such a weird way, whilst the local boys ogle over Yamada and envy Mayama. Hagu, meanwhile, is still down after her disastrous date with Morita, and a chance encounter with him only changes things for the worse as she ends up wrapped in a scarf with a high fever.
After Shuu-chan explains to Takemoto that the date with Morita went horribly because Hagu felt so awkward which suggests she really loves him, he heads home dejectedly to a decidedly spaced-out Mayama - however, even this gets interrupted by the arrival of Morita’s brother Kaoru, who cracks the security on his room and gets his passport delivered to Narita airport in record time - Morita’s off to Los Angeles for work! Takemoto, seeing this as Morita escaping his issues with Hagu (as well as his continued academic failure), hitches a manic lift with Kaoru but arrives too late to see Morita off properly, instead screaming at him futilely from the ground. After Kaoru gives him a lift home and displays a variation on his younger brother’s twisted humour, he asks Takemoto a simple question when he asks how long Morita will be away for - does he want Morita back or not?
Hmmm. Most of the show’s spazz will have flown away with Morita, but I doubt he’ll be gone for long. The question is, where does this leave Takemoto and Hagu in particular? For all Takemoto’s reasoning that Hagu really doesn’t love him back, I wouldn’t necessarily take her awkwardness around Morita as being signs that she’s in love with him - as we’ve all noted, their relationship is entirely dysfunctional at all times, and I don’t really think Morita actually loves her back. Admittedly, I am probably worthy of the dreaded tag of a Takemoto/Hagu shipper *shudder* but I don’t think that the fact that they’re genuinely good friends is a complete death knell to their relationship (although this is probably because I’m a bloke, and the hideous Friend Zone is something not to be contemplated in a relationship drama!)
While I did, like every Honey and Clover episode, love this one unconditionally, thanks to the classic mega-spazz and great drama, I must profess that I hope we get to see some more focus on some of the other characters - mostly Ayu, but Mayama and the almost-forgotten Rika need a bit of focus too, as their story is mostly being seen from the viewpoint of others, such as the unseen ferris wheel conversation and the Third Generation’s comments this time. However, with another 14 episodes or so to go there’s plenty of time for such things. Here’s hoping we don’t get a KareKano-esque non-ending, though…
Posted in Honey and Clover | 8 Comments »
July 4th, 2005
Life continues as usual for the gang - Morita and Takemoto have moved in with Mayama, who lives in a one-room apartment with an outdoor shower, which brings new trials and tribulations (such as Morita wearing Mayama’s underwear, for instance), but everyone’s pretty much as usual - but then Shuu-chan returns, alongside Professor Tokedaiji. He brings gifts (including clothes for the girls and a rock for Morita!) and photos of all the people he saw, but Tokedaiji embarasses him with tales of how he pined for Hagu. Meanwhile, Morita shows an unexpected attitude for the sitar, and the guys realise that, now they’re out of college, they’re adults too, much to their horror.
The following day, Hagu asks Shuu-chan to take her shopping for new paints, and she ends up going with Morita on a semi-date - however, it’s a disaster, as he doesn’t speak to her for the entire time and seems to have his mind elsewhere, greatly upsetting Hagu. As she returns crying to Shuu-chan, the others muse on winter’s coming as Morita stands on a bridge alone…
Much more comedy than we’ve had in the past couple of episodes, but another killingly poignant ending from a Honey and Clover episode there. Morita certainly seems to be a man of hidden depths, but he’s obviously not really capable of a functional relationship with Hagu - he hides any real feelings he might have behind his crazy antics, and when he’s stripped of those he can’t really relate to her.
It’s interesting that there was perhaps some evidence to suggest that Hagu really isn’t that small, it’s just how she appears given the way she acts - perhaps it was only for humourous effect, but when she’s trying desperately not to cry at Shuu-chan’s return he imagines that she’s grown up like an adult before she shrinks down into the piggish crybaby (there was some seriously odd SD stuff here - Morita with duck lips like something off 2chan?). It’s interesting to compare how she looks when Takemoto first saw her in the first episode, as referenced here - she’s almost always depicted in some kind of SD/cutesy manner now, but there we perhaps see the real Hagumi.
You also notice that Takemoto’s grown his hair long again. I guess Morita stopped forcibly cutting it, then.
Posted in Honey and Clover | 5 Comments »
June 30th, 2005
The gang goes for a ferry trip to Odaiba in the freezing December weather, where the girls and Morita pig out on their interesting tastes in food while Mayama gives Takemoto advice on his feelings for Hagu via every blogger’s favourite storytelling device, a montage! After they disembark they find the park they’re visiting’s completely empty, and they rush to grab seats on the second biggest ferris wheel in the country (yes, finally the ferris wheel shows up) - Morita deviously shoves Mayama and Yamada together, while he boards with Takemoto and Hagu. The atmosphere is tense until Morita breaks it in rather spectacular style - however, surprisingly enough he apologises for his crazy behaviour! Obviously he’s not totally inhuman after all. We don’t find out what happened to Mayama and Yamada, but the gang heads for home a little less stressed than before.
Random things to note - the coffee Morita drinks when Yamada’s reminiscing about Mayama has the initials JCS on the top, as in JC Staff. Plus I could SWEAR that Hagu did one of Sakura Kinomoto’s “hoeeee!” noises at one point.
You know, nothing happens in Honey and Clover at all, really. I can see us having a completely non-commital ending when it finishes - perhaps they’ll all go off and get jobs in random parts of the country where they won’t see each other any more or something. But what the hey, it’s still great fun to watch.
Thanks very much to Omni for noting what the insert song is this time round, incidentally. I’ve been really impressed with the music used from Spitz and Suga Shikao in the anime thus far, and I’m looking forward to hearing the new ED whenever it starts.
Posted in Honey and Clover | 4 Comments »
