April 15, 2005
Honey and Clover Chapter 1
OP - Dramatic (Yuki) - the singer unfortunately appears to have something lodged in her rectum judging from her voice, but the song is pretty good - and what an AWESOME opening animation! Stop-motion stuff with bits of food, it's crazy but really really cool - and the end will surprise you!
ED - Waltz (Snowhare, I think it romanises as) - it's not a waltz, it's in 4/4... half-decent poppy song with a little extra scene at the end with lots of spinning clovers and stuff.
Takemoto is a poor, struggling art college student in Tokyo, living in a dormitory with his upper classmen friend Mayama and the distinctly odd Morita amongst others. After the trials and tribulations of attempting to get Morita to class on time (involving photographic evidence, wooden scooters and balletic dancing), they meet the daughter of a cousin of their teachers, Hagumi Hanamoto, with whom all three become immediately smitten, although Morita goes to extraordinary lengths to show this.
Of course, there's a lot more to the first episode of Honey and Clover than that, which Garten has already covered. As a school "slice of life" show in the grand tradition of many shoujo shows before it, it's quite difficult to summarise what happened here (i.e. not a lot), especially there were a lot of shots devoted to establishing characters that we haven't really met, such as Yamada (who has some kind of problem with Mayama).
But I must implore all of you out there to watch Honey and Clover, as I absolutely loved the first episode. I'm a sucker for shoujo, as I've said before, but Honey and Clover's first episode was really well done, a rarity in these days where shoujo shows get very little in the way of budgeting. The show is part of Fuji TV's "Noitamina" initiative, attempting to attract an older (i.e. college-age) female audience to late-night anime, and JC Staff appears to have pulled all the stops out - I once read that the studio aims to do shows that are "different" (note that their other offerings this season are Gokujyo Seitokai and Loveless!), and Honey and Clover certainly looks the part, with gorgeously detailed backdrops and a slightly "washed-out" look which, unlike Bleach's fuzz-filter, gives everything a hazy, wistful atmosphere - think Saikano crossed with KareKano and you'll have some idea of the visuals. While I don't "get" shounen comedy, I've never had this problem with shoujo usually, and I actually laughed more than once!
It's too early to tell much about a lot of the characters - Hagumi could potentially be a little annoying; although she's amusingly cute and terrified of Morita, she'll need a bit more substance before I fall for her - but after one episode I'm definitely interested to follow the slightly odd lives of the oddball cast.
Posted by BluWacky at April 15, 2005 10:58 PM | TrackBackThe ending to the OP sequence wasn't a complete surprise to me because, when I saw the shrimp-cocktail dish, I had enough time to think "... 'Beetlejuice'?" There's a scene in that movie in which people are eating shrimp cocktail, and suddenly shrimp-fingered hands lunge out of the dishes and grab several characters by the face.
Posted by: dbm at April 16, 2005 06:54 AMBeetlejuice is one of those films I've always wanted to see but never have done. I should just pick up the DVD, really.
It surprised me, anyway. I have to wonder why they went with that kind of opening, though - I know Noitamina is appealing to a different crowd than usual, but is that really the kind of "difference" that will attract college-age women? I thought it was cool, but then I'm not a woman...
Posted by: BluWacky at April 16, 2005 04:51 PMI don't know if this approach will appeal to college-age women but the anime certainly appealed to me as well. IMO, the character design for the anime is far better than the manga version (well, the covers are really well-designed but the actual pages are not that great).
If I think about it, the strength of the manga lies more on the storyline than the visual. So it's good to see the anime carries that over and adds better visual to go with the story.
Posted by: Garten at April 17, 2005 05:38 AMGot around to watching this.
Doesn't really feel shojo to me.
Morita makes it look like slapstick school show.
Hagu is looks very detached from the show, the artsy scenes.
Episode 1 got me laughing.
Sort of disappointed at episode 2 title, love stuff.
Found your site through Google. I don't know if it's been clarified aywhere else, but the guy who does the ED's name is Suneo Hair.
Just so you know.
http://www.suneohair.com/
http://www.musicwhore.org/artists/artist.php?artistID=257
Sorry for my links
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