April 22, 2005
Honey and Clover Chapter 2
It's all about Hagumi this time round. Morita makes a creepy webpage devoted to her as a forest sprite that brings odd fanboys to her door, but later makes it up to her by buying a pair of shoes she wanted. Mayama convinces Takemoto to hold a teppanyaki party in the apartment after seeing how much he likes her, while Mayama himself reflects briefly on his past relationship with Yumi, a potter who makes friends with Hagumi.
Morita is one scary bloke.
I'm trying not to say the same things I said about the first episode here, but it's proving rather difficult. Essentially, it's another series based around Ye Olde Shoujo Cliche of people in school/college going through life and falling in love, a genre I actually have very little experience with (aside from KareKano, I don't think I've watched any such series to completion before). Yet Honey and Clover is definitely an extremely good addition to the genre, and probably the best series I'm watching from the new season (I may love Aquarion, but it's not exactly brilliant quality!). Surprisingly enough, I plan to keep on blogging this.
I was particularly pleasantly surprised by Hagumi's voice acting this episode. Last time she only really had to do reactions (which she's really very good at it seems) but her voice isn't as fearsomely moe as I might have expected - obviously I'm applying shounen standards to shoujo, but it was a relief that she actually sounds vaguely normal and like her age rather than her size.
Posted by BluWacky at April 22, 2005 02:43 PM | TrackBackFinally I got to watch this. I'm also very pleasantly surprised that Hagumi doesn't sound all high pitched and moe and all... But I do wish she said more than the little she does say!!
And don't you think the way they show the episode preview is very creative? They mix it into the ending sequence, so you are forced to watch the ending sequence and listen to the (IMO) great song. ANd then they show a little bit at the end right after the song ends, and then after the "This was brought to you by..." it shows one frame with the next chapter on it.