Anohana The Movie Review

Anohana The Movie Review

In 2011, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day caused a massive wide flood of tears across the world. Viewers at home bawled their eyes out when the series wrapped up with the Super Peace Busters finding their ghost friend and bid their farewells. However, there was one individual who didn’t leak a single drop during this scene. Nope. Not even one throat itch. That individual was me.

No, I’m not heartless. I have a soul. I can cry. In fact, I enjoy movies or shows that make me have feels. But quite frankly, when people tell me Anohana was the saddest anime they’ve ever watched, I would say “Puh-lease. You want real sadness? You  really want the feeling of being beaten down to the floor and have your hearts ripped out of you? You don’t know true suffering until you watch Clannad and Clannad: After Story!” That Anime has gotten me sobbing for two weeks straight while Anohana just kind of left me hanging. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. And before you close this window on me, spoilers: Don’t worry, I cried at the end of the Anohana movie. So what happened?

Well, to be honest, I don’t know. Perhaps I was watching the TV series with the wrong mindset or maybe I was not in the mood at the time. Or maybe both the Clannad series made such an impact on me that I was invulnerable to all future sadness temporarily. Whatever the reason was, I am glad I gave Anohana a second chance for it to turn me into a little girl. And boy… did those tears shoot out of my eyes and onto the big screen at the Downtown Independent…

Anohana The Movie offers a different perspective, “gaiden” if you will. The point of view comes from Menma this time as she writes her letters to all her friends… Well, by letters, I really meant short… one sentence messages. And who can blame her, she died before completing elementary school! Anyway, the audience were shown her thoughts as she was writing the letters that were ripping the tears out of our eyes. If Anohana wanted to succeed at something with this movie, then it succeeded in making us cry again.

And that’s it. I think that point of the movie was just to make the audience cry again. To me, it didn’t offer anything new in terms of story. We were shown pretty much a summary of each episode through flashbacks in a wacky order which could get confusing if you are not familiar with the story & characters. So if you were planning to get into Anohana but don’t want to pour in a few hours for the TV series, then I would advise you to reconsider because the movie seems like it was intended for fans who are already into the anime, not to create new ones.

Overall, I was very pleased with Anohana the Movie. At first, I didn’t want to go see it but a great friend (you can thank him) dragged me out for it. Now, I am glad I gave it a second chance to make me cry and it succeeded.

If you’re interested in seeing it, check out this chart to see if your local theater is showing it.