Your Anime Sucks – Honey and Clover

This will be the first post of a new series titled ‘Your Anime Sucks’ where I will critique an anime that I just happened to have seen from Hikago’s collection. Sounds just like millions of other blogs out there? Well, here’s the twist – I’m not actually a fan of anime. I never watch anime, much less associate myself with them. It also doesn’t help that my impression of anime comes from Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Naruto. The only decent series I’ve seen so far is Basilisk (because ninjas are freaking cool), and even that lost a lot of momentum towards the end.

For those who are not familiar with Honey and Clover, it’s about a group of college students, mostly in arts, and how they deal with romance, friendship, and misfortune. It seems like a promising premise with something that actually has something to say, and not, as hikago might put it, cater to the lowest common dominator.

At the first glance, I can say that I like the setting. I mean, it’s about undergrads. I can relate to that. If this series is anything like what I was expecting, and that is, a mix between a sitcom and a soap opera with a hint of Terrence Malick-esque reflection on life, I’m not overly concerned with plot. And of course, there are those interesting, and rather eccentric, characters.

Let’s start with Hagu, an 8-year-old girl for all intents and purposes, even though they claim she’s actually 18. (I don’t buy that for a single second. Maybe it’s a legal issue) I don’t mind it if she only looks like a child, but the problem is that she is so detached from reality and devoid of social comprehension that I was convinced she is either autistic, or at the very least, suffered some severe developmental problems. It would have been very convenient if they had just introduced her as a child, except for the minor detail that one of the protagonists, Takemoto, is in love with her. (now you know what I meant when I said that it could have been a legal issue)

Speaking of Takemoto, he has to be the most boring character in the ensemble. Actually, come to think of it, most of the characters including Mayama and Yadama are rather stale. They play off the same note throughout each episode. The saving grace, in my opinion, has to be the free-spirited Morita. His goofy sense of humor he brings is a refreshing break in between melodramatic ramblings.

My biggest complaints have nothing to do with characters. (Perhaps I simply need to give them a little more time to develop. ) The problems are, firstly, inappropriate use of background music, and secondly, the abundance of voice overs.

The point of music is to supplement the atmosphere. It is meant to evoke emotions in the audience. Imagine watching again that scene in Schindler’s list with the girl in red, but without the choir singing in the background. It is a powerful tool, but must be used sparingly. Almost every speech given in Honey and Clover, however, is accompanied by sentimental music. This makes the scene overly melodramatic and draws unnecessary attention to itself.

Voice-overs are tricky. If done correctly, they can be essential to the style of a movie. If not, they can single handedly destroy what would otherwise be a great film. I think way too many people gives in to the temptation of simply writing out what the characters are thinking. Not only is that lazy writing, it completely strips away the subtext of a given scene. Since film (television series and animation are not far off) is a visual medium, the quality of a scene and its dialogue is dictated not by their choice of words, but rather, by what is expressed visually in the absence of words.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the fictional Robert McKee in Adaptation. “…God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character. “