Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Honey and Clover – episode six

June 13, 2005 on 8:09 am | In Honey and Clover | Comments Off on Honey and Clover – episode six

“Tears, the past and confessions”

On a weekly basis, Honey & Clover impresses me. To the max!
Amazingly, this episode had about a billion storylines, and all of them worked: Takemoto and Hagu’s relationship, Hanamoto and Rika’s shared past, the love triangles of Mayama and Morita’s highly suspect pursuit of money.
Close to perfect.

Until now, Hanamoto has been little more than a portal through which Rika entered Mayama’s life and Hagu-chan entered Takemoto. Now he is revealed as having his own feelings and his own history. Hanamoto’s revelations bring to light a new character: Rika’s late husband Harada.

The recount of Hanamoto’s student days was one of the best moments that Honey & Clover has offered so far. Kuroda Yosuke has done some good dramatic work in the past but with stuff like Excel Saga under his belt this really is a surprise. Admittedly both of these titles are based on manga so he’s limited by that, but … yeah.

On the Hagu-chan front, the way that she and Takemoto related was the most natural portrayal so far. Hagu isn’t that much shorter than Takemoto, it’s just that sometimes she acts totally childish. This week she has none of those moments; just moments of getting along perfectly with Takemoto.

Better even than that is that Morita is shown appreciating Hagu-chan from his distance. The composition of that scene is good and gives more of an indication of Morita’s personality. The “questionable work” angle had been largely ignored for the last few episodes but it is back with a vengeance. Is Morita the most caring of all of the members of this group? It is an interesting theory. Even more interesting is the shot that suggests that Hagu-chan might reciprocate Morita’s feelings!

Finally, Mayama is a nice fellow for once. These relationships are heavy and intense on all sides. Mayama now understands that his jealousy was unreasonable; that his treatment of Yamada was a coping mechanism. The last scene was simply wonderful.
In fact, pretty much everything about this episode was perfect. Ultra good, too much to go in to … and all in the space of 25 minutes!

Honey & Clover has had broadcast dates up to episode 16 confirmed; I would have picked this series as being the kind for a thirteen episode run. No complaints, though; if it can keep up this level of quality I am more than happy to stick with these characters.