Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Honey and Clover – episode eleven

July 9, 2005 on 10:13 pm | In Honey and Clover | Comments Off on Honey and Clover – episode eleven

“Love pushes us around.”

The triumphant return of Shuu-chan! Back early from his trip to Mongolia, Hanamoto comes bearing gifts. Unfortunately, he posted the letter alerting the others of his return just before he left, so it arrived just as he did.

By this time, Mayama has “matured” somewhat, with no mention of Rika or stalking at all. The thing that distresses him is that he has become even more of Morita’s “mother” figure or perhaps more accurately, Morita’s “target for leeching”.
Having been employed at an architecture firm since graduation, Mayama has no real reason to live in the student apartments anymore, but he says that there is “something he wants”, which makes one of the clearest characters in this whole program mired in ambiguity.

One of the quiet things that is surprising me is the relationship between Yamada and Takemoto; before, one would never have thought of them conversing. Now they seem to be quite close friends in the war against Morita’s weirdness and Hagu-chan’s inappropriateness (such as her praying to a Hanamoto shrine).
Their quiet enjoyment of coffee before the shock return of Hanamoto was a very nice little moment.

Yet, of course, this episode is about Hanamoto and Hagu-chan; they can operate without each other, but the longer they spend apart the harder it is when they return. Surprisingly, Hanamoto had it tougher, crying out for Hagu-chan in his sleep, getting substitute Mongolian kids and making it difficult for his associate to keep up the research.
Takemoto and Yamada observe that, as soon as Hanamoto returns, Hagu-chan becomes a korobokkuru again: the very same Japanese mythical fairy types that Morita associated with her in the first episode.

So what does this mean, when Hagu-chan and Morita go out to buy art supplies together? It seems that Hagu-chan can not deal with Morita in a one-on-one situation. We have seen her get along splendidly with Takemoto when they relate to each other, and it is understood that this is because Takemoto knows exactly what it is that Hagu-chan tries to communicate. Morita has a finely tuned sense of perception, but he tries too hard to push people into the directions that he thinks they should take.

In pursuit of his goal of putting Takemoto and Hagu-chan together, Morita turns into his sombre ball of no fun. This has more of a negative effect because it makes Hagu-chan feel much more insecure. Of course, Morita isn’t totally noble; his other current goal appears not to be to get Yamada and Mayama together so much as it is to send Yamada quite red in the face.

On the note of Hagu-chan’s design, Yamada and Takemoto think that a picture she takes is not for “coming of age” but rather for “shichigosan”, a celebration of three, five and seven year olds. Mixed messages definitely abound.

As of this I don’t think I need to conclude every entry I write with “Honey & Clover is great! Yeah!” Look out for new and exciting ideas.