Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Honey & Clover II – episode 6

August 10, 2006 on 7:00 pm | In Honey and Clover | 5 Comments

“We were never to go to the beach”

Wait a second, even that episode title is a spoiler! That’s right: in this episode, the characters of Honey & Clover fail to go to the beach.
Otherwise we get a rare episode that provides insight into every character: an ensemble piece based on an ensemble that isn’t assembled. It’s really quite beautiful.

Spoilers within! The Morita Family motivation revealed!

Morita remembers his childhood, when his father owned the Morita Technological Research Institute.
Mayama goes to Spain to save Rika from the dastardly Mac Carlos (bringing a much needed dose of Rika comedy along), and Yamada is not tearless but copes better than she might have before.
Takemoto sees his work as boring and endless, while Hagu realises that she will never be able to achieve everything that she wants to in life. Maybe if she had someone to assist her in her battles, she would be able to do more …

It’s surprising that everyone of the core cast of six manages to get so much done in the space of 23 minutes. I am not complaining, because the Honey & Clover team is a large part of the appeal of the program. As good as episodes focusing on individual characters are, it’s easy for one to find oneself longing for the others. To unite them all in this fictional context is nothing short of a glorious rain of love upon the audience.

I never really wondered about what Morita had been doing until, a couple of months ago, my friend Kim attacked me with questions about the nature of his occupation. Now I finally understand what the pursuit of money is for: Kaoru and Morita want to reclaim their father’s company. Father Morita was a man very much like Morita: charismatic, vaguely threatening and caring.
You can see in the scenes where he interacts with his sons when they were children that he loved both of them, but the framing and scene selection implies a feeling of abandonment on the part of Kaoru. This is mere speculation but, as he is the one dedicated solely to the pursuit of Morita Technological Research Institute, I think that Kaoru is trying to gain his father’s “approval” (although I am guessing that said father is long deceased).
Morita is, of course, willing to help, but he wants to lead his own life. Family matters take precedence, however, and this is why he finds himself unable to help Hagu-chan in her artistic quandary. Until Kaoru’s grand designs are realised, Morita cannot be free. It’s something more complex than I can adequately explain, but this obligation to chase someone else’s dream is beautiful in its tragedy.

On the Yamada front we get Nomiya being understanding and comforting, which means I can barely remember how much I hated him in the past for being a tough loving bastard. Nomiya is emerging as one of the heroes of the season and I think that the more time he spends with Yamada, the more normal she will become until she reaches the point of becoming a normal young woman with artistic talent.
Unless she’s one of those people in whom the talent dries up as soon as the tears do, which would be a terrible irony. Now she can see Mayama in an almost friendly light, though, so the future may not be bleak.

Then, of course, we’ve got the parallel situations of Takemoto and Hagu, the only characters still actually art students. (Morita is a student too, but we never see him working). Takemoto has become stagnant and passionless in his creations: he is making something big, but he doesn’t feel it. Hagu, conversely, has too many ideas and she appears to want to commit none of them to canvas due to her intense uncertainty about her place. The two may be able to help each other, but they are drifting apart. Takemoto may not even be conscious of the problem faced by Hagu. The withdrawal from each other is going to hurt both of them. While it may sound silly, a meeting of the artistic minds is in order.
The method by which we came to understand all of this about Hagu was great, too: we’ve never before had a Hagu internal monologue. She normally does not receive much in the way of dialogue, so this was a much needed insight into her character. I love Hagu when she’s looking mature, because it lends a much deserved seriousness to her. She’s a somewhat tragic figure, and you can’t help but feel for her.
With a Morita voice over, this show will be complete.

The ideas of this episode are disparate, yet when the characters can all rally around one idea (which somehow transplanted itself across to Morita and Mayama, who were not present), they are as one. Honey & Clover continues to rock because there are parts of it that I can identify with, and the story is well told besides.