Category: Hana-Saku Iroha

Ah, I knew it. It was all too good to be true. Despite that though, this episode still surprised me with the direction it took. The whole movie subplot was wrapped up really subtle. In fact, we don’t even fully know the repercussions yet. For this episode, life continued as usual for nearly the entire cast, except for Ohana’s uncle and grandmother.

That uncle who received a ton of depth, by the way. In a way, it’s a shame that the promotional material just contains the cute girls of the series. He shows that the males have just as much right to be there. What this episode did to Ohana’s uncle was excellent: it completed establishing what kind of character he is, and developed him further by introducing romance. This is the kind of change that I was talking about during the last episode.

Now, I also want to see those repercussions. Again, that could very well be the change that I was hoping for. This episode gave away enough hints that something big is going to happen. The most logical thing would be for people to be laid off in order to compensate for the losses that were made, and you can really get some good drama out of that when played right.

Now that Ohana’s uncle received such good development, I can’t help but wonder: what about Nako and Tomoe? These two feel a bit out of it, compared to the rest of the cast. Nako at the moment is just “the best friend”. She always stands in Ohana’s shadow and never really gets to do something herself. Tomoe suffers the same fate: she’s been absent from pretty much all of the parts where this series really hit its stride and showed off how good it was. At the moment there’s not much more to her character than “Ohana’s boss”.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Before the actors arrived, I just couldn’t help but think that the entire movie thing was a scan. Then the actors arrived, and I’m not really sure what to think right now.

I mean, while I can buy a film crew making a movie in the inn (it does have a very authentic character, after all), I’m really not sure in what kind of mind the director was to promise important roles to the Kissuiso staff. Even weirder having the novelist assist with the writing… without an editor or even one meeting with the director about what he should write. Then there was that pool thing: why bet on something of which you have no idea how much mold it has accumulated over the past 20 years? (Also, please tell me that that isn’t going to be an excuse to have a pool episode in the near future…). It all seemed way too convenient, and more like this suspicious guy coming onto Ohana’s uncle with this shady deal that required 10% of the Inn’s income.

But no, the actors came, and it actually really looks like the director is just quirky. We’re going to have to wait for the next episode to really see the points it was trying to make, but the focus on Ohana’s uncle was really good. On top of that, this went further on the troubles of a small inn. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the inn ended up going out of business for the climax of this series.

I do have a bit of criticism at this point though, especially when comparing this series to Ao no Exorcist. I know that it’s a bit weird to compare slice of life to shounen fighting and all, but I’m especially referring to the light-hearted scenes (again, this show knows how to do drama correctly): with Ao no Exorcist, I really noticed the light-hearted scenes get more interesting and enjoyable with every episode, as you can see the cast grow. With Hana-Saku Iroha though… this still is more of the same. Those kinds of scenes weren’t really interesting in the first half, and little has changed in the second half I’m afraid.

It’s not really the fact that nothing happens: I have really enjoyed far slower series in the past. But like that scene where Ohana was trying to fly on a broom, or when they were cleaning the pool… it just… didn’t feel right. Too forced, even.

What’s also jarring is that now that I think about it: the second half so far didn’t really have much character development for the main cast. The past arc developed Yuina and her fiance quite well, in Kissuiso (whenever things aren’t happening), things are changing too slowly. Perhaps the biggest change in the main cast is that Minko is less annoyed with Ohana. Compare that to Tiger & Bunny, taking a look to give a ton of new insight to vital characters, Ao no Exorcist who introduced a bunch of new characters to spice things up, Steins;Gate with its plot twists or Hyouge Mono, where [SPOILER]. There seems to be too little movement in this series, and the fact that this is slice of life shouldn’t have anything to do with that: it has enough drama to have made something interesting out of it.
Rating: * (Good)

By now it has already been established that Ohana is strange, and this episode only established that even more. To come rushing out and actually volunteer to act as a waitress in order to help out the in she’s supposed to be staying at. At first, I thought she was crazy, but as the episode went on, I really got what this episode tried to tell.

Instead of dancing on Yuusuke’s grave, this episode focused on the development of both him and Yuina, but it also had some interesting messages to share about working, that tie in really well with the rest of the series. Ohana is the type of character who doesn’t wonder whether or not her ideas are strange: she just carries them out. In the past that lead to a bunch of awkward, annoying and embarrassing situations, but with this episode it actually paid off really well.

On top of being well written, I also felt that the background art of this episode was exceptionally good, even for this series’ standards. It looked really crisp and clean. It may be that I just returned from a holiday myself and all, but the inside rooms look really realistic and have this great use of lighting, compared to the copy and paste indoor art you usually see. The landscapes also were really well drawn. It’s all with just that tiny amount of CG to crisp things up, yet not make everything look blocky and stand out.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Oh, I nearly forgot that this show had a fourth main character (as in, character who shows up on all of the promotional material alongside the three female leads). She’s really been a gimmick character so far, so it was a bit weird to see an episode fully dedicated to her. An episode that spent the rest of its time on plain fanservice and beach episode antics. Oh, and the male classmates of the cast were really annoying as well.

So yeah, this episode was a big step back from the previous arc. I would have hoped that with this, the character development would really get interesting, but that doesn’t really work with a character who hardly ever had any significant impact in the first half. Having said that though, this was the best episode for her so far where we got to know quite a bit more about her.

At this point though, I’m not sure whether she may have the distinction of being a main character. She still needs to convince me that she didn’t just get lumped together with the rest of the main characters just because she’s a cute girl. That spot would have been much more appropriate for Tohru or Ohana’s grandmother. This series is about the staff of the Kissuiso. What is she doing among them?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

This was a wonderful conclusion to the past arc. Instead of using the midway climax as the most dramatic of the episodes so far, it was actually really warm-hearted and entirely focused on character development. Ohana’s mother’s visit was very down to earth and it showed something new about pretty much the entire family. Ohana’s mother’s advice and presence really brought change to this series.

I especially loved that the characters weren’t afraid to use liquor in this. That always turns out to be a great way to flesh out characters. It’s a bit weird for Ohana to get drunk on soda, but the way it finally made her lay out her feelings was really worth it. It also was quite unexpected that Ohana’s grandmother suddenly started drinking. Through this episode you could really see that Ohana, her mother and her grandmother are related: they’re all big workers, even though their personalities are completely different. The only oddball here is Ohana’s uncle: this episode really established him as a third wheel, and I suspect that the rest of this series is going to make use of that.

Also, since next week will be a beach episode, it’s clear now what format this show is going to follow. Setting aside the fact that beach episodes are bloody overused, this show will follow about the same format as Tiger & Bunny: the first half has random episodes with a long climax, the second half also has random episodes followed by a bit of a longer climax.

That’s not a bad thing by the way. When an episodic series is done well, it’s the second half where its episodes really start to shine because it’s there where the characters really start to show themselves off, and it’s here where the creators can really play with their development.It’s been a while since we’ve had series like this, so I’m quite interested to find out whether Hana-Saku Iroha and Tiger & Bunny can pull them off again. It’s a format that I really like because it can lead to a lot of variety. Whether or not we’ll already see this with the beach episode though… I’m not sure…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

And yet again, Hana-Saku Iroha delivers an amazing episode. This… was sharp. It was bloody sharp. The entire episode was pretty much a string of characters doing the complete opposite of what you’d expect them to do while somehow still remaining perfectly in character. Mari Okada: how the hell did you manage to write three original stories and two adaptations in just half a year, and how the hell did you manage to create such sharp dialogue for just about all of them, save for Fractale? Heck, delivering the best screenplay for slice of life dramas is one thing, but doing it multiple times across different series. what the hell has she been taking? This hardly isn’t human anymore…

Okay, so Ohana completely gives a different twist to the love triangle by flat out telling Tohru about her crush, after this show starts to give off hints that he’s now interested in her mother instead. Meanwhile Tohru spend an entire day doing a rather morbid date that really doesn’t sound pleasant, ending. Ko’s co-worker meanwhile reveals herself to be really direct, Tohru forces Ohana to kidnap Ko and Ohana’s mother whom she first wanted to kidnap herself suddenly decides to take a few days off to go to a certain inn.

This isn’t the roller coaster of emotions that the previous episodes were, but instead it juggled the different characters around and fleshed them out brilliantly. It threw all of them in new situations and it just kept coming with detailed dialogues. This episode was also wonderfully paced.

Now, the question is: what is the plan for the creators? Do they actually have what it takes to keep up this pacing across the entire series, or are we simply at the mid-way climax here? Either way though: what an improvement over the first third of this series!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

And with this, Hana-Saku Iroha stepped out of the shadow of its first two episodes. This episode once again was great, and full of emotions.

It was a bit random, but nevertheless a great way for Ohana to get back to her mother. Ending up writing a scathing review of the inn where both her daughter and mother work. The tension between her and Ohana in this episode was just amazing, and after that this series managed to make things even better by also involving Ko in the equation.

It was indeed a bit early for me to call her part of the love triangle, but at least I was right about her having a crush on Ko: the signs about her introduction were all there. What I didn’t expect however was for Ko to turn her down. That scene between him and Ohana at the Wac Donalds was some excellent romance: it played with the distance between the two and Ohana’s shyness, without making it a simple “will they won’t they?” This episode also rocked because the creators stuffed in a ton of those small details, like Ohana crumbling that piece of straw wrapper.

Overall, I know that I’ve been a bit harsh on this series while it still was building up. In the past I would have had the patience to indeed wait until it get the chance to show its true colours. However, 2010 unfortunately made me very sceptical of those kinds of series that promise to get better later on. It felt like half of the long shows failed to do that despite the huge luxury in episodes they received: Heroman, Nurarihyon, Arakawa Under the Bridge and Index II all failed to live up to their promise to get better. Then there are the series like Kaichou wa Maid Sama which despite the fact that I dropped them early on, I really doubt that they were able to redeem themselves. On top of that there were Durarara and Letter Bee Reverse, which both decreased in quality during their second halves and Star Driver, which promised to get better, only to remain pretty much consistent throughout its entire run. There was only a relatively small fraction of 22-26-episoded that started in 2010 that actually made good use of all of its build-up (Giant Killing, Rainbow, Denyuuden, Uragiri and Shiki).

That’s why I’m really glad that so many long series this season seem to head into the right direction, but as long as they don’t I unfortunately have to remain a bit (okay, very) sceptical.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Yeah. This was good. This was really, really good. It was definitely the best episode since the first two episodes. I’ve always wanted to see an episode that just follows the every day lives of these characters without these hi-jinks like set-ups, and this was it. Sure, Ohana had to get sick for it, but what follows is a wonderfully down to earth episode in which for once the cast really came to life. it’s a very mundane episode, but because of that the creators were able to show a lot.

It’s a bit ironic that the episode with the most mundane premise so far has turned out to be the best one, but this has to do with the essence of why I didn’t enjoy Hana-Saku Iroha as much as I hoped I would. It’s not the fact that it became less serious, but rather that the scenarios for each episode felt… uninspired. Of course I don’t mean totally uninspired, but I did feel like I was missing something. They were fine as build-up, but in terms of the characterization they missed this thing that this episode had: their ability to really breathe life into these characters.

This episode was genuine as hell. The acting was wonderful, for just about everyone. The sick Ohana was wonderfully performed and the creators really went out of their way to portray her overly serious attitude while being sick. The chemistry between the cast really returned back to what it was in the first two episodes. Tohru also ended up showing much more of his crush on Ohana beyond the occasional chuckle as well, especially that scene in which he brings her dinner was really well done.

And you know what the irony is? This episode was written by Junji Nishimura, the director of True Tears. It shows.

Heck, it was storyboarded by the the director of Armed Librarians and directed by the co-director of GTO. Talk about a dream team here…
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Okay, so with this episode it’s clear: Hana-Saku Iroha is building up to a love polygon: we have this new girl who likes Kou, while Ohana and Kou still don’t know whether they actually like each other, and while Tohru is likely to start hitting on Ohana anytime soon now, with Minko still having her crush on Tohru. The only one who misses at this point is Nako and the entire picture will be complete.

I’m not the biggest fan of love polygons, as they tend to be really annoying, but at the very least this series is aware of that and therefore is building up things carefully. Plus, if the rest of the episodes will be as interesting as this past arc, then it’ll still be a very interesting series.

It’s a nice and stressful episode for Ohana, and I liked how this past arc created its drama, even though it was a collection of coincidences strangely happening all at the same time. This episode however took that idea and rolled with it, resulting in quite a bit of character development and new sides of characters that we hadn’t seen before. Overall, these were the best episodes of Hana-Saku Iroha since the first two episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ooh, this episode was very good! It probably even was the best episode since episode 2, but at the same time it still was nothing like these first two episodes. The key of this episode was suddenly getting a lot of customers to book a room at the same day while three of the staff members were either sick or had a day off. The stress in keeping things running and the build-up of this were really well done here.

On top of that, the added chaos also showed different sides of everyone, and nearly everyone was enjoyable to watch. The only one who wasn’t was that Takako-woman, but she served her purpose in making things even more hectic by focusing on the mystery guests. This is the pace that this series needs to keep up.

This episode was forced, though. It’s one thing for Grandmother to collapse on such a busy day, but Kou also just had the perfect timing. Not to mention that this set-up was perfect again for fueling the Tohru love triangle that I never really was a fan of. That’s one thing that this series still needs to convince me that it’s going to be worth the build-up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)