Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai

[Ryllharu]

(We Still Don`t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day)



Description: Once, there was a group of close childhood friends. Something happened between them one day, and before they entered high school, they had grown apart from each other. One of them shows up before to the leader of their group, asking him to fulfill her wish. She doesn't remember the details of it, but somehow knows that all of them must be together to grant it.

Genres: Drama, Coming of Age, Tragedy, Angst, Nostalgia
Links: AniDB, ANN, Official Page

[UTW] Ano Hana - 01 [720p]
[gg] Ano Hi Mita Hana... - 01 [720p]
[Doki] Ano Hi Mita Hana... - 01v2 [720p]
[Ayako-Delight]Ano Hi Mita Hana... - 01 [720p]

Stick with UTW, they seem to be the best of the lot.

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If you're looking for a strong drama this season, this appears to be one to definitely pick up.

I really liked the character design of this series for some reason. The three guys gave off a look of "realistic normal" for some reason. One got fat and scruffy, one is a slacker, and the other looks clean cut. It's kind of hard to describe, but it added some additional depth to their personalities in support/contrast to what glimpses we got of them.

The girls are similar in that way too. One of them is very clean cut and responsible too, but from how little they showed, she's hiding something underneath that. The red-head reminds me of character designs from Umetsu Yasuomi, which is awesome. The third is a bit generic, but slightly immature appearance matches her personality perfectly.

What really surprised me about this show is how much subtle character development they crammed into it. The first episode alone had love polygons (Anaru -> Jin-tan -> <- Menma <- Yukiatsu <- Tsuruko : by my estimates), major plot and character development, and plenty of unconfirmed things to speculate and guess about. Of course it was totally obvious that Menma was dead from the first scene, but they didn't really try to pretend it was a surprise to anyone (she knew it from the start too), which I thought was a nice touch.

Strong first episode, strong cast, good animation, excellent plot/character development. This is one I'm sticking with for sure.