Honey and Clover

Hachimitsu to Clover

Also Known As: H&C, Hachikuro

Genre: Drama/Comedy

Format: 24 Episodes

Allegiance: J.C. Staff

Director: Kasai Kenichi

Vintage: 2005

Intelligence Agency Report by: Lady Sage

Takemoto Yuuta lives the life of an ordinary art student, along with his apartment-mates, Mayama and Morita. This life is turned upside down when cute freshman Hanamoto Hagumi is introduced to the three by their teacher, Hanamoto Shuuji, and both Takemoto and Morita quickly fall for her. Don't forget the "Iron Lady" Yamada Ayumi, who suffers from a serious case of unrequited love for Mayama. In this twisted situation, the group is forced to unite and grow up together, and in the process, form unbreakable bonds of friendship.

Field Agent Report by: Lady Sage

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

8.75
9.75
9.75
9.25
9.50

Overall

9.50

(not an average)

Welcome to real life. Or at least, the closest anime probably will ever get to real life. Created for the new Noitamina program on Fuji TV, Honey and Clover's aim was to get teenage girls into anime. With a character-based comedy/drama series they could both be entertained by and relate to, the girls bit and the series was a hit.

Everything about Honey and Clover is distinctive. The art style is beautiful, with soft, muted colors that bring to mind an old photo album. It creates a sense of gentle nostalgia, of idealized days gone by back when life was fresh and possibilities were endless. The music also does a better-than-average job of setting the mood, with beautiful, gentle J-Rock insert songs that even the most militant haters of anime music may find themselves tapping their toes to.

Technical excellence aside, what truly makes the series is its characters. All are slightly wonky, but most art students in real life are as well. What's important is that there's more to them than their wonkiness: they are also creative, conflicted, unsure and full of self doubt but also amazing potential. There's a great deal of monologue, but it's all well-written, well-acted, and interesting. There's great chemistry to the cast, which keeps a balance between the ensemble comedy and the intra- and inter-personal drama.

Possibly the series' single flaw is that the timeline can be a little difficult to follow. Months will pass in a single episode, and annual events, such as Christmas, can end up being only a few episodes apart. However, this flaw is extremely minor, especially in light of everything that the show does so right.

Watch Honey and Clover. I can't recommend it highly enough. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cry from laughing so hard...

Field Agent Report by: Kuzu Ryu Sen

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

6.25
7.50
5.50
8.00
6.00

Overall

6.25

(not an average)

Disappointment: 1. a feeling of dissatisfaction that results when your expectations are not realized. 2. The Toronto Maple Leafs. 3. Honey and Clover. After all, despite countless animation studios being employed, despite being the flagship for Noitamina, Fuji TV's new revolutionary shoujo animation block, the end product was an over-hyped, melodramatic, scrapped together cesspool of well, nothing. Heck, for a show about art school students, it really wasn't even very pretty.

Honey and Clover has two main selling points: humour, and a supposedly realistic and deep portrayal of a coming-of-age story. To be blunt, the humour failed miserably. I can count the number of times I chuckled throughout the series on one hand. Heck, I can even count the number of times I smiled on one hand. Much touted segments like "killer Twister" and "Gates-sama" flew by with nary a twitch from my lips, and honestly, I didn't even realize that a joke had been attempted half the time.

As for the story, the basic components are all there, and the characters really do have a world of potential. Unfortunately, the planning was atrocious. Years mysteriously pass where nothing happen, yet more than a dozen episodes span a period of approximately six months. Plot segments would seemingly conclude only to be extended by the most asinine of plot devices. This wasn't an unacceptable method artistically; it just didn't feel realistic that nothing of consequence would happen for a year. To make things worse, the plot constantly jumps between two very loosely connected paths, and by the end, the main character has really only been the main character for all of half a dozen episodes. Furthermore, the ending resolves the path that received less attention, leading to a lack of attachment to the entire cast for either lack of screen time or lack of resolution. In the end, the members of the main cast can be respectively summed up with the words melodramatic, unresolved, useless, annoying, lolicon, and weak.

The animation is quite smooth, and CG is used very seamlessly. However, there are still some glaring flaws. First, the female character designs are disgustingly wretched. Second, the overuse of ineffective super-deformity drags down the dramatic aspects of the series. Third, despite it being a show about art, all the pieces of actual art are presented in the same faded palette as the backgrounds. As such, while the backgrounds are rather pretty and soothing, the artworks wind up dull and ignored. Musically, Honey and Clover is completely unimpressive. The OST seems to consist of an eardrum piercing opening, the same three or four instrumental tracks used over and over, and a myriad of insert/ending themes that all sound exactly the same. Not particularly irritating, but not exactly noticeable either.

In the end, "disappointment" is the only word (keeping in mind that children will read this) that can be used to describe Honey and Clover. With a convoluted plotline, boring (yet insane) characters, old dry jokes, and forgettable audio/visuals, the only thing that Honey and Clover has going for it is that it was not really anger or stress inducing. Really, when it comes to Honey and Clover, let's just leave it at "it is," ok?

Field Agent Report by: Erigion

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

1.00
3.00
2.00
8.50
7.50

Overall

4.00

(not an average)

You can learn a lot from the OP of an anime. Most of them have some bland J-Pop song matched with some bland smorgasbord of scenes, telling you that the series will be uninspiring. Then, there are the ones that stand out. For instance, the jazzy sound of Tank! expresses the smooth style of Cowboy Bebop. And the upbeat sound of Read or Die no Teema gears you up for the action packed ride of Read or Die. But, Honey and Clover's OP, Dramatic, stands out for all the wrong reasons. And so does Honey and Clover.

So how does Dramatic stand out? First and foremost, it grates on your nerves…a lot. Listening to a few notes from the singer made me want to go deaf, while watching the series made me want to get a lobotomy. Supposedly the series takes snapshots of the lives of art students in college over the length of multiple years; yet all of the snapshots of the characters seem to be the same. There is hardly any development for any one of the characters as they tread water for what seems to be the entire length of the series. Characters go on the backburner for lengthy periods of time and when they come back nothing has changed. And let's not talk about the plot, or lack thereof.

Actually let's talk about the plot. There is none, which isn't much of a surprise coming from a slice of life show. What Honey and Clover does have is two themes that try to give the characters something to develop around. There isn't a problem with the themes per se, but when the emphasis jumps from one to the other, with no rhyme or reason, it gets a little tiresome trying to make sense of what is going on and actually caring about it. Then you have the ending which comes out of nowhere and almost had me screaming at my monitor, "Run, Forrest run!" If I make it sound moronic, that's because it was.

What else did I notice about Dramatic? It's a horrible mix of audio and visual, a terrible song combined with stupid looking claymation that gave me a, "what were they thinking?" feeling. Meanwhile, Honey and Clover gave me that same feeling with a horrible mix of comedy and drama. Now I know it's hard to combine comedic and dramatic moments together, and it's rarely done well, but the first thing that's needed are good dramatic and comedic moments. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. H&C only got its first chuckle from me more than halfway through the series, and the dramatic moments never mattered because I couldn't connect with the characters. So not only was there a lack of good comedic and dramatic moments, but the way the directors tried to combine the two was horrible. Attempts at comedy would be smack dab in the middle of a dramatic moment, completely destroying what little emotion the scene had generated.

What's worse is that the OP is also a tease; halfway through the series the OP sequence is changed. It seemed like there might be hope when I noticed the lack of claymation, but it was quickly smothered once that grating song came back. About that same time, Honey and Clover gave me a bit of hope when I noticed the dramatic moments were being separated from the comedic ones, and there seemed to be some character development happening. Then I looked a little closer and realized the same problems were happening over and over again. Then I realized that the numerous insert songs in the second half were hiding the complete lack of writing. Then I realized I just wasted hours of my life.

So there you have it, Dramatic is all you need to know about Honey and Clover. It's annoying, flat out terrible, and a complete waste of time. Of course, I could have just saved you the time it took to read this review and just written: "H&C blows." But I don't think my boss would've been too happy about that.

Field Agent Report by: Niner

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

7.75
9.25
9.00
8.50
6.50

Overall

8.25

(not an average)

Let's just get something out of the way to start off: this series isn't for everyone. Truth be told, while there is really no one anime that everyone can enjoy equally, Honey and Clover is definitely one of those niche anime that only a certain type of person will want to watch. That being said, those who do find it to be their cup of tea will certainly be rewarded for their time.

Since the show is based around an art school and its students, it would only be appropriate for the artwork and animation to be unique and high-quality. The scenery is beautifully drawn and helps to reinforce the idyllic, carefree surroundings. The character designs are strikingly distinctive, but in a good way. All these technical aspects are especially interesting to note since Honey and Clover went through a number of different animation studios to churn out episodes, a few of the more noteworthy ones being Bee Train, GAINAX, Xebec and Production I.G. The animation and character designs are kept consistent and at a high level of quality throughout the length of the series, quite an accomplishment, considering the number of studios involved in production.

Honey and Clover really fits the description of a "slice-of-life" anime, as each episode is a peek into the daily lives of these unique people with seemingly everyday problems. The series is grounded in its portrayal of realistic situations that the characters face, such as complex relationships, jealousy, joy, sorrow and the like. The characters themselves exhibit distinctive personalities, each with their own quirks and oddities to spice up the mix. Each of them brings a certain joie-de-vivre to the series, some more pronounced than others. For example, there are quite a few lighthearted comedic moments that are mostly brought about by Morita-san, but even his character is demonstrated to be much deeper than his screwball exterior would belie. As a whole, the characters truly give life to the story, which is less about humongous, life-altering changes and theatrical melodrama and more about interpersonal introspection and the evolution of friendship and love.

While it does some things well, there are a few aspects of Honey and Clover that come up lacking. The pacing is a bit slow, despite the fact that time seems to elapse quite fast in the show's chronology. This is especially troublesome as the series is winding down as the story seems to lose focus and cohesiveness. The music also leaves much to be desired. "Dramatic," the opening theme, is a gratingly ugly J-pop song utterly devoid of any aesthetic pleasantness, which forced me to fast forward the OP every time I watched a new episode. The background music and insert songs are unimaginative and bland, not really detracting from the show's appeal, but not really adding anything to it either. The same can be said for the ED, which thankfully doesn't reach "Dramatic"-level atrociousness.

As I stated before, this series isn't meant for everyone. If you're looking for something with earth-shattering drama or over-the-top zaniness, then you should probably look elsewhere. But if you'd just like to watch a simple show about everyday life with eccentric but lovable people who are easy to relate to, then sit down and let the characters of Honey and Clover charm you into their beautiful, rose-colored world.