Aoi Hana

[angelx03]

Aoi Hana a.k.a Sweet Blue Flowers

You can watch it right here!

Fumi Manjoume, an introverted, bookish teenage girl, is beginning her first year of high school at Matsuoka Girls' High School. She enters the school year with her heart broken by a previous relationship. At about the same time, she reconnects with her best friend from ten years ago, Akira Okudaira, who is now attending Fujigatani Girls' Academy as a first-year high school student. As they reconnect, they both deal with their own respective romantic problems, and help each other get through them.

Well, if you want a mature take on the yuri genre without the gimmickry (well, except the fact this takes place in an all-girl school), this series will deliver it. Most of what happened in Episode 1 is pretty much what's written in the synopsis above along with the introduction of some characters, and Fumi's and Akira's primary personalities. This episode definitely followed the manga very well, and it ended with

Spoiler :

Fumi discovering that her female cousin is getting married. You can imply that those two had a rather.......interesting relationship with each other.

Now the OP sequence, I say it is safe to say that Kunihiko Ikuhara did in fact work on this especially it had Fumi and Akira dancing with each other which reminded me of a certain dance scene of a rather known movie he directed. And there's this!

Solid pacing with a potential of engaging characters along with soft and subtle yet beautiful art work should give even non-yuri fans a try. And besides, this is directed by the Honey and Clover and Nodame Cantibile director Kenichi Kasai so you know there'll be some realistic and fun interactions with the characters.

[Pas]

"Fumi Manjoume and Akira Okudaria were close friends when they were young, but when Fumi moved away, they lost contact. Ten years later, they meet again as high school freshmen. Although they find that things between them have changed, they try to help each other through hard times, and maintaining the new lives they've built without growing apart." - ANN

I'm a pretty big fan of Takako Shimura, and I love her very soft drawing style. I enjoyed the manga and so following the anime has always been the option for me. It has followed the manga quite faithfully, omitting some minor aspects but also including some new content at the same time (which is a welcome change).

J.C Staff have done a great job in replicating Shimura's art style and the backgrounds and lovely and detailed with that soft watercoloured feel to it. The music was an added highlight, with nice piano pieces inserted in between, and both the OP and ED had nice music to accompany (with the animation of the OP being incredibly fluid and well-drawn, while the credits featured stills of Shimura's artwork).

Overall a very enjoyable first episode, and because I followed the manga too, I await to see it's adaption into anime. This may very well be one of the only shows I'll be following this season.

[angelx03]

Episode 2! Man, for an episode about the girls joining school clubs this utterly wins with elegant pacing. And with it, the groundwork of the complex relationships are laid out.

Spoiler :

And for anyone who wants more confirmation Fumi nearly had a sexual relationship with her cousin Chizu who later got married with a guy which obviously devastated Fumi's heart (seriously, having Chizu leading Fumi on like that was seriously a bitchy move ).

It also seems

Spoiler :

like Fumi has her sights on a rather tomboyish girl Yasuko which led her to sign up for the literary club. Of course Fumi the realized Yasuko just came out of the literary club and is actually in the basketball club.

The rekindling of Fumi's and Akira's friendships is definitely something.

Spoiler :

I found it cute when she asked Akira to sleep with her.

She can always rely on her for moral support!

[Nya-chan Production]

Slice of life - check
Long dark haired meganekko - check
Yuri points - check

/me gets

[hasteroth]

I watched it when it came out. Me like.

[angelx03]

Episode 3, I guess I could call this the date episode. For Akira's side,

Spoiler :

she got herself involved in a group date with her friend Kyouko and her "so-called" fiance. Amusingly enough, Akira's brother didn't like the idea of her going out so he ended up stalking them. Akira was obviously not pleased! ^.^'

Though it seems that the reason Kyouko did this group date was to get over her feeling of rejection she felt recently. Considering the beginning of the episode had her left the room (which her and Yasuko were in) crying, this should imply that much.

Now as for Fumi,

Spoiler :

she got asked out by Yasuko to go on a date. And MAN, I think the best moment in this episode was when Fumi went all massive blushy especially when Yasuko called out "Fumi-chan" and then "Fumi". Seriously, that is one hell of a shot there!

And this episode ended with an off-screen first kiss in the library between Fumi and Yasuko. For some peeps, they might get pissy over that. As for me, it works for me and besides blushing Fumi was truly the highlight for this episode.

And thus ends my Crunchyroll trial period so the next episodes might come a little late for me.

[hasteroth]

Good stuff.

[Nya-chan Production]

Watching it as we speak write.

Awesome stuff, better and better every second.

If I could, I'd give it 11/10.

Maybe I'll have to shift my personal scale.

[Nya-chan Production]

Btw, wanted to ask...

And there's this!

Is this a single cleaned picture or is there by chance a creditless OP running somewhere around?

[angelx03]

Btw, wanted to ask...

And there's this!

Is this a single cleaned picture or is there by chance a creditless OP running somewhere around?

More likely you'll have to wait until the DVDs are released.

Now, Episode 4!

Spoiler :

Well then, we actually got the on-screen kiss in the anime while the manga merely implied it!

But besides that, damn things got really thick! Though I have to say, it's very rarely in anime that we actually have

Spoiler :

a girl actually admits that she's going out with another girl. And there's the issue of having to deal with that someone who's that way. This what happened with Fumi and Akira when Fumi cried out to her that she's going out with Yasuko and pleaded to her not to think it's gross. Much later on, Fumi suggested to Akira that one way to deal with it was to accept it and act that everything normal. Seems reasonable, right?

Though I'm starting to worry about Fumi especially with the way this episode built up a foundation which implied that Yasuko used to be in a relationship with her male teacher.