Your first impression of this show is probably spot-on. Yes, it’s a show about cute girls doing cute things. Yes, it’s flowery, adorable, and sweet to the point it makes you cringe. And yes, it’s a typical story about the friendship between five girls in a club setting. On the surface, Hanayamata doesn’t do much to deviate from being the stereotypical anime featuring everyday lives of girls in a school club. Since the anime realm is saturated with these types of anime, you will more or less get what you expected with Hanayamata, especially in terms of the overall plot progression and the character developments.
However, ... Hanayamata is obviously not a show you will love because of all its stereotypical aspects. It’s a show you will love because of how it takes those stereotypical aspects and manages to make them enjoyable. It’s a show that takes the predictable character developments and makes them heartfelt. It’s a show that takes the typical shoujo personas and makes them lovable. And it’s a show that demonstrates a genuine effort to deliver high quality animation and drop-dead gorgeous aesthetics each and every episode. Hanayamata excels at what it does and sets a gleaming example of how the typical story of cute girls in a club setting should be done.
Hanayamata tells the story of five middle school girls who end up joining the Yosakoi club, a club dedicated to performing a modern style of traditional Japanese dance. The story focuses mainly on Naru Sekiya, who is a shy, passive girl that considers herself as “average” in every aspect. Her wish going into middle school is to break out of her shell to become someone dazzling like a heroine found in fairy tales, but that wish is easier said than done, as Naru struggles to do anything out of her comfort zone. However, after the fateful moment she meets the "fairylike" girl named Hana Fontainestand, Naru's life slowly starts to change. After deciding to join the Yosakoi club with Hana, Naru sets out to gather members for the club one at a time, all the while unknowingly developing into someone she's always wished to be. The story follows the five girls that eventually join the Yosakoi club, as they try to understand one another and work together to eventually dance as a team at a local Yosakoi festival.
When I first read up on Hanayamata, I didn’t feel it as anything out of the ordinary from a typical club setting anime. So what exactly does Hanayamata do differently that sets it apart from the rest? Three words: Well-executed character developments. The anime really takes its time to explore the characters’ backstories and makes sure not to rush their developments. As a result, the characters’ backstories and their developments don’t feel forced or “shoehorned” in just for the sake of adding depth. This aspect allows viewers to better immerse themselves into the show since most of it is dedicated to the coming-of-age story of each character. It is generally uncommon for an anime to dedicate so much of itself to the characters, but Hanayamata purposefully focuses less on its main plot in order to focus more on walking the viewers through the gradual process of maturation and self-discovery as experienced by the protagonists as the show goes on.
Therefore, since the character development is the main focus of the show, the main plot undoubtedly loses some of its spotlight. Does this mean that the main plot is negligible? Not in the least. If the plot hadn’t been gradually moving forward in the background, then there wouldn’t have been such an emotionally satisfying resolution. Once Hanayamata painstakingly develops all of its characters, the main plot takes over and leads the characters towards the resolution they’ve been working for throughout the show: to dance together at the Yosakoi festival. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen such a satisfying resolution for a show, and that sentiment is owed to the effort that the show puts into bridging an emotional connection between the characters and the viewers, all the while keeping the focus of the main plot strong.
To top it off, Hanayamata displays a captivating art style and boasts some of the finest quality in animation. The bright color schemes and the vibrant art style really scream out “youthful” and “beautiful,” both adjectives of which are fitting of a story about middle school girls enjoying their youth. The flowery overtones go well with the theme that each of the girls represents some sort of flower, and overall the art style helps to amplify the bright energy given off by the show. Some of the backdrops and sceneries are just downright gorgeous to look at and demonstrate the amount of effort that’s been put into this show in terms of aesthetics. In terms of animation, the quality can most directly be seen whenever the girls are dancing. Although there aren’t a whole lot of scenes in which they dance, the scenes in which they do are smoothly and naturally done. Considering that animating the choreography without resorting to 3D animation takes a significant amount of money and time, I applaud the show for its dedication to deliver such high quality animation.
The music of Hanayamata isn't anything noteworthy, but I did want to point out its opening song, “Hana Ha Odoreya Irohaniho,” which is uniquely sung by the voice actresses of the show. As you get more and more familiar with the show and the characters, you will start to hear the characters’ voices within the opening, thus giving the song a feeling of intimacy nonexistent in most opening songs. It is often the small things that count, and details like this really made me love the show even more.
To end, I did a double take on this show when I realized that the writer for this show, Yoshida Reiko, wrote for shows such as Aria, Girls und Panzer, and K-On! among other famous works. Combine her with the director, Atsuko Ishizuka, who directed shows such as Chihayafuru, Nana, No Game No Life, and Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, and you have a dynamic duo that knows what it’s doing when it comes to anime like Hanayamata. Although Hanayamata is filled to the brim with stereotypes of the typical anime featuring “cute girls doing cute things,” the duo still manages to evoke a sense of brilliance out of the staleness commonly found in this genre. Hanayamata as a show is nothing too out of the ordinary, but the amount of effort that is put into this show is astounding and the execution of the story and the character developments is one of the finest I’ve seen in awhile. Whether or not you’re a fan of “cute girls doing cute things,” definitely give Hanayamata a try.
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Story: 7/10
Character: 8/10
Art: 10/10
Music: 7/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
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Overall: 8.2/10
Alternative Titles Japanese: ハナヤマタ Information Type: TV Episodes: 12 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Jul 8, 2014 to Sep 23, 2014 Premiered: Summer 2014 Broadcast: Tuesdays at 01:35 (JST) Producers: TV Tokyo, Avex Entertainment, Sotsu, Movic, AT-X, DIVE II Entertainment, Bandai Namco Games Licensors: Sentai Filmworks Studios: Madhouse Source: Manga Genre: Slice of Life Duration: 24 min. per ep. Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older Statistics Score: 7.331 (scored by 40,441 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #26422 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #1935 Members: 111,110 Favorites: 390 Available AtResources |
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