I will be sincere. I skipped this show after watching the first episode when it was released, it was too cute for my taste, but it left me a good impact in terms of production values, so I kept it in mind. An year later and
Tari Tari was released, it was shorter (13 episodes), so I gave it a chance and was very amused. Because of that I've returned to Hana-Saku Iroha to fully watch it.
Well, I still find it far to cute and light for a slice-of-life show, but Hana-Saku Iroha has its merits. It's a different experience from shows like
Honey & Clover, Clannad, and even
Tari Tari, and more to the style of
K-On, Lucky Star, Haruhi Suzumiya, and many others there. This means the show is focused on the silly girls, the cast is far more comical and less realistic, and it usually avoids being really serious, even when working on more mature problems like job, independence, rejection, etc.
After working in assistance to many great shows,
P.A. Works went for its own series with
True Tears, Canaan, and
Angel Beats. All these shows had decent animation, but nothing really outstanding. The character design was generic, backgrounds were blurry, and animation lacked something to truly shine. Hana-Saku Iroha is the first job the studio did things really right. Despite still resorting to generic character templates, the rest of the production is superb. First of all, it has outstanding backgrounds based on real locations, using some sort of photography filter, but merging nicely with the characters and CG elements. The generic characters are nicely animated, have sharp lines, consistent quality, and they never resort to stupid "XD" smiles or similar lame things, keeping things on a high level of quality that is not common for these kind of shows. The CG elements are nice, but rarely used and still missing the mark to be truly great. For those who've seen
Tari Tari, the merge with CG elements was certainly one of the biggest steps forward by
P.A. Works. Overall, there are very few shows with the production quality as Hana-Saku Iroha, especially in 2011.
Hana-Saku Iroha is tagged as seinen, but really, most people I know that truly love it are very young girls. And in the sound direction this targeting seems pretty obvious. What we have here are musics with frantic rythmn and the typical terrible pitch of a female singer, much like on K-On. It's hard to appreciate such thing. Background music is nice, but I don't really see how a typical european music fits in a show that happens in the countryside of Japan. At least this Paris-like background music goes away after the first half. Voice-acting presents the same problem I always state here: lots of cute lolis, lots of annoying voices. Anoha can be particularly annoying sometimes, and you'll see her most of the time. Besides her we have the slowpoke of speech and the male characters that talk funny. Not much of originality here, but fits the comical part of the show at least.
This a tale of the daily life of Anoha, a young and vibrant girl that is forced to live with her grandmother after her rebellious mother flees with a man. She moves from Tokyo to the countryside and find herlself working in Kissuiso, her grandmother's inn, where she'll learn a thing or two about living with others and the hardships of work.
- Carefree Start
Perhaps the thing that kept me from initially liking Hana-Saku Iroha is its carefree start and the focus on Anoha, the genki protagonist. Everything in the show lacks a good serious take, and as a consequence it feels like the show will be just a soft comedy for young girls, filled with 16-year old lolis that look and act as 12-year old, as well as one-dimensional characters with little depth and exagerated personalities. The show evolves to be more than this, but even after it becomes more serious, we have an episode or another to remind us of the carefree part.
Drama
Moving from a big capital, starting a new live, leaving behind her crush, knowing her strict grandmother, adapting to work. There are many things happening in Anoha's life and with the rest of the cast as well, giving room to some nice dramatic elements to evolve. However, we don't see the show using these elements with mastery, and the two main events (Anoha's crush and Kissuisso's crisis) are left to the sidelines the vast majority of the show. There are some minor dramatic scenes, but they are far too soft and masked by the carefree comical moments and the cartoonistic characters.
Romance
Shy girls? Surely! Well... Hana-Saku Iroha tries its share with teenage romance, and sadly that doesn't go very well. We mainly have two relantionships in the show, with a simple love polygon that could develop something good, but no, the author prefers to keep the girls acting like 12-year old and always fearing to even talk to their crushes. Anoha's is especially annoying as a romance pair with her weak-willed boyfriend. I can tolerate a bit of shyness, this certainly happens, but for 16-year old they could surely have more courage to talk their feelings or at least learn to live with it hidden and don't break in dozens of shy scenes and tsundere behavior. Well... is japanese romance really like this? Are they so shy they shake and break when in front of their crush or get angry when someone tries to tell something about love or relationships? If this is the case... well, then the show goes well in this department, but it's still annoying.
Wanna see cute lolis naked?
What we have in here is a surprising amount of fanservice, and from the very first strings of episodes till the last you'll always have some scene with the girls in the bath, or half-naked, or naked, or the male characters having dirt thoughts, etc. For a show that screams to be very girly (and attracts young girls), the amount of these ecchi scenes surprised me. It never truly focus on ecchi, but its traces are everywhere. If they had a protagonist called Keitaro this would instantly turn to be Love Hina!
Character:Have you watched K-On? If you did, then you won't be much surprised by the female cast here. Sadly, Hana-Saku Iroha cast is build from a template not only in its design, but in their personalities as well. Anoha is the genki girl, initially very independent but who slowly learns to rely on others as the show progresses. Although she reminds me a lot of my niece and her development is fine, she is never truly remarkable to make an impact. She is very one-dimensional and never surprises us during the show. The support cast vary a lot, although they use basic stereotypes and never evolve from it. We have the long-haired tsundere, the girl that talks absurdly slowly and is all clumsy and dumb, the pervert weird guy, the angry but secretly kind grandmother, and a few others. Some of them can be more realistic, but most fall to the comical side and are never given a chance to evolve from that.
- Somehow, They Become Likeable
Although built upon basic stereotypes and being very straightforward, the show manages to create a nice atmosphere for the cast to become funny and charismatic. This is much like what happens in long-running shounen shows, but here we have only 26 episodes to do the work, which is quite remarkable. They don't grow to be outstanding representations of human behavior, but become quite nice. A few of them even manage to change in the season, like Takako and Nako, but the most important thing is that they do a good job in becoming great representations of their stereotypes.
Hana-Saku Iroha is a beautiful visual experience. It has pretty backgrounds, cute character design, and a nice animation. Aside from that, however, it doesn't offer much. The slice-of-life is build upon a nice premise and we even get a good target point early on (the fact that the inn is going through a crisis), but the episodes are mostly pointless until near the end, more filled with fanservice than what is tolerable from a show like this. The cast is also very common and bland at first glance, although it can give you something good to watch. The comedy can save from time to time, but is too childish and simple for a whole 26-episode season. Perhaps if the show was 13-episode short we could get a far greater experience, but that would also mean the cast wouldn't grow to be charismatic.
Hana-Saku Iroha offers a welcome slice-of-life experience. It's not build upon the high-school environment, which is a huge plus, and has a mix of comical and soft drama that is far better than the likes of Clannad. It can look very generic and unispiring at first, but if you manage to watch it past the mid part it'll definetely grow and catch more of your attention. For it's stunning visuals and absurd production values, I could label this as a must see to anyone who likes slice-of-life and is in the mood to watch cute lolis. However, those who are annoyed by cute girls and the recent approach on tsunderes and genki girls are better to stay away and watch something else.
My niece (11 years old when she watched this) loved it and her classmates loved as well. I can understand that, the show is like K-On with bits of ecchi and kiddy romance, something that pleases the younger people but can hardly make an impact to more demanding watchers or people who already grew tired from the early 2000's burst of the genre.
Tari Tari, which I've watched before this, if substantially superior although the AniDB scores says otherwise. Why's that? Easy. Because Tari Tari never tries these silly things that Hana-Saku Iroha did. Fanservice can be a powerful device to attract those who are just looking to fill some free time, and when you join it with a very cute artwork made by
P.A. Works, you have an instant horny-teenager attractor.
But comparing to other moe fests around and shows with dozens of cutie girls, Hana-Saku Iroha is a step above simply because the tale is never absurd or stupid. It's simple, but not stupid.
