Honey and Clover is trying to tell us that it is very possible to find your own big adventures in life – it’s just a matter of recognizing them for what they are.

Creating a story which puts its characters in strange and outlandish situations while maintaining a connection to its readers/viewers, allowing (at least some of) them to relate to the characters, is not an easy thing to properly pull off.
A few years ago I watched the anime adaptation of Honey and Clover, and it manages to do this in an effortless manner, using its slice-of-life setting as a foil to the inspiring cast as they embark on their adventures in “the real world”. (Slight spoiler warning in the following section.)
Mayama embarks on his knightly quest to… well actually, he just follows the woman he loves halfway around the world. Takemoto begins his admirable quest to travel the land in order to discover, understand and rebuild the ancient temples of the land… taking on a summer job as a building restoration worker. These are just two examples of the stories in this series, stories that seem to proclaim to us, the viewers; “go forth in to the world and explore!  The adventures are there for you, if you just grab them!”

All of this could sound a bit pedestrian, but H&C presents its wonderful set of characters with their wants and tribulations in such a lively way, putting them in situations comical, sad or tragic so well presented that I could not help but feel with them. You could easily find that at least one of the themes found in the show strikes a familiar note; unrequited love, a complicated family history, trying to get to know yourself and finding out what you want to do with your life, feeling scared and excited at the same time at the prospect of leaving university and finally “growing up” – or perhaps you will find that you’re doing just fine keeping the child within and don’t really need to grow up that much?
These themes are presented in such well-told ways that I found it very easy to relate to Takemoto’s coming-of-age tale. It’s not that long ago that I felt a bit lost while being at a university.

What keeps the show from going stale with these thematics is its great variety. There are some creatively directed scenes that I found flat out hilarious (one certain scene involving Morita and a push scooter) – then there are simply, quiet and beautiful scenes that make me feel all warm inside – then you have the truly somber and sad scenes. Every episode I watched (including the ones of Honey & Clover II) felt new and invigorating – characters will show new facets of their personalities, and in some cases you have a really well-done character progression. I never felt that there was any filler material, and I was never sure of what exactly would happen next.

To make everything really come to life on the screen, the show is wonderfully animated in a lively and fluid fashion, with beautiful artwork (in a very slightly “rough” style that matches the show perfectly) and character design. The voice actors manage a wide range of emotions and none of the characters ended up annoying me, which happens often enough in anime.

This is a show that strongly resonates with me even as I just think about it, and I find myself wanting to know what happened to the characters after the show ended. As such it is a very rare sort of collection of characters and stories, no matter what media we are talking about.

I want this blog to be something I can show to a friend and say; “these things really warmed me, gave me a fuzzy feeling, touched on one of my strings. Check them out.”

To illustrate what I mean, here is a piece of art signed Doomfest;

Bringing a message to keep your mind open while you identify that which really matters to you; I find this touching. The idea is warm and the beautiful rendition makes the idea come to life.

For those interested in digging further into the context of this image, there is quite a back story.

I had never played a visual novel before I stumbled on Katawa Shoujo, a free VN currently available as a demo. Intrigued by its premise, I  played it with no expectations and ended up finding a very well written set of stories and characters.
The image above hints at the contents; taking place at a high school for disabled children, a cast of interesting characters will find and foster friendship, and, in some cases, love.

I admit that, when I first heard of it, I had doubts that such a tender source material would be well handled. I was sincerely happy when I found out that my doubts were entirely unfounded – the characters have been very caringly crafted by the writers.
When I read writings from unpublished writers on the internet, (video game fan stories, for instance) it is often very noticeable that not enough time has been used to re-hash and edit their writings, not only regarding text flow, but also in how characters act and how situations flow. Even though it is unfair to compare these kinds of writings to those of acclaimed, professional writers, it is an unfortunate truth that no matter how good an idea for a story is, the reader will not easily be able to immerse her/himself and enjoy it if there are too many head-shake-inducing moments.

The Katawa Shoujo demo, however, displays an impressive quality in this department, and it is obvious that much time and effort has been used on it – and more importantly, that the people who have performed this work have a good set of heads on their shoulders. The writing (more in the style of a theatre play script than a novel) makes it possible to enjoy the process of discovering the stories and characters in their world.

The different personalities in the composite cast are, generally, written entirely and separately by one of the several writers involved in the project. While actions have been taken to somewhat synchronize the writing styles and character actions across the board, there is a noticeable difference when following different story routes in the VN. (One is prompted into these routes by selecting the protagonist’s actions at select points in the story,)
This is something I very much liked. Because the VN game sets the reader on a certain route after certain choices, (savegames and skip functions make it easy to revisit these choices and take other routes in the VN) one ends up being more exposed to a certain writer and her/his character during that select playthrough.  This also significantly changes the way the protagonist thinks and acts, which really makes sense on a very important level (you’ll know what I mean if you play it) and results in every different route presenting a distinctly different reading experience. In the case of this particular VN, this works out very well.

The artwork and music also displays a high level of quality. The character designs are well done and some of the character scenes are outright gorgeous. With poor artwork, the impact of the writing would have be lessened – luckily, the character artwork in Katawa Shoujo often accentuates the writing and brings character nuances of their own, sometimes managing to truly bring a character to life, which is no easy feat. I am especially (but not at all solely) thinking of the in-game Rin artwork.
The music is well-fitting and many tracks can stand on their own – worth listening to even when not playing the game.

Yes, there are certain elements that could have been polished and improved, but in my mind, that would be demanding the resource investment of a professional studio – and the “fun” thing is that there are not many professional entities (I’m talking about anything from anime studios to non-genre novelists to movie makers) out there that have managed to tell stories that have been as heart-warming to me as Katawa Shoujo.
For a number of hours in a few subsequent days, I was engrossed in the tales of these characters; when I finished with the demo, I was left with a warm feeling, and not a lot of recent media has done that to me.