Anime Review: Hanasaku Iroha Episode 6

Anime Review:
Hanasaku Iroha Episode 6

What this is about: Watching all of the anime shows so you don’t have to! For more information about me and my reviews, click here for details on what I am reviewing.

Series Premise: Hanasaku Iroha, or Hana Saku Iroha, is a 26-episode weekly anime television series started in April 2011. The series is an original project directed by Masahiro Ando, produced to celebrate the tenth anniversary of P.A. Works. The story centers around carefree sixteen-year-old Ohana, forced to move from the city to live with her estranged grandmother in the countryside, who operates a traditional inn. Finding herself at odds with her co-workers and thrown into an entirely new world, Ohana tries to make the best of the situation.

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Episode Summary: Takako invites a consultant to the inn to help revive business, and the girls end up wearing revealing outfits as a test, which ends badly. While Takako is left in the dumps about his failure, Ohana wishes to cheer him up and looks for other ways to help the inn. Mr. Bean Man overhears, and leads Ohana to a large wardrobe of fancy, tasteful dresses that Grandma Sui created in years past. Ohana and Nako try them on, and they are an immediate hit.

My Impressions: Well, the bloom is off the rose, you might say. After Hanasaku Iroha wowed everyone with its heart-aching brilliance in the first two episodes, since then it has been reduced down to your standard coming-of-age slice-of-life situation comedy series. Mind you, it is still quite a good show that is enjoyable to watch, but Hanasaku Iroha does not look like it is going to end up being “something amazing”, as I had hoped.

Just more of Ohana interacting with the various other members of the inn, stirring things up more than usual. The consultant is a “regular”, everyone has gone through the whole rigamarole before — but with Ohana added into the mix, it certainly does shake things up a little bit. And that, in a nutshell, is the essence of the series itself. With Ohana as the new wildcard, a new variable is added to the equation and all that was staid and normal before turns out a tad different. Earlier you could see how she was slowly cracking Minko’s hardened shell. This time around, she’s there to cheer up the depressed Takako, reminding him of his sister for a moment; and reaching through to Sui, although it’s going to take much more for the two of them to form any sort of relationship.

Of course, Ohana the Wildcard affects everyone for better AND for worse, as we see Tohru’s secret fascination/infatuation with her. Ohana, naturally, is completely oblivious. This is nothing new, we’ve seen some hints of that in previous episodes. What’s new is that Minko is starting to realize it, and we can already see the long fuse to the fireworks are lit, it’s just a matter of time before they explode.

The verdict:

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For more information:

• My earlier reviews:
  • Episode 1 (May 26th)
  • Episode 2 (September 4th)
  • Episode 3 (October 19th)
  • Episode 4 (November 11)
  • Episode 5 (December 7)
• Info resources:
  • My Anime List
  • Anime News Network
  • AniDB
  • Wikipedia
• If you like this, you might also like: Maybe Toradora or Only Yesterday

Sampling of Online Reviews:

• “We have switched though from the excellent drama in the first few episodes into cute girls acting cute / fanservice mode. Not to say the creators aren’t doing well at having cute girls acting cute: the show is doing an excellent job at this. But I personally prefer the drama. I’m guessing they’ll probably get back to it eventually. ” – Draggle’s Anime Blog
• “Once again Ohana takes center stage here with her very straightforward and honest personality. While Ohana does occasionally annoy me with some of her antics, in the end she is probably the most refreshing character to see out of the entire cast in this show.” – Emory Anime Club
• “HanaIro, in my opinion, still hasn’t really come back to the high level of writing it was in the first two episodes yet, but it is getting better. I feel what is happening in HanaIro is that it’s trying to achieve that coming of age essence (which is mostly serious and dramatic) and the slice of life essence (which can be completely random and is mostly comedic), and it’s having difficulty finding a nice balance of the two to fit in one episode” – Daifuuku!
• “Compared to previous episodes of Hanasaku Iroha this felt like a rather run of the mill episode – it carried itself on Ohana’s enthusiasm as always…It was light-hearted and fun to watch despite this however, via an episode which flowed nicely and looked as good as ever, do for all its relative mediocrity it still raised a few smiles and held my interest, which is hardly a disastrous state of affairs.” – Hanners’ Anime Blog