Aoi Hana

[Yiew]

Aoi Hana, or Blue Flower, is an 11 episode Romance / Yuri anime based around Fumi Manjōme and her encounters with love.

Review:

This anime is not the 'Girl on Girl' action one may think. It is a very slow and gentle anime. The main protagonist, Fumi Manjōme, is a very delicate character that gradually begins to grow strong, and you can see this in the last episode, an almost complete character turn around.
Her best friend Akira Okudaira is always by her side, and accepts the fact that her first lesbian relationship is with a 3rd year student known as Yasuko Sugimoto, but I will talk about the characters later.
The character section will be quite long, as I think it deserves more as its a very interrelationship style of anime.

If you do not like slow romance animes, especially those with out a 'traditional' ending, then read no further. But if you like happy endings, character v character, drama and all the like, then please continue.

Characters:

Lets set this straight.
Fumi-chan is best friends with Aa-chan.
Fumi-chan falls in love with Sugimoto and these two end up dating.
Kyouko Ikumi also loves Sugimoto but never gets to be with her.
Sugimoto loved and still loves (slightly) a teacher by the name of Masanori Kagami

This is all I will talk about.
There are many emotions being thrown into this anime about the characters mentioned above. Although I could have mentioned two more that have an impact, I believe these characters play the biggest roles.

Fumi is the delicate character that supports many of the themes. She seems to get thrown into everything but not with out the support of her best friend Aa-chan, who is the strong on in the relationship. Fumi always seems to cry at almost every moment, how ever there is always a reason behind it and not always the same. At times it can make you think, feel sympathy or simply say 'Dont cry...GAH!' But you will be happy to know Fumi really does change as a character. She is quite frail at the start of the anime, but toughens up. She does this in a way thanks to Sugimoto, but she does not loose her innocence and gentleness either, so you will still love the Fumi you grew attached to from the start.
After watching the anime, I realised it had a very good balance of characters and how they related. It seemed to me to be opposites attract.
Fumi the soft gentle type is best friends with Aa-chan.
Fumi falls in love with the cool, rough edged Sugimoto.

There are a great deal of love triangles though in this anime, well...I shouldnt say love triangles, but more half triangles? There are many characters that love one character or the other and they all know it well lead no where, but despite that fact it still happens. This was rather frustrating at times, but it had a point in the end and left a very satisfying feeling.

I think the creators did a very good job, voices met well and you will never get tired of them, how ever you may just get a little frustrated over Fumi's constant crying, but this is shown in many different lights, so its always a different situation.

Art:

Once again, the art was very gentle

Spoiler

I quite enjoyed watching this anime because of the art. Very soft on the eyes, and the style went brilliantly with the gentleness, slow pace of the anime. There werent many amazing art moments, but the consistency on the overall effect was superb.
The OP / ED art was also quite well done, one of the better drawn OP's Ive seen.

Sound:

Once again, very gentle. OP - Aoi Hana by Kukikodan
Really great OP song. Other than that, and commenting about the ED there isnt really much to say in terms of sound. So, lucky for you guys this is a short part.

Enjoyment:

I really enjoy slow paced romance animes. This was no exception. The anime would not stand out in a crowd, but I HIGHLY recommend you watch this anime, its a very realistic look on what many girls sometimes go through. With out the support of ones best friend, where would we be in life?
I could watch this over and over. The voices could make me sleep because they are so soft and soothing, but the anime would keep me awake on its own.

[chup1n]

nice review, might give it a try (even tho it´s yuri :/ ...)