Completed: Ano Hana: Letters to menma

*sobbing* so *sniffle* aniplex showed this movie in north american theaters... and... and.... so sad *more sobbing*

Ok but seriously though this movie.... i was doing so well... even when you see the flower they saw that day.... i didn't cry but i did gasp...
even when they are reliving their guilt i tears up but i didn't cry.
but then.... stupid hide and seek
i HATE hide and seek thanks to this show.
just..... GAH *sob*

i despise crying in public places... so a packed theater with friends is like...  the worst. 
i'm not the only one of my friends that cried though so.... yeah... good...

SO... Ano hana (which has a stupid long title that i don't remember right now) is about a group of friends who play together all the time until one of them dies in a tragic accident.
Skip a few years and the group barely speak to each other anymore after dealing with grief at such a young age and also having to deal with the fact that being around each other brings up memories.
That is until Jintan, the 'leader' of the group of friends suddendly gains the ability to see the girl who died and all she wants is for her wish to be fulfilled... she doesn't remember what that wish is... other then it involves getting everyone together again.

Now i won't go into details but the show hits a little too close to home for me. When a lot of people felt like it was pandering and just trying to make you cry i saw it as being fairly sincere having gone through a lot of what these characters went through.
But it makes this show insanely hard for me to watch... it brings the "what if" question to mind and it just hurts thinking about it.

So i was worried when my friend invited me to it... this kind of plotline breaks me down pretty easily.

But in the end i'm really glad i saw it.
It was, once again, a great depiction of people dealing with grief over time, they no longer blame themselves as much and now they think more about how that person helped shaped them into who they are today... and how just the memory is enough of them. It was really really sincere.

And really really sad. there was not a dry eye in the audience and considering it was mostly male... thats pretty damn impressive.

Also watching this made me realize why little busters pissed me off so much. the stories don't share much except the theme of loss. Little busters phones it in for a happily ever after while Ano Hana deals with the fact that song things in life hurt like hell and while the pain never goes away you can't just be miserable all the time either.

So go see the movie if you get the chance and enjoyed the series. it's very very very well done.




Spoilers:
the title of the show roughly translates to
We still don't know the name of the flower we saw that day.
in this film we see the flower.... and i'm pretty sure it's a forget me not.
they never say it but thats what it looked like to me.. .and yeah... i almost broke down there.
great use of flower symbolism.