Why Honey and Clover is a worth a watch:
Hachimitsu to Clover is a title that is comforting, strange and emblematic of the show’s essence as an ode to the bitter-sweetness and elusiveness of purpose, love and the artistic process.

H&C is set in a 2000-s era art college and follows the lives of five close friends and their professor, while tracing a brief period of their personal and professional journeys. The story builds around their relationships to each other and the future at this liminal junction

Fans of Umino’s storytelling in 3gatsu will enjoy H&C as a precursor work to SnL. The distinct character-design, water-color and pastels aesthetic, spectacular metaphors and understanding of what makes different people tick are all in there, if less polished.

H&C is a great watch if you’re a creative artist of any kind who has grappled with doubts about both the randomness of talent and the difficulty of finding your artistic voice. And it explores some very real and scary questions about purpose and perfectionism:

would your life still be meaningful without art? Why be an artist if you can’t be a successful one? Why make art at all? For me, many of these questions related to poetry. Replace art with “love” in those questions and you have another one of H&C’s great thematic concerns.

The series explores but does not single out answers. When it does, they can be disconcerting or even disagreeable, but it’s built around a good understanding of where its specific characters come from; some S2 arc ends and meandering themes in S1 could be a spot of irritation tho

H&C also really captures the zeitgeist of hostel/dorm life and the weird space of being both fiercely independent and “confused, uncertain, mom-I'm-broke-please-give-me-money” in college. If Tatami Galaxy hammers home the message that college really is the best

because of its simultaneous mundanity and spontaneity, and not inspite of it, H&C often delves into the terrifying final-year psyche of finding your way forward from that very fun life and the weird employment horizon.

I have to give a special word to the wonderful music of H&C. The openings are weird and kind of wtf but also fitting for the eclectic, artsy bunch that is our MCs. The OST is very beautiful and does justice to H&C’s many, many emotional moments without being obtrusive,

but it’s also memorable. Many of these pieces haven’t left me 8 years after I first watched this show. The show also makes very good use of the Japanese Indie-rock scene for the EDs and inserts; when it wins, it wins but there are moments of imperfection.

One of H&C’s greatest strengths is its ability to navigate difficult and complicated relationships with great kindness and empathy. In one of its few flaws, some could find the resulting arcs questionable or dramatic, but the grayness of the decisions was what further drew me in

because I found the motivations for those decisions understandable, if difficult to sympathize with. The individual arcs of the main cast are generally well explored and greatly fulfilling for anyone who likes character deep dives, and the comedy is usually on point.

In summation, H&C is a wonderful journey among the trials and tribulation of young-adulthood, and even if you may not fall in love with it, I’m sure it won’t be a wasted ticket.