September 26, 2011
Hana Saku Iroha Finale: Until We Meet Again
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
– Irish Blessing on Partings
September 13, 2011
Hana Saku Iroha Ep24: Something Out Of Nothing
Every parent has a dream for their children. For many, they dream for their children to find something in life that they’ll love, and do it with all their heart and soul. I come from a very business oriented family. It was something of a shocker for my parents when I told them all those many years ago that I wanted to be a doctor and not continue the family business. That task has mostly fallen on the shoulders of my brother these days. It took a while for them to accept the fact that I would never ever change my mind.
Every parent has a dream for their children. It just so happens that Sui’s is for her children to stop living for hers, but for their own.
September 6, 2011
Hana Saku Iroha Ep23: Conviction
It’ll hit anyone hard when they hear that the place they’ve come to call home is being closed down. It’s already a difficult thing to be forced to move, to make such a drastic change in life. You try so hard to make a new life for yourself in a new environment, and when you start to finally feel at home it, the rug gets pulled under you. Madame manager must have her reasons, but it no doubt comes as a rather depressing revelation to Ohana and everyone else in the inn that the place that they call home (or second home for that matter) is closing its doors after so many years.
It shouldn’t be surprising of course that anyone would want to defend their home.
August 25, 2011
Hana Saku Iroha Ep21: The Space Between
This show is still one of my favorite shows of the year, even if the last few episodes have been sort of a major letdown. The lack of blogging of this show is both a result of that and time constraints as an intern. I still get to watch the show when it airs, and I still reerve some disappointment over the fact that it still focuses much on the side characters when the show is about to end, and good ol’ Ohana still has her own long ways to go.
Not to say of course that this episode follows the same fate, but in reality the episode manages to balance out the side characters with the lead, and for that I feel confident that the show is back on track.
June 27, 2011
Hana-Saku Iroha Ep13: Family Ties
In medicine it’s usually frowned upon, if not downright unethical, to treat your own family members. Aside again from the ethical considerations you have to face, there will also be that difficulty in separating familiarity from the science of medicine. There will be some sort of bias among other things when dealing with family as patients, especially because you have to treat them with knowledge other doctors wouldn’t know. I imagine to some extent that dealing with family as guests at an inn would be sort of the same. That’s the best analogy I can make for this lol.
June 13, 2011
Hana-Saku Iroha Ep11: The Movement
We run. Maybe we always run. When we don’t know what to do, what to feel or even what to say. When you think you know how it all works, that’s when it all starts crashing down, that’s when you start running before you even realize your feet are moving. Some of us go on thinking we we have a clear path and a clear goal in mind, but sometimes really that’s not how the world works. We get so sure of ourselves that when nothing goes our way, we crumble and cry as we speed through the streets we called home. Nothing looks familiar anymore. It’s like everything’s changed. We no longer know what we know and who we know. The world is alien. As the often cliched rain pours and washes away all familiarity and all peace, we can only wonder what is left of us and the life we once knew.
But it is gone. It has moved on.
May 30, 2011
Hana-Saku Iroha Ep9: The War Has Begun
The above title actually has little to do with the episode itself, as it more has to do with the current state of the fandom in regards to Ohana and the two… uh… men in her life, taken to more (il?)logical extremes. Ohana’s bravado and gung-ho style of management may have saved the day, but at the end of said day it also brought to the table a certain degree of teen angst and emotional conflict further magnified by the anime fandom’s usual penchant for supporting specific pairings we all know as shipping. One guy apparently gained points while the other guy got shafted by fate in the ass.
Me? Underdog all the way man!
May 24, 2011
Hana Saku Iroha Ep8: Taking Charge
When shit hits the fan, someone has to man (or woman) it up, take control, take charge, and steer the ship away from the shitstorm. Vulgarity aside, this task usually falls on the hero who must take the helm and lead the crew out of their current predicament. Most shows, even more slice of life-ish ones like this, have conflicts that need resolving in the midst of (more than) average daily life. That’s not something you only see in heroic Shounen shows, and for Hana Saku Iroha in this episode, Ohana’s been likened to a Shounen hero springing into action as the inn faces a daunting task that may very well affect its future. Throw in a very interpersonal event while all this goes on, and you have a setup for one hell of an exciting drama.
May 10, 2011
Hana-Saku Iroha Ep6: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Win (Gained!)
The above statement, slightly corrected, as stated by the management consultant obvious doesn’t make any damn sense as a corrupted modification of a popular statement. Of course, it doesn’t deny the fact that the inn’s patronage has been slipping over the years, something that even madame herself admits is true. The statement though still manages to encapsulate the core problem the inn faces, as well as perhaps one of the more important life lessons Ohana needs to learn as she lives and works in a setting that she considers her new home.
April 19, 2011
Hana-Saku Iroha Ep3: All Tied Up
It’s a… very different and somewhat jarring change of pace for a show built on as a semi-serious show about growing up in a world very foreign from the hustle and bustle of the modern city. I guess wherever you go, there will always be perverted writers with bondage fetishes dreaming of a Pulitzer Prize for writing the novel of the century about high school girls getting it on in a sparkly and steamy bath fantasy.
Or maybe not.
Medical Student vs. Anime 