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 26, 2011
Ano Hana Finale: Flowers for A Lady
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.
– George Eliot
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.
June 11, 2011
Ano Hana Ep9: Just Beyond The River’s Edge
Of course none of us can really comprehend or even experience the death of another human being. To die is to die, a state that is the absence of life, a one way trip to an existence or non-existence that is exclusive only to those who go through it. A lot of people nonetheless would like the make that crossing to the other bank that, once crossed, can’t be returned from. It is ultimately unknown to all of us except until the time we must also go through it. It is inevitable for everyone, some earlier than others. Watching this series it makes me wonder if Jinta has ever tried to think about death as something more than simply no longer “being there”.
With this episode I think he is starting to understand.
June 3, 2011
Ano Hana Ep8: Letting Go
Letting go is, and will always be, the hardest part. This is especially true for parents who have lost children, and children who have lost friends. Parents live their lives believing they’d watch over their kids as they grow into teenagers, into young adults, until the day they become adults themselves and finally leave the nest. A parent expects to grow old and play with their grandchildren, to watch a new generation come to take the world from them as they sit on the sidelines, content that their work is done.
A parent expects their children to be the one to bury them. It’s never a job for a parent to bury their children.
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!
Medical Student vs. Anime 