oyceter: (honey and clover - nomiya)
Oyceter ([personal profile] oyceter) wrote2009-06-29 11:25 am

Umino Chica - Honey and Clover, vol. 04-05 (Eng. trans.)

This continues to be a lovely revisit of the anime for me (even though the manga came first), although I still miss the anime's gorgeous watercolors and the music. That said, I'm really loving Umino's very sketchy art style. Sometimes her head-on faces don't work for me; her mouths occasionally feel too wide. But she does these absolutely gorgeous profiles, especially when it's one character looking at another character who is engrossed in something else. There's a lovely wistfulness to the way she captures the second person's expression and the first person's longing which I find particularly suited to the many instances of unrequited love in the series.

Spoilers

My favorite examples of the above are the moments in which Takemoto watches Hagu concentrating on a giraffe or sakura or something else, where you can tell she's in an entirely different world, seeing things her own way, and how he both loves her for it and is pained by how he can't join her there, as well as Nomiya watching Yamada thinking about Mayama.

I can't remember if the cast of Fujiwara Design has been introduced prior to volume 4, but we definitely get to see much more of them in these two volumes. I love how it shows us another side of Mayama, and I especially love all the elbowing he gets about his crush on Rika, which is admittedly quite sketchy at times!

Other favorite scenes from the anime are Yamada's musing about her herbs along with the fireworks episode and Hagu saying that no, she doesn't want Morita to come back until he's done what he set out to do. I also love the funny bits, like Yamada and Hagu bonding over extremely strange cooking, and Twister (though it's not as funny without the sound effects!), but I love the melancholy bits the most.

[identity profile] jinian.livejournal.com 2009-06-29 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I have the whole run so far in Shojo Beat issues, but right now I feel like I need additional copies for work! I love this so much and want to reread it RIGHT NOW.

[identity profile] jinian.livejournal.com 2009-06-29 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, you sent it to me ages ago and I could not stop watching after seeing that bizarre opening. :) Maybe I should rewatch it after my Project Runway binge.