Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie Review

Some memories never die.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 12, 2014

Unless confronted by it head on by the death of a relative (typically someone like a grandparent), young children rarely give a second thought to their impending mortality. While teens and twenty- or even thirty-somethings are often classed as “young invincibles”, people who are aware death awaits us all but who are simultaneously convinced it could never happen to them, kids just seem to frolic in an existential bubble where their ultimate demise isn’t even a passing thought, let alone a recurrent one. AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day was a 2011 anime (aired as part of the short form Noitamina block on Fuji TV) which only slowly (very slowly, some would argue) revealed that it was dealing with the death of a child. The series initially focused on Jinta, an outcast of sorts who seemed to have drifted away from his coterie of childhood friends and who, as the series began, was attempting to forcefully drift away from a pestering young girl named Menma. Things became somewhat more complex when it became evident that only Jinta could see Menma. Ultimately it became clear that Menma was in fact a ghost of sorts, and that her death had led, or at least contributed, to the dissolution of a childhood group of friends who had named themselves the Super Peace Busters. AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day was an unusually melancholic exercise in grief, regret and the vagaries of memory, an anime that didn’t have a traditional plot arc but which tended to derive much of its dramatic and emotional momentum out of the interior worlds of its characters. This 2013 film serves as something of an epilogue to the series. Those who haven’t seen the original anime will be able to more or less easily glean the outlines of the plot, courtesy of some interpolated “recaps” as the story plays out, but of course those who have seen the anime will be able to understand more of the ins and outs of why the various characters are behaving as they do. The film perhaps helps to resolve a few outstanding issues the characters have, but it doesn’t necessarily promote that oft-quoted adage that “time heals all wounds”.

Structurally, AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie takes a trifurcated tack, something that perhaps deprives its overall arc from more of a feeling of catharsis. The film tends to ping pong between scenes that ape material covered in the actual anime series, memories of happier times when all of the Super Peace Busters Club were younger, and then “contemporary” scenes where the main characters reminisce about Memna, sometimes while writing notes to be left for her at her shrine as the anniversary of her death approaches.

While this approach may be understandable when considering this film as a standalone property, one where new audience members need to be brought up to speed with everything that’s gone on over the course of eleven episodes in the original anime, it may leave some who did watch the series wondering when anything really new is going to happen. This tendency is only magnified by the fact that this entire franchise deals with memory, and so a certain amount of the remembered material in the film simply goes over territory fans of the series have already encountered.

As with the original series, there’s a certain melancholic aspect to AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie that gives the entire film a kind of bittersweet quality. Jinta and the rest of the now older Super Peace Busters have yet to really come to terms with what Memna has meant to them, but they seem to be at least moving in that direction as the film goes on. Interestingly, the film actually closes with a sweet scene featuring Menma’s family, and (again as with the series) a subtle but still relatively overt reference to religious beliefs is evinced not just by the shrine the family has erected in Memna’s memory, but by a coda where Memna herself discusses reincarnation.

Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Aniplex with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The film is just as lustrously beautiful as the series was, though some of the character designs seem just slightly more angular than they were in the original anime. Line detail is generally quite strong, but there are some selected instances of aliasing (pay attention during the closing credits, for example). Colors are, as with the series, incredibly inviting and nicely varied. Extremely bright, vivid and nicely saturated primaries are utilized extensively, but there are an abundance of intermediary tones as well, all of which pop very nicely on Blu-ray. One of the nicest things about the film, and its high definition presentation, is the care which has obviously been lavished on the backgrounds (look at screenshots 3 and 4 for just two examples).

Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie features the original Japanese language track in both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0. There's frankly not that much difference between the two, given that the film tends to be on the quiet side a lot of the time, but the 5.1 mix does significantly open up the nicely done music score and some of the ambient environmental sounds like a scene where the kids are all playing hide and seek. Fidelity on both tracks is excellent and there are no issues of any kind to report.

Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

For such a relative niche franchise as this, AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day has had no issues with coming out in deluxe editions. The original anime was released in one of the very handsome NIS Premium Editions, replete with a hardback book. (NIS later released a somewhat scaled down Standard Edition. Now Aniplex is following suit with AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie by offering a 3 Disc Collector's Edition that comes in a chipboard slipcase which includes the Blu-ray, a DVD and a soundtrack CD. The extras score above refers to the entire package, not merely the supplements found on the Blu-ray disc. The complete on disc and collection supplements are as follows:

On Disc Supplements

• TV Spot and Trailers (1080p; 12:52)


• Announcement (5.1/2.0) (1080p; 2:32)


• Textless Opening (Special OVA Version) (1080p; 1:32)


• Credits

Note: As with many Aniplex Blu-ray releases, the feature simply starts up after preliminary copyright warnings. You need to press the Top Menu button to access that menu and through that the supplementary features.

Other Supplements

• DVD of the film and supplements.


• CD features soundtrack music and other selections. This has a nice variety of J-Pop and more ruminative instrumentals that might remind some of the Windham Hill label.


• Booklet features 19 pages of text, credits and character illustrations.


• Poster with reversible art.


• Collectible Postcards

Anohana the Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day The Movie continues along much the same path as the series, and that is both a good and a bad thing. A lot of this relatively brief film is going to seem pretty repetitive to fans of the original anime series, and what's "new" is hardly earth shattering. But from a tonal and emotional standpoint, the film actually does manage to connect with the viewer in almost exactly the same bittersweet way the original series did. There may not be a huge catharsis here, but there's a surprisingly heartfelt examination of what those left behind after a death need to deal with in order to come to terms with their own lives. The technical merits on this Blu-ray are very strong, and Aniplex has put together a very handsome package in this Collector's Edition. Recommended.