Super Official Anime Discussion Thread

[sundin13]

My Opinions on: HaNaYaMaTa

So I started watching Hanayamata a few days ago for a few reasons. I've been stressed to hell with a wave of bad fortune and schoolwork crashing down on me and I needed something light and fluffy to unwind. I had a few options for this, Hanayamata or Oreshura. Both were really pretty to look at and I knew very little about either, but overall, Yosakoi was more interesting to me than...well harems (?), which seemed to be the topic of Oreshura.

So I dove in.

Hanayamata is a show about a bunch of middle schoolers dancing Yosakoi, which is like a traditional freestyle dance. I was initially unsure if I should expect K-On or Chihayafuru when it came to how important the "club" activity would be, and I'm glad it fell somewhere in the middle. While dancing a crucial point to every episode, often it just happens alongside the plot instead of being integral to it. Yes, they are doing these things to "practice" but in truth, it is just a disguise for cute girls doing cute things. Which I'm totally fine with.

What I'm less fine with is how shallow this show it. The drama all seems very forced, from jealousy to predictable romps through tropes and it brings down the show somewhat. Not that the drama was always a heavy focus, but the show relied on it to flesh out the characters, and when the drama didn't work, the characters became more one dimensional. I'd be willing to bet that they will each turn into just cute girls in a month in my memory and I will not even be able to tell you what show they came from.

As for the animation, it was one of the reasons I first started this show. In stills, it is really pretty. The dancing sequences and some of the nature is absolutely wonderful looking, as expected of Madhouse. However, there do seem to be a lot of cut corners. For one, the show is reluctant to actually show them dancing. They show the feet, or a second here and there or just slowly panning stills, but I want to see more dancing and the show just doesn't give me that. This is all probably my biggest issue, as it seems like the animators looked for ways to cut costs wherever possible and took out anything that would be a complicated animation task. This is a shame because the few bits we do get look really nice, and as a show about dancing, I think I deserve to see more dancing. While the finale dance was great, I always wanted more.



Overall, it was enjoyable and cute, albeit shallow, but it did its job at cheering me up a bit.

5/10