As I’ve said before, Honey and Clover is my favorite series of all time. Period. No ties for #1, it is undisputed. I was just glancing over the now filled out About page of ours and I noticed a lot of Honey and Clover’s under “Favorite Anime” and after reading maya’s little insert, I just felt the urge to revisit the anime.

Now I’m not going to do any recaps. Odds are, I’m guessing, if you’re reading this post, you’ve probably already seen the show yourself. If you want a recap, go to Memento. These are the only episode recaps that I’ve ever read in full and it’s like watching the episode all over again. Those really are amazing recaps. You may tell, the title of the post is sorta like an homage to Garten’s posts, too. I usually like flashier titles because without those, no one reads my posts and those types of titles attracts the eye. But for this show, I felt that the readers I want to attract are those who truly love this series and just want to relive it with me. Simple enough, just like the title. Me, I’m just gonna ramble what comes to my head as the episode progresses.

Man, that OP. How awesome. It’s been so long, I totally forgot how it went besides the fact that there was food, soiled panties -never forget- and that the shrimp hand pops out at you at the end. I jumped the first few times the hand did that, but I was wiser this time around. Clever shrimp-hand, clever clever shrimp-hand. It’s thanks to this show that I really got into Yuki. Despite how her voice can get annoying at times -one of my best friends really hates her voice and makes me change when he’s in the room-, I used to think it was “cute”. Also, the whole food motif, it’s really fitting. I just survived my first year of college and good food was quite rare at college. Ramen and Easy Mac cannot compare to the food shown in the OP and I was pretty much hungry all the time. One of the things I tell many people when they ask me how my first year went was “‘Midnight Snack’ is now a meal of the day” and “Asian chili sauce goes with EVERYTHING”.

As you can tell by now, this is my first rewatch after college life and I see things a bit differently. It’s a nice feeling.

Now where Takemoto lives, despite the not so high quality condition of his house, I can understand how that can be pretty fun. You’re living with a bunch of great guys all suffering along with you and the bond is strong. My main group of friends, we share food all the time. Whenever one friend goes home, he always comes back with baklava and despite our efforts to try and ration it out over the days, half of the tray gets devoured in the first hour and the other half over the next day. So when they all share the croquettes, I feel them. “Why couldn’t he bring back steaks instead of baklava?! Oh well, I’ll take ‘em anyways.” I mean, like that guy that only has 70 yen to his name… I really learned how to appreciate money until this past year. No more reckless drives to the fast food joint a couple miles down the road. I save gas AND my health. I realized little things like that and see you really do change a bit after going to college. -I’ll never ride a homemade scooter, though.-

We can all relate to one of the characters. I have my own Morita-esque friend, we have our own Mayama, our own Ayumi and everyone’s got a little Takemoto in them. I wish we had a Hagu, but you cant have everything, huh? Also, when watching the series a second or whatever number time, you notice more stuff, dont you? Like, you notice Ayumi’s glances at Mayama and Hagu’s cuteness before you’re properly introduced to them in the show. I love that feeling.

The season this series starts off is Spring. Spring has its own feeling for me now. Especially that period during the two Final Exams weeks. The days where you aren’t in your room cramming all this last-minute stuff, you can go outside and just sit on a bench. Or even just that walk to the library can actually be pretty nice. On one hand you have no more classes so you can really enjoy your surroundings -I go to a relatively small and quaint campus so it can be nice- yet on the other hand, you still have that pang in the back of your mind thinking about an upcoming finals. I cant decide whether I really like it yet or not, though. It’s so full of chaos yet also full of peace.

And now this is just getting too long so I’ll try and cut off here. I’m still considering reblogging the rest of the series, so if you want me to go on, please tell me. I still have too much I feel I can blog about (Seeing Takemoto fall in love, the ED, etc). If anything, I’ll do at least one more post to get it all out.

But to my final statement:

That scene where Morita JUST met Hagu and runs off and SPITZ’s song Hachimitsu is playing in the background… That is so brilliantly done. Still takes my breath away and just makes me shiver watching it. But it’s not just this scene. I feel I’ll be revisiting that feeling again as I continue on with the rest of the series. I highly recommend rewatching. And if for some reason you’re still here and you haven’t seen it yet, GET ON IT.