Well, your certainly in the vast, vast minority of people i.e. people who don’t like this series.

“I would have loved to see that reflected in Honey and Clover, but I didn’t.”

“like they actually have serious psychological problems that aren’t explained in a way that makes any sense”

Again, you didn’t even watch the series so how could you possibly make such a statement?

Psychological problems make them unintersting?

The characters are boring you say? maybe. Are most people in real life boring? yes most times. Are you yourself and the founders of this blog boring? I dare say yes…

“I don’t know about you, but the only college kids I know who would actually utter a statement like that in seriousness live on a different plane of reality and have no idea how relationships actually work.”

Hmmm…okay. Just take a breath and really think about what you just said. Anime characters not thinking/talking/acting like characters in real life…..how absurd!!! Honey and Clover is more realistic than most of your psychological seinen series but is by no means 100% true to life.

I honestly cannot comprehend this post. You openly state that all three founders have/ are completing university degrees, yet this post is so unreasonable, almost juvenile in it’s logic that this blog simply loses credibility.

Now, I haven’t read any of the Honey and Clover manga, so my opinions are based entirely on the beginning of the anime. And during those five episodes or so, I didn’t find a single character interesting or relatable in any way. The main guy’s (can’t remember his name, sorry) character development was pretty much non-existant — it seemed like the mangaka was trying to write a character who was as ordinary as possible. I don’t know if this was an attempt to make him relatable to the largest number of people or something, but I found him really boring. Hagu is creepy as hell with the lolita thing she has going — adult women finally have a genre that’s supposed to cater to their perspective, and this creepy woman-child is the best the mangaka could come up with? And the men in this show are sexually attracted to her? Ew. I didn’t realize the other girl was supposed to be a main character until episode 5 or so, which just goes to show how much of an impression she left. And that weird, cartoonish guy with the mysterious backstory? I guess I kind of wondered what his deal was, in a vague, maybe-someday-I’ll-look-up-the-end-on-wikipedia kind of way, but I didn’t find his personality very compelling. My sister is a student at an art college, and all of her friends are creative, interesting people. Many of them have pretty extreme personalities, and all of them hold really strong opinions about a lot of things. The characters in Honey and Clover either seem so conventional that they’re totally uninteresting, or like they actually have serious psychological problems that aren’t explained in a way that makes any sense. I can hardly believe them as people, let alone creative, talented people.

I know my opinions and Lianne’s aren’t based on that much of the story, but we both saw so little to like in the beginning, and have heard from sources we trust that the rest of the series has the same problems we saw initially, that we had no desire to see more. It’s a storyteller’s responsibility to introduce his or her characters in a way that gives the audience something concrete to hold on to, some way to understand what kind of people they are. Honey and Clover hardly gave us anything, and for that we have no qualms about giving it harsh reviews.

Well, it’s alright to hate it, but I just feel a bit alarmed when you said that this is just an ‘initial reaction’, even when such strong decisive opinions are made. I think, to be fair, using such words like “garbage” and “cliches/crappiness” to describe the whole series, only after reading the first two volumes and watching 5 episodes is a bit too strong. Oh yea, the claymation intro is supposed to be representative of the type of food that Yamada and Hagu cooks. That’s later on, and you’d have to watch more to find out right?

Well that’s just my 2 cents. You can take or leave it, but if you’re willing, I hope you can give it another chance.