一枚 【ひとひら】 (n) petal; flake
Hitohira, the best little show you didn’t watch spring season, is about stage acting.
But not just ANY stage acting. Stage acting with incredibly shy girls who get stage fright introducting themselves to the class. Meet Asai Mugi, alias Mugi-Choco, our wonderfully shy lead girl:
Poor Mugi-Choco can barely manage to whisper 90% of the time, she’s so shy. And embarrassed. She’s always down on herself, she doesn’t have a lot of friends (except for one, Touyama Kayo, who has stuck by her since the early days of junior high school), and she doesn’t really want to join any clubs in high school. She does have one powerful asset, though: when she’s upset enough to overcome her shyness, her voice is powerful.
Enter Ichinose Nono:
She’s the president of the Drama Club Drama Research Society. She used to be part of the Drama Club, but isn’t anymore. Due to a difference of opinion between Nono and Sakaki Mirei, the Drama Club President, she has lamentably left the school’s very popular Drama Club, dragged two hapless, unsuspecting friends away from the Drama Club, and formed her own club, the Drama Research Society.
And now, due to her powerful voice, she’s got her eyes set on Mugi to help them win the contest between the Drama Club and the Drama Research Society–two clubs enter, one club leaves. So, she storms into Mugi’s classroom and demands that she join her club. This leads to that, and Mugi is left with no choice but to sign on.
Cue yuri undertones.
Hitohira is a high school anime, yes; that’s where all the similarities with other shows end. There’s some light humor, but the show is primarily a drama. And it’s a good drama, too; the entire main cast is highly likable, and there are some truly powerful moments. I find myself liking it like a good yuri show, even though I wouldn’t call this outright yuri; it has the aforementioned undertones, but like shows such as Revolutionary Girl Utena and Simoun, which are yuri shows, it creates interesting characters and creates interesting drama between these interesting characters. The show is clearly seinen judging by the designs, but it functions almost like a blend of seinen with shoujo.
I really liked this show; for one, I can identify with Mugi-Choco. She’s basically an exaggerated version of me, but in cute anime girl form. Maybe that contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the anime, but the technical merits of the series put it head and shoulders above a lot of other shows released this year. Admittedly, this year poses a tough challenge towards selecting what the “Show of the Year” will be for a lot of people (not me; I never do those kinds of things anyway), but for anyone wanting a schoolhouse drama about, well, drama, this is sure to take top marks. Give it an episode or two. You might be surprised.
by OGT
Towards our Memories 