Apparently Utena director Kunihiko Ikuhara did the OP sequence for this show. I’d never have guessed.

The first episode of Aoi Hana was the first show of the new season to hit Crunchyroll, and due to the limited effort in watching it that results from that, I figured I’d at least give it a look. To be honest, though, I was going into it with the impression that it wasn’t going to be “my thing”.

Which is pretty much the impression that I had going out of the episode. This isn’t really to say it’s bad – it’s entirely competent in pretty much every degree, with relatively nice animation that reminds me a little of Honey and Clover aesthetically (which probably shouldn’t be a surprising given that staff involved) and relatively interesting characters and the like.

The probably is that it’s all merely competent – whilst there’s nothing spectacularly bad about the show, there’s absolutely nothing in there the manages to inspire any real kind of interest for me. It displays none of the amazing directorial flare of Honey and Clover, nor it’s humour. The animation is good, but not spectacularly so. The characters are interesting, but they are still largely genre archetypes. Perhaps worst, the show does absolutely nothing to take advantage of the fact that it’s animation, which puts it right in the firing line of live action dramas, and it honestly doesn’t come out all that well from the comparison.

I guess there’s always the whole lesbian thing, but really, if I want lesbians, I can just watch Saki – at least there I get insane special-effects Mah-Jong and Taco-madness.

Ultimately, Aoi Hana seems like it’s just good enough to have become kind of boring. Unless you really like lesbians. Which it seems like much of anime fandom does, so I guess this’ll do all right.

If only Ikuhara had directed the whole show. We’d probably have had swordfights. And magical carwashes that turn people into cars. That’d have been sooo awesome.

(I really need to re-watch Utena one of these days…)