Ano Hana is just how people generally refer to it, but the show’s official name is really Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai which translates to “We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day.” Yeah, I think that’s the longest anime title currently on record. Lol. It’s last episode just aired last June 24 so I guess I’d write about it while the intense emotional impact it had on me was still fresh – and I doubt it’s going to get away anytime soon. All thanks to the Zone/Scandal ending song Secret Base (10 Years After ver.) covered by our three leading ladies.

Plot: Jinta Yadomi, a reclusive high school student on the verge of dropping out, starts hallucinating his dead childhood friend Menma and considers it a mental ailment due to stress and the summer heat. Unable to ignore her any longer, he decides to humor his ‘stress’. On the first episode, they would incidentally meet their other childhood friends Anaru, Yukiatsu, Tsuruko and Poppo while walking around town. Jintan tells Menma how they have drifted apart and changed after the years, and are now indifferent with each other.

Menma then says she appeared because she wants a wish to be granted, but doesn’t have any idea what it is – only that the five of them must be present for it to be fulfilled. Jintan, remembering his childhood memories having no closure at all, decides to bring back their group together and make Menma’s wish come true.

Poppo, Anaru, Menma, Jintan, Tsuruko, Yukiatsu