Hachimitsu to Clover
Hachimitsu to Clover AKA Honey and Clover is manga by the author Umino Chika (Sangatsu no Lion is her other famous work).
It follows a group of students in art school (quite refreshing after thousands of works set in the high school) focusing on their life outside the school. There are a few love triangles driving the drama, but for the most part it’s very relaxing and thoughtful.
My favorite part of the series is after the midpoint when the main character Takemoto is rejected by the girl he likes and feels like he just “needs to get away” (if I remember correctly). He jumps on a bike and just drives, without thinking. Many hours later he is feeling surprisingly good and decides to continue the journey.
Meanwhile a funny meeting is occuring where the school professors are examining his graduation work, a huge tower of sorts, combining various construction styles. The professors at first don’t seem to “get it” and focus on the negative parts, maybe wondering if they should pass the work at all. Professor Hanamoto who is a friend of Takemoto’s and not one of the reviewers, attempts to guide them to a more favorable review. He tells the other professors how Takemoto has gone on a trip to “search for himself”, and that the title of his graduation work is “Youth”, something he just completely made up on the spot. The other professors instantly go teary-eyed remembering their own youths and then go on to praising genius of Takemoto’s work and give it the highest marks :D
Oblivious to all this, Takemoto ends up biking all the way to Hokkaido, after a person he met gave him a proper touring bike. That person is part of a travelling building restoration company currently working on a temple. The group of workers kind of take Takemoto in after they discover him sleeping in the bushes, exhausted by his biking so far. Takemoto spends time with them and promises to return and join their group properly after completing some required occupational training.
Takemoto finally reaches the northern shore of Hokkaido a changed man, and turns to bike back to Tokyo.
I read one of the extras in the last volume of H&C. The one after the last story chapter. The author would note how she had lived with the characters she created for the past 6 years. And now when the work had come to completion, it was like a family of hers had disappeared. And she told how she could now imagine the same thing happening to every other mangaka out there. When their series ends they just stop and have to start again from nothing. That’s quite crazy.
One thing in particular that got me thinking in the manga was when Hagu got hospitalized and faced the prospect of never being able to draw again, which is her life. Such hospitalizations are common in fiction and I always seem to not think it as bad situation as the writers imply. You lie there in bed, unable to do what you love, but at the same time you are not doing anything, because you don’t “have to”. Setting aside possible issues from losing your livelihood, in my mind not having anything to do basically means you have all the time to do anything else you might like. I think a person who has dedicated her life to art is really devoted to creating things, and there are infinite ways to do that, so I don’t believe they would be unhappy very long. It’s the stance of life that allowed Hagu to do art that should also make her able to appreciate all the other possibilities. In her case losing her dominant hand might not even be such a big setback, right? I drown myself in positive thinking like this and wonder why others don’t always do the same.
Been re-reading Honey and Clover for the past few days. Great as always.
Finished re-reading Honey and Clover last night (expect for the bonus chapters at end of last volume). I think I wrote impressions in the dailies last time I was reading it, but without looking at those… I think the ending drama was very “forced”, with Hagu getting suddenly seriously injured and everybody going crazy about it. I also disliked the Morita brothers’ backstory and conclusion because there’s so little indication of any of it before the last volumes. Like the connection between Peter Lucas and the “big bad company” seemed completely arbitrary, added for the purpose of making Morita (Shinobu)’s career with movies meaningful (I did like the movie thing around middle of the series). Takemoto’s biking journey was great as before, but I thought his character transforms a bit too much as a result of it, and in the end he almost seems like Morita (especially with calm expressions). Yamada is so whiny that I felt genuinely bad for Nomiya, whom I liked quite a bit. Nomiya is cool with his sadisticly forceful approach. Perhaps most I liked Mayama and Rika, calm and philosophical personalities like them are very interesting to me.
