Tag: Honey & Clover

The Maturation of Mayama: Honey & Clover and the As If Principle

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mayama: how do i become good enough? There’s this poignant scene in the Honey & Clover drama where Mayama asks demands, “How do I become an adult? What do I do become a person who can support someone else?” How does someone become a person people can rely on? Several episodes later he answers his own question: start behaving like that person. It errs on the melodramatic side, but this scene really touches upon something so quintessentially human.

When thinking about this scene recently, The As If Principle quickly came to mind. The title of this enthralling book by Richard Wiseman comes from the words of William James:

If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.

The realization doesn’t quite come to Mayama in that form, but Continue reading →

The Travails of Takemoto: Honey & Clover and Self-Actualization

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If I find my own way, how much will I find? …Will I find you?

That’s the question intensely and even agonizingly posed by Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun”, a question the anime Honey & Clover explores and answers for at least one of its characters. Does figuring out where we have to go or where we have to be us bring us closer to those we care about?

Although this anime series is almost ten years old now and is almost claustrophobically small in its world of self-absorbed college students, Honey & Clover is still quite an odyssey into personal circumstances that middle-class, creative millennials can relate to—a journey that attempts and sometimes manages to navigate the challenges of creativity, career, romance, loss, identity, belonging, friendship, family—you know, growing up.

That’s what made Honey & Clover so compelling; if you could buy into Continue reading →