When I Was Watching AnoHana and Couldn’t Help but Bawled.

Friendship: a very curious creature borne from human interactions. It’s different from other types of relationships be it sexually-attracted relationship or filial relationship, because the driving force behind this one we call friendship is very much less superficial and less evolutionary. Consider this; we fall in love ostensibly because we need to find a mate to produce offspring and we love our family mainly because they are our source of dependence and bonding, either physically or emotionally. But we have no physical need for friends, really. But we do need them for something more profound, more intrinsic. We need them just because we relate to them. That is why camaraderie is something that is rather special and is only confined to us humans. You don’t see less-complex animals like starfish or snails making friends in your garden do you?

Anyway I’m digressing. I just actually finished watching this one particular anime series called Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day) which strongly affected me, in a way. In all honesty I cried during its last episode (it has only 11 episodes but I gotta juggle between my studies and my entertainment so basically it took me 2 weeks to finish this anime). Thank goodness tonight my room-mate is not in the room so I actually don’t seem like a sob tearing up to a cartoon in front of him, and that would have been so awkward.

Again, I’m digressing. This anime actually is the only anime I watched that so far made me bawl, next after the classic film A Walk To Remember, so you guys could now see the pattern of the perfect ingredient to make me weep my manly tears.

Death, and friendship.

It is not just simply death. It is not just simply friendship. It is the fact that the one that dies go and take away with them a flicker of happiness that has been dancing in the very vitreous humor of those who love him/her, replacing at its place, pain and longing. It is the fact that there is a whole new journey that needs to be travelled by those who are left behind; a journey of getting by without, a road of making do without. And that is exactly the right ingredient with which you can use to create a very powerful, moving storyline. Because everyone loses someone they love. Almost everyone who is living has tasted the after-taste of death. It is like washing dishes with laundry detergents. It is too strong a detergent for dish washing purposes, that you could almost taste that soapy, bitter taste lingering on the spoon or the plate you just washed. It’s relatable, it’s easily emphatised.

I’m straying away.

Another beautiful aspect of this plot line is how this anime highlights the pure, innocent friendship we all have once at least, experienced at some point in our life. That relationship, that camaraderie we need not fulfil out of peer pressure or other shallow, superficial advantages. Yes I’m talking about childhood friendship.

I remember something back in my childhood that was almost akin to the Super Peace Busters (the name of the group these little kids in the anime called themselves). It was ‘Kelab Penyiasat Muda’ (Malay for Young Detectives Club). Composed of 5 too-young-and-too-childish little ‘adults’, Yan (this is what I was called back then), Ani, Fatin, Syuk, and Naz, we moved ahead in our own little ambitious bubble of investigating everything and anything that seem odd in our little neighbourhood in Seremban. I recalled those 5pm detective meeting at our own exclusive hideout that we called ‘rumah pokok’ (Malay for tree house) which is a rather deceiving name because it wasn’t actually a tree house. It was only a little ‘hut’ located under a huge, shady mango tree, that’s all. That was where we did our stuff, that was where we became friends, that was where we looked at the world with our rather green-tinted glasses. I recalled one time when there was a dead corpse that was found inside an abandoned house which happened to be directly in front of our ‘rumah pokok’! Imagine that! Police was called to check it out, the whole neighbourhood erupted in an explosion that is close to a melange of controversy, mystery and suspicion. Some said it was a murder, some said it was an unfortunate death of a drug-addled homeless who happened to hide out inside that abandoned house before OD-ing himself. What really struck me was that was quite a memorable moment in our lives, because we really felt that finally there is someone dead for us to investigate! Talk about being a morbid bunch of kids! (Blame Detective Conan manga, which was really a trigger because all of us loved that manga back then)

I remembered writing down pamphlets and photocopying them to be distributed around the neighbourhood, requesting for any information regarding the ‘murder’ of the poor man. (lol) We even went as far as to muck around the abandoned house for clues even though we all were a little bit wary of the ‘supposedly haunted status’ of the house (back then, any house that is abandoned and had had the misfortune to bear a dead body would be considered as haunted by us, you know, kids). I still remember one fine, dry and hot afternoon, when the majority of the adults in our neighbourhood was having a siesta and it was very quiet, we again scoured the perimeters of the old abandoned house for any clues but someone (read: me) had a lighter, and accidentally lighted a dry stalk of tall grass nearby. I should tell you that the grass at that moment were cut and left to rot and dry in the hot sun so you can imagine what happened when a straw of dry grass caught fire. It actually spread like a wild fire, literally. We managed to put it out despite being totally nerve-wrecked. Yes, we were all grounded afterwards for being 1) too nosy and 2) almost destroyed a property.

In retrospect, those were a very formative and of course, foolish, foolhardy and feeble-minded times of our lives. Now everyone has gone off on our own directions, Fatin is still studying at a local university, Ani I heard already gotten her first job, Naz I heard is now engaged, Syuk (he is actually my little brother) is now also working to earn his own money after deciding to stop studying, and me, here, far in Australia, the land down under, studying to death just so that I could follow my dream that is to become a geneticist. Everyone is off following what they think is their best path to lead their lives. Everyone is no longer in touch with each other, and although I must say Ano Hana plot is very much sadder and more tragic than mine, I can’t help but cry because childhood friends were impossible to replace. By being your childhood friend, no matter who they are to you right now, either an enemy, or just another stranger, they have actually acquired and reigned a perpetual corner in your heart; a special room in your memories.

They made you, you.