Flower and Asura

 Flower and Asura (花は咲く、修羅の如く) is a 12 episode coming of age anime based on the manga of the same name by Takeda Ayano.  The series originally aired during the Winter of 2025.

     Haruyama Hana is going to be starting high school at Sumomogaoka High, away from the isolated island she had grown up on.  After watching a poem recital in her youth, she has been enamored by the act of public story telling.  Inspired by the performance, she began to hold regular readings for young children in town.  An older girl from school witnesses this one day and invites Hana to join the Broadcast Club.  Hana declines at first due to relying on someone to ferry her back and forth each day with their boat.  Unwilling to give up, Usurai Mizuki, the senior, does some behind the scenes work and negotiates for Hana to be able to stay after school for the clubs activities.  Accepting the possibility that her desires won't burden those around here, Hana joins the club as one of four freshmen members.

     Hana suddenly learns more about the club than she expected during her first days, as the other new members have either participated in similar clubs in middle school or have a greater understanding of the topic.  Everyone is driven for a different reason, some are more hungry than the others.  But in the end they are there to enjoy themselves.  Hana is constantly being pressured by her peers to conform to their ideals on how to approach the clubs activities, but Mizuki gently pushes her along, sometimes forcing her to grow out of her shell.

    This was a nice change of pace from a lot of the recent titles out there.  It was through and through a coming of age story that didn't have ulterior motives or distractions...until the last arc unfortunately.  I'm a bit of a broadcast nerd, having working professionally in the media industry for over 25 years now as well as pursuing music and video production on the side for just as long, if not longer.  In my first year of middle school I joined an after school club similar to this, a forensics club, so I had a bit of an interest in the subject matter with this series.  However...the last arc, as eluded to, kind of spun the reality of the story into something a bit more fanciful as the group of plucky teenagers face off against a Showa era matriarch.  It felt a bit forced and they might have actually excluded that part to focus more on the NHK cup they had been focused on the entire show...but I also don't know how much of that was shown in the manga.  It was an odd direction regardless.

    Aside from what I consider a blunder in the story at the end, the show over all wasn't bad.  The characters were have rather blatant personalities.  At times, during an important recitation, the viewers are transported to a visual representation of the delivery which can be fun at times and awkward at others, leaving a rather uneven tone to the story in general.  For all the criticism I have for it, its generally not a bad anime, I just would have enjoyed it more with a few alterations.  I'm not sure if I will ever re-watch it or look for the manga, but I won't shy away from suggesting it to others who may be the right audience.  In a land full of similar stories again and again and again, its a nice change of pace.  It tells a straightforward and rather mundane story and we grow with Hana.  It's no Showa Genroku Raguko Shinju however...that is an amazing piece of literature about story telling.

The series was simulcast on HiDive.