Honey & Clover: Umino's Divide

WARNING - SPOILERS

The "Honey and Clover" (HC) anime contains numerous direct and indirect references to "Maison Ikkoku" (MI). These references can inform the reader about Umino's overall approach to and structure of the HC story.

Rumiko Takahashi's MI was slice-of-life romance comedy manga that became the basis for a 96 episode TV anime. The main character Yuusaku Godai (first name, family name) starts out as a loser ronin who falls for the new manager at the boarding house that he lives in. The manager Kyoko Otonashi turns out to a be a widow. There complex love story spans seven years of painful misunderstandings, mishaps, and many moving moments.

Here are the similarities that jumped out at me:

• Mayama, Takemoto, and Morita live in a boarding house, which is an anachronism in Japan.
• Mayama falls for the widowed Rika who cannot forget her first husband. In MI, Godai and his rival both struggle against the spectre of Kyoko's first husband. Also, Mayama is younger than Rika as Godai is younger than Kyoko. In anime and manga, the older woman rarely wins out.
• Both widows are encouraged by an older man to live life rather waiting to die (which is the meaning for the japanese word for widow). Here are mugshots of these gentlemen.

• Rika's dog is named "Shiro", which is also the original name for Kyoko's dog. Kyoko's dog eventually receives her husband's name, including the -san.
• Arguably, Ayu's internal conflict is similar to Kyoko's. Kyoko genuinely grew to like Godai, but thought that falling in love with Godai would render her earlier love for her husband Souichiro as false.
• Takemoto's disastrous job search takes a turn for the worse when the company that hires him goes bust. Ditto for Godai.
  

HC was strongly influenced by MI. More importantly, a half of HC was influenced by MI. HC divides its cast into two major romantic groups:

1. Hagu, Takemoto, Morita, and later Hanamoto-sensei
2. Mayama, Rika, Ayu, Nomiya

Besides the setting of the boarding house, most of the MI references apply to the second group. During the first series of HC, Takemoto's doubts and insecurities are examined. He undertakes the journey of self discovery to find the source of the sound of emptiness. The pivotal search for the four leaf clover is narrated from his point of view. His monologues are nuanced with human frailty.

Hagu is afflicted by a paralyzing shyness. She is continually tortured by Morita. From the standpoint of society, her art is her only redeeming quality; she would be considered socially inept and a burden on Hanamoto-sensei.

Contrast these flawed creations with the three other core characters. Ayu's conflict is her inability to find true love in spite her beauty and other good points. Mayama is solid, dependable, and charismatic. Even his obsessive power, his major weakness, nets him the object of his affections in the end. Morita's bizarre behavior is brazen and does not serve as a crutch to him as it does to Hagu. His manic energy and mysterious movements seem strong enough to overcome any obstacle. While Ayu, Mayama, and Morita have their flaws, their identifying characteristics are strengths. Umino created these characters to be looked up to and admired.

The story seems to be told on two different levels, there is an elevated level that Ayu's and Mayama's story takes. Morita also shares a similar level with his quest to regain his family's legacy. Takemoto's doubts are less clear, muddy, and transpire on a more earthly level, and Hagu's life shares the same mundane aspect as she cries over Ayu's heavenly body.

Umino also attended an art college and drew HC from her own experiences. Even after HC garnered attention, the author preferred to remain anonymous and camera shy. She shares some of the same quirks as Hagu. The intimacy invested in Takemoto's monologues implied that he is also based off the author's personal experiences.

I believe that the others were based off of friends and classmates she new. Matt Ruff's "Fool on the Hill" draws a cast from his college days at Cornell University and elevates his acquaintances to heroic stature. In summary, I believe that Umino drew inspiration from MI for more distant half of "Honey and Clover", while her more intimate characters follow a less clean-cut, but more personal plot.

Please feel free to air your corrections, disagreements, and expansions. Thanks for reading