Character · Anohana
Meiko Honma
A girl who died as a child turns up years later on a shut-in's futon, cheerful, solid enough to eat, and asking for a favour.
In Otakana the clue reads: Childhood friend who appears years after dying
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Anohana
- Letters
- 5 · Hard
Meiko Honma drowned when the six friends who called themselves the Super Peace Busters were still small enough to share a secret base in the woods. The group came apart that afternoon and stayed apart. Years later Jinta Yadomi has stopped going to school, and Menma is sitting next to him in summer clothes, older than she was, asking him to grant a wish she cannot remember making.
Nobody else can see her, which makes Jinta look worse than he already did. His attempts to work out the wish drag the other five back into the same room, and each of them turns out to have spent years quietly blaming themselves or one another. The show is far more interested in what the living did with their guilt than in what the ghost wants.
A-1 Pictures made eleven episodes in 2011, with Tatsuyuki Nagai directing and Mari Okada writing. It is short, it is unembarrassed about crying, and the last episode is famous for reducing rooms full of people to silence. Secret Base, the 2001 pop song used as the ending theme, was rerecorded by three of the cast and became the sound of the show for a whole generation of viewers.
Spelling MENMA
MENMA is five letters with an M at each end and nothing awkward in between. The nickname is squeezed out of Meiko Honma, and it is also a real ramen topping: menma, the fermented bamboo shoots that sit on top of the bowl. Two M's, one N, and the usual slip is typing MEMNA when you are moving fast.