ANOHANA: HOW DID MENMA DIE?
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day is an anime about six childhood friends who reunite after years apart following the tragic death of Menma, one of the group’s members. The series follows the characters’ journey as they deal with grief, regret and the need for forgiveness. However, the series never fully explains how Menma died. In this article, we’ll look at the clues the series gives us to understand the meaning behind Menma’s death and the impact it has on the story.
This accident has a huge impact on every character in the series, especially Jinta. He feels responsible for her death because of the harsh words he said just before the accident.
Menma’s death also has a significant impact on the story, since it serves as a catalyst for the characters to face their emotions and the guilt tied to her death. The series shows how losing a loved one can deeply affect people and how hard it is to overcome that pain. It also highlights the importance of forgiving yourself and others for past mistakes.
But how did she actually die?
The series only shows her shoe in the river, pointing to the place of the accident, but we can draw two hypotheses about what might have happened.
The first, and the clearest, is that while running after Jinta, she tripped, rolled down to the river and was seriously hurt. As I said, the only scene we get throughout the episodes is her little shoe floating at the river’s edge.
There’s also a scene in the second-to-last episode that reinforces this, but we’ll come back to it.
The second is that in several scenes across the episodes, we see Menma leaning over and hanging off things. In some moments this triggers memories in Jinta, and in the second-to-last episode I mentioned, there’s a very specific scene where she’s on a bridge at night, sees something in the river and leans over to look.
This suggests that when she went after Jinta, she crossed this bridge and something made her go to the edge to look. Since she liked hanging off things and didn’t see the danger, she ended up losing her balance and falling into the river.
Right after that scene, we see Jinta going after her and spotting Menma down below, at the river’s edge, waving at him. There he has another memory trigger, a flash of her younger self and of the little shoe in the river, which reinforces this hypothesis and, at the same time, the idea that she rolled down to the river: when he goes running down to her, he ends up falling and rolling to the river’s edge.
Luckily he wasn’t badly hurt, and Menma threw herself on top of him, desperate, begging him not to die.
So there are two hypotheses reinforced by these scenes, but we can’t be sure what really happened. It remains a matter of interpretation.
So, which of the two do you think is more likely? Or do you have another theory? If so, leave it in the comments. Take care!
Fact Sheet
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Year: 2011.
Director: Tatsuyuki Nagai.
Written by: Mari Okada.
Episodes: 11.
Country: Japan.
Genre: Drama, Supernatural.
About the Author
Leandro Vieira da Silva (Rio de Janeiro, June 11, 1986), also known as LeandroVSilva, is a Brazilian writer, author of the Enerkry series among others. In 2018 he released his first book, Os Irmãos do Gelo, the first book in the Enerkry series.
Founder of LeandroVSilva STUDIO, in 2022 he left his stable job of many years to found his own company, dedicate himself to his career and help other authors in their literary and business journeys.
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