Episodes: 26 Second Season?: No. The series is completely finished. Plot Summary: Hanasaku Iroha centers around Ohana Matsumae, a 16-year-old teenager living in Tokyo, who is left in the care of her estranged grandmother, following her mother's elopement with her boyfriend. Ohana arrives at her grandmother's country estate to realize that her grandmother is the owner of a Taishō period hot spring inn called Kissuisō. She begins working at Kissuisō, at her grandmother's request, but finds herself at odds with many employees and customers at the inn. Initially feeling discouraged, she decides to use her circumstances as an opportunity to change herself for the better and to make amends with her deteriorating relationship with the Kissuisō's staff for a more prominent future. My thoughts: Wow. This series started in the Spring Line up and I have to say has been one of my definite favourites of the 2011 line up overall. Every episode felt special and warm and ranged from leaving me laughing, to crying or just general happiness. The anime graphical style is absolutely beautiful and has in fact won several awards for having one of the best art works of all time in any anime ever too. Every character in the story is so fleshed out that as you go on in the series, you start to feel such a connection and before you know it, you become completely sucked into each character's own circumstances and feelings to the extent that you are rooting for them in your own special way. The story itself is really heart warming and special too that it just keeps you on the edge of your seats in so many ways. There have been a lot of strong anime released this year, but this one is by far one of the strongest of them all so far in my opinion. I definitely recommend that people watch this when you get a chance. It might not be everyones cup of tea admittedly, but I give my personal guarantee as an Otaku that this anime is something special. ~ But yeah. Anyone else watch this anime? Any thoughts etc? (Please remember to spoiler tag things if you're gonna talk about story elements, so as not to ruin things for people who may wish to watch it but haven't yet. Thanks. XD)
