Of Swords and Parasols

Hanasaku Iroha is a 2011 anime about Ohana, a teenager who lives in Tokyo who is sent to the country to live with her estranged grandmother after her mother has to go on the run with her boyfriend to escape debt collectors. Given that every other anime/manga/jdrama I've encountered that has parents going on the run to escape debt collectors has included the parents leaving the kid where they are to fend for themselves, i got confused for a few moments about why I was thinking that her mother was being more responsible than expected.

When she gets to her grandmother's home, she learns that her grandmother actually owns and runs a traditional Japanese inn, and that rather than taking Ohana is out of charity, she expects Ohana to work for her keep as a maid. Ohana quickly befriends Nako, another maid her age who appears to be shy, but her more trouble with Minko, an apprentice chef who Ohana crosses before they even meet by mistaking Minko's herbs for weeds. Minko takes her status as the series's tsundere character very very seriously, and keeps a notebook which she uses to come up with insults and how to make them sound natural, and tends to stay up until the wee hours of morning to work in it. Another friend she quickly makes is Yuina, the heiress to a rival inn who likes to go around imitating various accents. Most series would make Yuina be a rival and have her and Ohana (and/or Nako and/or Minko) always competing against each other, but Yuina's reaction to Ohana is pretty much "We are in the same class and have battleax grandmas who run inns. WE ARE BFF."

Is a much more relaxing ,low key series than any of the other anime I've watched recently, which is a nice change. Instead of going for "city girl has to get used to the country" laughs, the series instead focuses on Ohana learning about working in a traditional inn and her friendships with Nako, Minko and Yuina, as well as her relationships with her mother and grandmother, neither of whom are really who they appear to be at first, and it's largely gentle and relaxing, though there's some fanservice that I found aggravating. The worst of it is in episode three, though, so at least they got it out of the way fast.

The series is by P.A. Works, who also did Tari Tari and Red Data Girl, and so the animation is unsurprisingly gorgeous, especially the scenery. OTOH, P.A. Works seems to use variations of certain basic designs with bits of tweaking for their characters, and so I kept getting distracted thinking that the girls looked a lot like the girls in those two series. or rather, the reverse, since Hanasaku Iroha came first. Also, not an issue for anyone else, but I started this right after finishing Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing, and most of the voice actresses for the younger female characters also had major roles in that, and I spent the first few episodes going "That is not the personality that belongs with that voice..." I know the VA pool is comparatively small, I just haven't watched 2 anime back-to-back before that shared so much of the main cast.

There's also a movie, but I haven't watched it yet.