You know what single people really need? An entire short anime series featuring cutesy couples doing cute couple things together. Honobono Log is a short (2-3 minutes) 10 episode anime series. The series is one of few based off an art book, by Naka Fukamachi, which deals with the everyday life of couples and families. As a single girl, watching this show was like becoming a flagellant. I was surprised I got through the entire thing, everything was just so adorable, I almost wanted to download tinder or something and get a boyfriend.

The ‘Logs’

Each episode is a stand alone look into the life of a few characters. While the over arching theme of the show is ‘love’ and ‘relationships’, this is interpreted in so many different ways. In one episode, there’s the generic a couple on a date, while in another there’s a girl crying over an unrequited love and her friend comes to comfort her. I really enjoyed the variety of episodes shown – it actually made it exciting to see what the creators would come up with next.

I know a lot of people weren’t too impressed with the art style. It was very jagged and almost puppet like. But I actually really liked it. I felt like I was reading a webtoon, and I felt it added to the soft feel of the series. The music was also really great, and added an extra dimension to the series.

My main criticism with the show is that it was incredibly heteronormative. I would have really liked to see families and couples that weren’t just the usual binary dynamic of ‘boy’ and ‘girl’. I felt this anime had a really great opportunity to create a discussion on love and relationships while also including lots of different communities. It was just really disappointing they didn’t take up this chance.

Characters

Overall, with episodes only being about 2-3 minutes long, you couldn’t really get a strong feel of the characters. In saying that, audiences were able to get a brief look into the relationship dynamics between individuals. One of my favourite episodes was one where a girl was annoyed that her boyfriend ate her pudding and was trying to get him to go out and buy her another one.

Overall I really did enjoy the series. As with most short anime, it’s a really good to watch if you have 5-10 minutes spare and you want to watch something to take your mind off things. As I mentioned before, the series should have been more inclusive of LGBTTQQIAAP and other communities.  3/5

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