No one in April Showers Bring May Flowers is perfect. That might not sound important, but it truly is, particularly as the series goes on. There's a tendency in this style of high school romance to make a few people seem larger than life, as if their outer beauty reflects an inner saintliness that makes them exquisite to look at but less than human when you get right down to it. April Showers Bring May Flowers eschews that style of storytelling. everyone is human, full of their own issues and insecurities, and the way that people see them is rarely indicative of who they are. This basic use of actual character development drives the story in a positive way, creating satisfying (or satisfying enough within the limited scope of a thirteen-episode series) character interactions and a good story.

The primary protagonists are Hana Tabata and Yosuke Ueno. Although Hana hasn't been persistently bullied like Honey Lemon Soda's Uka, countless small aggressions have made her painfully self-conscious and convinced that she's both ugly and weird. She tries to keep her head down at school, busying herself with the beautification committee, which involves tending flowerbeds and making sure that there are fresh flowers in the classroom every day. Her general philosophy seems to be that if no one pays attention to her, everyone will be happier. This is upended when Ueno discovers that she's the one changing out the flowers every morning. He's fascinated by her, especially as he watches her interact with the rest of the class and other committee members. He's also clearly attracted to her from the first, although he's not self-aware enough to realize that, and Hana will do anything to avoid thinking that he might like her.

Thrown into this situation is Sumire, the class's “perfect popular girl.” This, we discover very quickly, is an image Sumire deliberately cultivates; she believes that her physical beauty is her due and that it will give her whatever she wants, so acting like she's an angel can only make things better. Sumire, who is utterly shallow for most of the series' run, stands in contrast to Ueno, who is unaware of how others see him. His good looks aren't something he's really cognizant of; he's anxious and nervous, a boy whose looks don't define him because they aren't part of who he is. He and Sumire are total opposites, which also shows up in the way they interact with Hana: Sumire uses her to try to get to Ueno, while Ueno does his absolute best to be a good friend to her and later to convince her that he really does like her, something she doesn't believe she deserves. He's the middle ground between the girls' extremes, and it makes for a very good dynamic.

It's also one that can at times be painfully real. For me, the best example of this is Hana's mother. Mrs. Tabata is very eager for her daughter to be dating or at least crushing on boys, and she is not afraid to loudly and obnoxiously air that desire in public. When Hana and her parents go to the restaurant where Ueno works, her mother immediately clocks Ueno's interest in her daughter (and that she's also friendly with Tetsuo, another classmate who happens to be there) and immediately turns on Embarrassing Mom Mode. The boys seem unfazed (Ueno hasn't figured out his feelings yet), but for Hana, it's the social equivalent of being in the grocery store and having your mom loudly ask if you need tampons: absolutely mortifying at age sixteen. Hana can't see what viewers do, that her mother doesn't think she's too ugly to date, or that she doesn't deserve to be around popular boys. All she sees is that her mom is being embarrassing in a way that I daresay I'm not the only one to find familiar. This, too, is real and important because it highlights the depths of Hana's insecurities believably and recognizably.

The story takes care to make sure that both Ueno and Sumire get a similar level of development and that all of the characters are seen for who they are rather than the trope they represent. In the case of classmate Shimbashi, who represents the guy who thinks he's reinventing himself as “cool” but lands on “annoying” instead (we most recently saw him in A Star Brighter Than the Sun when he was named Izawa), gets a lot of screentime devoted to that. His internal monologues show that the person he's managed to convince of his fresh start is largely himself, and while there's a sense that we're meant to find his lack of self-awareness at least a little funny, the more important point that he serves is that change is deliberate and internal. Shimbashi became a guy who believes in his appeal because he wanted to, and he made changes that allowed him to feel better about himself. Sumire once again stands as his direct opposite, because every change she makes is less about how she feels about herself and is more tied to self-worth being based on outside approval. Hana and Ueno, on the other hand, are working through issues completely internally, even when we get to the confession scenes in the final episode. They can't feel comfortable with the idea of someone liking them because they aren't comfortable with themselves. Their work is internal until they feel safe enough to let someone else in.

With the deliberate pacing of the romance plot, there's plenty of room for character introspection. It often happens during the set pieces of high school romance, like the school festival (with inevitable fairy tale play) or a summer cookout, and little details help to highlight who everyone is and what they're coping with; the most interesting detail for my money is that when Hana hides in a bathroom stall, she has the toilet lid up, while when Sumire and later character Saya do the same, they're sitting on a closed lid, indicative of their awareness of and care for appearances, where Hana thinks she's so unsightly that it doesn't matter.

This sort of detail makes it very noticeable when the art and animation quality drop, which they do with relative frequency. Usually, it's just very off-model faces and stiff walking (episodes eleven and twelve are particularly bad), but there's also some inconsistencies when it comes to where Hana and Ueno sit; the class seat change is introduced, forgotten, and then brought back over three episodes. Unfortunately, Amazon's subtitles add to the visual issues. No on-screen text is translated, which is a major issue when explanations are written out or when text messages are used for communication. If you don't read Japanese, you'll just have to guess who's talking to whom and what they're saying. There are also a few cases where “/N” is visible at the end of the subtitled dialogue. It's not the most professional product I've ever seen.

Still, April Showers Bring May Flowers is a sweet show. Everyone's learning how to navigate the world and how to accept themselves, and the way characters are juxtaposed works very well. Parts are hard to take because they can feel a little too real, but it was worth the wait for this to be released with official English subtitles.