Little Women
Anyone who, like me, grew up in a small town, or worse, in the countryside, knows the single, unshakable urge: To get away at the first faint excuse. To vanish into the city, among the tall buildings, the loud parties, the cheap drugs. Or something like that.
The point is: gone, gone, gone. Anything but the yokel left behind. And then, after managing it at last, surviving five, ten, perhaps twenty years in the tangle of the metropolis, のんのんびより drifts across my path and drags me backward. Back into a green and lucid place, where things seem better, truer, closer. A slower world that takes my hand and smiles, as if it has been waiting.
The story itself is as uneventful as staring into a still pond. Hotaru, a fifth grader, moves from Tokyo to the sleepy hamlet of Asahigaoka in the far greens of Japan’s countryside because of her father’s work. In the local and mostly empty school, she meets a likeable group of even more likeable girls, each entirely unlike the others. That is all there is to see.
In のんのんびより there are no grand villains, no exploding tentacles, no ominous magic. Only the shy Hotaru, the undersized Komari, the mischievous Natsumi, and the tiny Renge, who speaks as if she suffered a small stroke every few seconds. Renge won me over almost immediately.
Every episode is heartbreakingly calm, unhurried, and idyllic. In truth, Atto’s series is a harmonious refuge for anyone worn thin by life, by work, by love. Nothing feels more vital than to stay there forever, to spend the year in that village where Kaede is known simply as Candy Store, where Kazuho keeps nodding off, where Suguru rarely has anything to say.
It’s so beautiful there that I want to scream and weep at the same time. I already knew I would treasure のんのんびより the moment I felt its pace. Just as I had once fallen for serene series like Jo’s Boys, Anne of Green Gables, and Dog of Flanders. It’s a quiet paradise where every day is good, no matter what disaster might be raging beyond its borders.