Of the Spring 2011 shows that I’ve seen so far, this is my favorite. However when I tell you what it is about, you may well feel skeptical. Let me try to explain.

The heroine is a 16-year-old girl named Ohana (Kanae Itou) who lives in Tokyo with her mother who is some sort of writer. The mother is rather irresponsible. In fact no sooner do we meet her than she runs off to Hokkaido to be with her boyfriend and eat crab. She sends Ohana to live with her grandmother who runs an inn in a rural hot springs resort.

The grandmother (Tamie Kubota) is a really hard case who is not glad to see Ohana at all. She has disowned her daughter and wants nothing to do with her granddaughter, but she’s willing to let Ohana live at the inn if she works to earn her keep.

There are two waitresses at the inn who are Ohana’s age, but neither one seems to be promising friend material. Nako (Aki Toyosaki) is so shy that she barely speaks, while Minko (Chiaki Omigawa) is unreasonably hostile and keeps telling Ohana to drop dead. But Ohana is brave and optimistic and determined to make things work out.

So far this sounds like your standard plucky-orphan-girl-has-to-go-live-with-mean-grumpy-people-but-she-manages-to-win-them-over-and-brighten-their-lives story. (This trope is at least as popular in Japan as in the West. In fact any story of this sort that you care to name has probably already been made into an anime.) This one seems special though.

There are two kinds of shows that I consider great. One kind breaks new ground with something I’ve never seen before. The other kind tells a conventional story but does it very very well. Hanasaku Iroha is in the latter category, at least so far.

For one thing the animation is really good. For another, the story has a strange offbeat sensibility. (The first storyline involves a perverted novelist. Would Heidi help a perverted novelist? I don’t think such things existed in her universe.)

Finally, there is something extra appealing about the character of Ohana. It’s not just that she’s naive but just plucky and upbeat. That goes with the job description. She’s also smart enough to realize that her situation is not just unfair but rather weird, but flexible enough to play along. Deep down there’s an edgy aspect to her personality that keeps her from becoming cloying.