Initially it was a bit of a drag to watch this show because of its slow pacing as well as it’s kind of weak starting in terms of characterization as well as its ‘gimmick’ if you can call it that. The show tried really hard to entice the audience with that ‘weird girl’ Urabe who transferred to the school in the first episode, and it kind of put me off when I completed the first episode. Along with that it pushed the drool part of the show pretty hard to be the main hook of the series, and all of it just felt pretty forced. Despite this, I grew to enjoy the series a little bit, as I do with shojou-type shows since I got to see the progress of the couple step further with each episode. They did more with the drool thing, which was interesting and when they introduced the scissor panties that was kind of weird but other than that the characterization of the two main characters was fine as a whole. Positively, Tsubaki was very apologetic, despite being a kind of a pervert. Well, that’s not that true, he wasn’t a pervert, I guess he was just a high school boy, so I understand that inclusion. Anyways, his constant apologies whenever he thought that he went over the line gave his character a kind of realness to him. Though sometimes he was a bit too awkward to believe, like whenever he was going to do things on impulse, but yeah I think it balances out.
On the other hand though, Urabe’s continued ‘mystery’ status continued and with each episode the audience found out a little more about her. though in my opinion the show relied too heavily in the early parts of the show to convey her character.
Aspects of the show that I also enjoyed were the simplistic art style - reminiscent of older styles of anime, which is simple but works in the favour of the simplistic plot and premise of the show. The music was pretty good as well, although I felt like they used the same track for the same emotions a lot, which I noticed but it didn’t affect my watching experience too much. The animation itself was alright, since the art style was so simple and the only time that they had to showcase it was when Urabe did her scissor panties trick.
The side characters were a bit weird, mainly that yuri friend character that always was being intrusive to Urabe and kind of invading her privacy though she did give her lunch and whatever. I just thought that most of her purpose in the series was to drive plot along with Urabe and Tsubaki, being the catalyst for both drama and the focus of the episode. Other than that, she was an alright character.
The conflict character was a bit weird though, since Tsubaki acted so on impulse so that the plot had somewhere to go. I understand why, but yeah, I’m not sure about its development.
Overall, the anime was decent. I didn’t necessarily love it, but I think it’s worth a 5/10 because of how hard it is to convey a relationship in the anime medium, as well as do it uniquely. This anime probably had some potential to be a little better in execution, especially with the nuances of the characterization though it did a fine job regardless.
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