Kaoru Hana is a strong teen romantic drama that covers a surprisingly wide range of topics with both sincerity and flair. Despite being quite on the nose with its themes and character work, it still occasionally finds itself overindulging in the melodrama much of the genre is susceptible to. To the show’s credit, it does work to prevent it from becoming over the top with well employed humour and awkwardness to help cut through the heavy drama after the fact. While largely successful in balancing its tone while maintaining the earnestness of its character responses, there is a sense of over-indulgence in some of its dramatic confrontations. To the point that these few instances can feel self-aggrandising and chafe against the down to earth yet sanguine way the rest of the show examines the experience of being a teenager. But this is also indicative of how strongly Kaoru Hana tackles its themes beyond being a teenager in love; not only addressing family and friendship but also examining societal issues like the difference in class between the Chidori and Kikyo students. This avoids the pitfall much of the genre suffers from in singularly focusing on only the romantic relationship at the expense of all else, contributing greatly to Kaoru Hana’s characters and their lives feeling remarkably well realised. Yet this abundance of themes and fairly expansive supporting cast leaves the show feeling like it resorts to paying off some of its character beats too soon. Despite the Kaoru Hana demonstrating a great deal of efficiency in its character development, and the pacing of its core story around Rintaro and Kaoruko’s relationship being well executed, the extent it wants to develop its supporting cast and the rate it occurs make it difficult to adequately space out all its major emotional moments. For all its exceptional ancillary themes, Kaoru Hana is still ultimately a teen drama, which while realising its story and characters with an exceptional amount of polish, still finds itself limited or even relishing in many of the genre’s conventions.

Although not necessarily breaking new ground in terms of its storytelling or relationship dynamics, Kaoru Hana still demonstrates an incredibly high level of polish. Not only do the story’s leads, Rintaro and Kaoruko, feel like genuine and fully realised characters, this extends to much of the secondary cast as well. The show employs the expected means of developing character depth, like showing different facets of their characters and allowing them to surprise the audience with how they go against the first impressions they make. While this might sound simple in concept, and perhaps even somewhat trite, it is by no means easy to carry out in an actual story and Kaoru Hana must be given credit for executing this well. However, this method of development often requires an extend amount of time to feel effective, with the little hints it gives to the contradictions in the character's beliefs or cracks in the mask they put on in front of others taking time to convincingly unravel. This is not much of an issue Rintaro whose perspective the show follows closely, and is generally being effectively employed to steadily build up the arc of supporting characters that have yet to come into the spotlight like Natsusawa. But there is also a clear intent to have secondary characters with comparable amount of complexity to its protagonist, the most notable of which being Subaru who at this stage is closer to a deuteragonist and is arguably more well developed than even Kaoruko.

While it is of course desirable for every member of the cast to be well realised and multi-faceted, this has placed an incredible amount of pressure on narrative resources to accomplish given this is not the primary focus of Kaoru Hana. It has led to a lot of the major character beats in Subaru’s arc feeling rushed or a bit on the nose in how much she is willing to admit or share with Rintaro in only their second meeting. In a hypothetical story where Subaru were the protagonist, these revelations about her personal hang ups and conflicting desires would have been drawn out over the course of more episodes. However, both the admission that she is merely putting on a front and the willingness to explain her reasons for it come all at once. To Kaoru Hana’s credit, the bluntness is in service of putting its best foot forward, embracing the full complexity of the characters and problematising things from there, rather than taking the approach of many mediocre shows do by slow rolling the initial shallow and trite portions of character arcs while pretending they are delivering some great insight. This is apparent in how Kaoru Hana develops Rintaro as well, with the sheer number of times he is judged for his appearance being a bit overbearing in its bluntness, but also continuously utilized and developed upon as the story delves into him also being judge for being from Chidori and how he has internalised much of it. It all speaks to the writing quality of Kaoru Hana in how compelling Subaru still is despite having to rapidly set up and pay off her character arc. The themes themselves surrounding her insecurities and self-loathing are both well thought out and sincerely conveyed, while the story also does not resort to simply declaring her arc complete after a certain point. There is always deeper to delve and more to problematise in the characters, and the show avoids the simplistic idea that realising a problem exist makes it go away, or that the solution is as straightforward as just “getting over it”.

How Kaoru Hana bring all these emotional beats together and prevent them from becoming overbearing is through emphasis on the awkwardness and embarrassment the characters go through after their outburst. Although there are many dramatic scenes where the characters breakdown, confide in, or confront each other, even to the point the point of physical violence when it is between boys, the show makes sure to dial its tone back once the heat of the moment has passed. This usually takes the form of characters feeling embarrassment and reflecting upon how consumed they were by their emotions, or through other characters unexpected comedic or magnanimous responses that defuse the situation with a rapid shift in tone. This is already employed effectively in episode 1 to prevent the drama towards the end of Rintaro and Kaoruko’s first meeting from being taken too seriously and affecting the overall tone the show is aiming to achieve. It even allows the show to have its cake and eat it too in some confrontations, like in the first meeting between Subaru and the boys from Chidori. The scene both relishes in the drama, using it as a means to highlight flaws in the characters and create conflict, while allowing for other characters to subvert expectations in how they respond to the confrontation. Beyond being a time efficient method for creating character development, this preserves the charged emotional moments as genuine and sincere responses instead of just being written for the sake of drama, while also avoiding the appearance of the story being too indulgent or lacking self-awareness. Although this method of undercutting the drama after the fact has been employed by many other excellent shows, like much of the polish in the rest of Kaoru Hana’s writing, it is far from common and difficult to execute even if not necessarily groundbreaking.

While this technique has often worked for Kaoru Hana's tone and been used efficiently to provide opportunities to flesh out the secondary cast, it has not always been employed in a timely manner. This is seldom an issue for the tender moments or primarily emotional confrontations between characters due to the writing quality aiding in the suspension of disbelief, which in turn buys more time to stretch out these dramatic scenes. However, in the few physical confrontations the show has, it feels like it is relishing in the juvenile bravado or even fantasy of having to literally get violent to protect the girl you love. The show certainly does not reach a point where it feels unsavoury or ridiculous in how it frames the situations, but it does tread close times with how long it lingers on the confrontation. In what is an otherwise quite down to earth and relatable story about building connections with others, these moments of high drama derived from physical danger feel over the top. They are still used to reasonable effect with how the show never resorts to something so gauche as to have Rintaro beat everyone up and be fawned over by the girls as a hero. Yet it cannot help but feel disappointing compared to the much more compellingly written emotional confrontations, particularly between Subaru and Rintaro in episode 4 and later on between Subaru and Kaoruko in episode 6. Like most contemporary dramas ought to be, Kaoru Hana is at its best when it derives most of its conflict from emotional impasses or differences of belief between its characters. Resorting to shallow external sources of conflict like a bunch of thugs or introducing a homewrecker character only sticks out more when the rest of the narrative is so sincerely written.

Despite the moments where Kaoru Hana slips into melodrama, the narrative as a whole never feels like it is merely a vehicle to deliver drama for the sake of it. There is a distinct sense that this is the story of Rintaro, Kaoruko and those around them, with all the trials and tribulations that occur being a means to explore their characters, discovering who they are, how they became the people they are, and watching them grow from there. While a lot of this impression is made thanks to the romance being convincing for teenagers with all its awkwardness and insecurity, as opposed to being unrealistically suave, it also is in no small part due to how Kaoru Hana spends a significant amount of its time covering the non-romantic relationships in the protagonist’s lives in a compelling way. While still clearly not the primary focus of the show, they are examined in the same depth that a more general drama would commit to. In particular, Rintaro’s relationship with his male friends and the experience of Chidori being an all-boys school feels particularly true to life. The relaxed and carefree atmosphere of a single gender space is captured with a lot of fondness while also been keenly aware of unspoken and sometimes subtle emotional repression that happens in male friendships. While Rintaro’s family life is also a major supporting element the show explores, it was developed in a much more haphazard fashion that gave the impression of the show setting up the exploration of a single mother household before Rintaro’s father and brother are introduced as being in the picture. Still, these other narrative threads not only give time for the romantic beats between Rintaro and Kaoruko to breathe and simmer while the narrative tackles other issues, but also ensure that the characters are not solely defined by their romantic feelings. This avoids the failing many other romances develop of having the story almost exclusively focus on the relationship, which not only tends to leave the characters shallow with the limited avenues to explore them but also makes the world around them feel artificial in how little of it factors into the story. Perhaps more importantly for the burgeoning ensemble cast of Kaoru Hana, it gives the supporting characters opportunities to receive their own development instead of being relegated to set dressing or accessories to the main romance.

Outside of exploring particular characters, Kaoru Hana is at its most interesting when it comes to tackling the class differences between the Chidori and Kikyo students. Of course, this being set in Japan and being an ancillary theme to the story means that that the divide between the two groups is not something as drastic as having vastly different amounts of cultural capital or economic means. The show is still ultimately about characters that are relatively close together in terms of class but have had noticeably different expectations, access to resources, and perceived social trajectories because of the school they go to. It provides that additional spark of interest since it adds shades of West Side Story while also bringing up opportunities for external conflict that have something to say about how wider society views teenagers and schooling. The preparation for this has been laid and it is easy to see potential compelling themes around Kaoruko still being a partial outsider as a scholarship student and how Subaru mentions that it is the teachers, the adults, in Kikyo that actually despise Chidori more than the students, which raises questions on how this stereotype is being perpetuated. There is also the implicit gender divide between the schools as single gendered spaces that has interesting potential to overlap and interact with the class differences. However, despite there being a wealth of potential, some of it already touched upon by the story with how Rintaro views himself as lesser because he’s from Chidori, it seems evident that this is not something the show is particularly concerned with exploring. Or at least not directly, leaving it to come up when it is convenient. Which is a pity since despite competitiveness in education being a major facet of Japanese society, few shows seem to even consider how this class divide gets built up and reinforced from an early age, much less tell a story about how this gap can be bridged. It still gives Kaoru Hana that extra edge withs its themes and ideas since it occasionally touches upon them, but the narrative as a whole is still firmly dedicated to being a teen drama with limited further ambitions. Which although certainly within the show's prerogative since it never had any other airs, is still a little disappointing because it has the clear potential to do more.

Overall, it is hard to deny that Kaoru Hana is a well polished and excellently written teen drama. Yet it is also apparent that it does not do much to break new ground while also still being beholden to many of the genre’s tropes. The cast at the moment also feels lopsided with how most of the development lies with Rintaro and Subaru, and how this is clearly contributing to the group dynamics not feeling full realised since there are an inadequate number of girls to create more varied and interesting interactions. But there is still every confidence that the story will build something even more compelling, and that the current cast composition at the end of the season is just a consequence of adapting a long form medium like manga to fit into a season of TV. With Kaoru Hana’s tendency towards melodrama leaving its low points feel like 7s and its strongest themes around societal expectations seeming firmly ancillary, it is hard to put it as more than an 8 out of 10 at the moment. The show is undoubtedly strong as a teen drama and romance, but it is mostly content on refining its story within the conventions of the genre. It is likely that the group dynamics and character exploration will hit its full stride in short order, which could certainly warrant an 8.5 or 9 if it maintains all its other areas of quality. But given its clear potential to be something more, using its teen drama lens to explore the societal expectations placed upon its characters, it is hard to say the show is uniquely exceptional until it crosses that bridge.