A decent romance with many somewhat boring characters. A common complaint is that all people do is apologize, but I think the reason that's so notable is the lack of other action. Subaru initially acts toward Rintaro more than a little inappropriately, and yet Rintaro does nothing but feel bad and apologize. It's as though Rintaro's entire personality is to be passive and apologize for his experience and existence.
Other than its flaws, it's another cute romance with some interesting character designs, Kaoruko especially with hair, with a story of how the two fall for each other. There are some cute moments, but I find it tries to stick away from some cliches enough that perhaps there aren't enough of those cute moments. As much as I enjoyed the nice moments it brought, it was something of a bore to get through near the end. Even the final episodes when we expect what will happen, does it feel as though we're being delayed for greater payout. While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it feels like our protagonist is being tortured by silence and lack of communication for that same payout, which makes Kaoruko seem a bit sadistic and relishing in the emotional uncertainty it brings.
Having watched and finished as it released, I can say I've forgotten much of what happens in the middle of this series. I know there was some drama behind our protagonist hiding things from his friends, dealing with navigating a weird divide between the two schools, but it doesn't particularly stand out.
Subaru's redemption from being the unreasonable person asking someone to quit talking to her friend behind their back gets a bit too easily forgiven. There is always a place for people doing something wrong for the right reasons, but it's a scenario that makes you hesitant to believe that's true. To ask someone to stop engaging with your friend, you would think that friend would be the one to decide something of that manner. You would think that doing so would constitute an act of betrayal. It's easily forgiven, and Subaru supposedly has learned from the behavior? It comes across as Kaoruko being all forgiving, but also unable to properly critique after that forgiveness has been made. Forgiveness need not be something held tight, but it shouldn't be something that we expect to be so easily given without scrutiny or hope for improvement.
So the characters act quite oddly at times, many of them seem to be one dimensional to an extent, and more importantly, that 1-dimensionality doesn't lead to much interesting happening, which tends to be more important than being realistic. Not to say that forgiving and apologizing for everything is particularly realistic.
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