Note that I didn't read the original work (nor do I plan to) prior to watching this series. Many points from this review are to be blamed on that work though, but since I'm reviewing the anime I'm mentioning them here.

I saw lots of wasted potential, the series was focusing on the wrong people all the time. We saw little to no development on Kaoruko's side (a 10-minute flashback at the end of the series explaining all prior actions does not cut it) unlike Rintarou, who had this nice transition from "I am nothing more to her than a patisserie server" all the way to "I'm starting to really like this girl hope she feels the same". Speaking of development, up until episode 11 I thought Rintarou's father had passed away. There was no screentime neither of him nor Rintarou's older brother whatsoever. This made no sense to me, I think they would have made a great addition to a lot of the scenes.

Kaoruko's kindness felt a little too exaggerated, just to make a "perfect" heroin for the audience. She was so kind that those "special" moments she had with Rintarou eventually didn't feel so special, because she used to behave similarly to pretty much everybody else. Near the end of the season, more attention than on Rintarou and Kaoruko's relationship went to Subaru, what started to annoy me after a while.

The entire series though felt like a race for "who's going to be more polite and express greater graditude". Many people pointed this out, mainly because of how often characters (all of them, not just the main ones) tend to apologize to each other. This was a little bizarre for the first couple of episodes, and even though I got used to it at the end, I still do not consider this a positive aspect of the series.

This series with it's whole point being "a couple which tries to forge a path for themselves", given the schools they attend, took an entirely different route right after Rintarou told Subaru he won't stop seeing Kaoruko. Rintarou's friends surprisingly quickly befriended them after, and it was just the lack of development that stood in-between them and prevented them to actually start dating sooner. Instead of throwing a cliché at the end of the beach episode (ep 12), if they actually got together a couple of episodes prior to that, the plot would be more intense considering that as a couple they'd want to see each other on a daily basis, not just "as far from our schools as possible so others won't find out". Only then it would truly fulfill the sole key point of the series.

Despite all of the above, it might not seem like it but I can definitely say that I liked this series' approach and it was nice seeing something unique while drowning in fan-service pointless blind cliché-filled rom-coms (there are many more negative adjectives I can think of).