Storyline: 8/10
This story goes beyond the understanding of "cutesy romance, after school clubs, and dramatic soap opera slice of life." As you may know the director who was involved with this series uses a lot of representations of items or scenes in explaining this series. Many of the times I watched this anime and thought what was the point of this anime? Why does this seem really confusing and how come it isn't making any sense? I read a post in understanding what this anime is about on reddit and looked at other opinions from other people, and what really stood out is the fact the metaphors are used greatly throughout this anime. Many of the times it seems that the different scenes and objects we see throughout the anime seems oblivious to us, but those scenes/objects are really important in terms of telling the story and understanding it. Realizing each scene about how it pertains to the characters, made better sense of what may have happened or the misunderstand of each other. I don't really want to ruin much of the story here, but you'll understand once you see the series with your own eyes. In the end, this story line seems more of a philosophical thought compared to the eye-candy-eye-catching artwork quality. I know it seems really bad in terms of rating, but once you put everything together throughout the story line it makes perfect sense, and don't just hate on it, you gotta let yourself think about the story line. Because the way how we think cultural differs on how the people in japan thinks culturally can effect what we think about this anime. You can't forget how sometimes Japanese culture are very subtle on how they act, but it means a lot more than what you might think.
(I think the story line is more important and I only made brief comments as to why it was good on categories below)
Art: 8/10
The artwork quality was done magnificently in terms of landscape, especially the rendering of the background with the high saturation of light between the trees in certain scenes, while focusing more of the characters, and heights the mood of the plot. I would say the art quality was almost done as well as the story line and I can't really find a complaint as to why it would be off-putting compared to other animes.
Sound: 8/10
Giving an eight for the score seems to be reasonable enough right? Since they didn't cheap out on the sound quality, and they did accurately display the recording of each character with its own scenes of ambient noises (like with cricket sounds, wind, or a car passing by). Now maybe if there were certain areas they had made the scenes sounded like they were on the beach because throughout the story line they all sounded like they were all in a room, but thanks to the ambient sounds and music, it had a less noticeable stale sound. (I may be asking too much, but I'm comparing this to the quality of their artwork)
Characters: 8/10
The writers of the anime did well in depicting the awkwardness in some characters. It does put a sense of eerie-ness within the story and it gives it a weird flavor of curiosity on what some character's might be saying, like how some words are cut off from certain characters with uneasiness, uncertainty, or maybe keeping things a secret. I think this is also why I was glue to this anime in the first place, with it character's personality on track rather than having to be changed dramatically, the progression on each character grew steadily of awkwardness to a better understand why he/she is awkward. And character development does grow on you through the story and by watching the anime towards the end, you kinda know what they're going to say next or be satisfied on why they are the way they are.
