On the one hand, this show does need to be acknowledged as having a lot of unique characteristics compared to your typical shojo romance. First, it regularly brings up the forbidden three letter word in shojo romance (SEX), and although it doesn't show anything, it's clearly a big part of the story for many of the characters. It also includes many of the darker aspects of adolescence, including struggles with body image and bullying. So for some this might make it seem like the show is more "real" that your usual "I'm so inexperienced about love I don't even know why this guy is trying to hold my hand" romance (I'm looking at you, Naho from Orange). But truthfully, it's completely the same:
- Despite certain characters being more "experienced" than others, they are all, as the story tries to tell us, pure-hearted maidens who are just trying to figure out love.
- People are completely oblivious to normal human interactions, though instead of it being mis-read signs of love it's people not realizing how absolutely cruel and heartless they are acting/speaking in the presence of others. Seriously, I've never seen a show reach quite this level of cattiness that could have been resolved if just one of them had the slightest ounce of self-reflection.
- The drama is almost exclusively driven by a total lack of the basic capacity to communicate as a human being. I wish I was kidding about this, but in one episode (the last!) about 5 minutes of the show is wasted watching a character run around looking for the other character because he somehow failed to see her hiding behind a telephone pole that was literally right outside of his house in an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood. And this only happened because they somehow forgot how to use their cell phones, which were ultimately the main tool that produced the initial misunderstanding that caused all the running around.
- It introduces a new character at nearly every episode who's sole purpose is to stir up drama. They then only have a few seconds of cameo in later episodes, so you wonder why they were even introduced.
At the end of the day, if you are a hard core fan of shojo, and I should add, are also a fan of the aesthetics (the characters certainly also break a bit of the typical mold in their looks, which I wasn't the biggest fan of), then you'll certainly get something from this show. But if you are looking for a really fresh take on shojo romance, look elsewhere.
