I had this review in mind since then, it was going to go on about what being hurt means, how people heal and how, despite our best efforts people will still get hurt or we will get hurt.
This anime takes one of my favorite ideas for storytelling. Don't tell the actual story that people would normally go for. Go for the story after those events and how people deal with the aftermath of it.
Dealing with loss, dealing with failure, dealing with family. No one handles it the same, and that's entirely right, no one should do so.
By episode 10 I was completely convinced that this anime was a masterpiece. It was showing people how characters actually develop, how they deal with their set of issues in completely plausible ways and it was exquisitely written and paced.
But then the final 2 episodes happened. I was stunned, in awe watching the episodes. Everything that happened simply destroyed the great pacing and growth that had led to that moment, simply to revert to a status quo in the end.
It honestly destroyed the entire plot for me, the entire adventure and enjoyment I'd had with this series fell off a cliff and never recovered.
It's extremely sad for me, I thought I'd found the greatest new favorite on my list, wondering why the hell people were giving it a 7 in total score. I was jugglging the idea of people hating the pacing because that's the only problem that might have come to mind if you were expecting another type of rom-com pacing, but now... I see why it's scored this way.
I'm horribly dissapointed. The production value is through the roof and hanazawa kana delivered one of her best performances ever just to be dealt a bad plot like this.
