It's a bit of a cliché at this point, but one of the things we humans obviously are not is, perfect. And obviously the same can be said about Sakura Adachi the 15 year old school girl a lot of this story is centered around. Adachi is a very flawed human being. Maybe I am a bit too empathetic towards Adachi as a person but a lot of the frustration people seem to have with her is how toxic and manipulative towards the girl she is madly in love with Shimamura. That Adachi is incredibly jealous if Shimamura spends any time with anyone else. And yes, while these emotions of jealousy and betrayal aren't healthy ones Adachi feels throughout the show. I think perhaps it is a bit misguided and unfair to not empathize with her plights even a little. She is a teenager growing up in the most social and emotional point in her life. I think it is a bit unfair of us to assume that teenagers during this time, especially a teenager who has grown up with nobody, no friends, who has a mother who to be quite frank did not help her development growing up very much, to be a bit clingy and jealous when they find someone they really enjoy being around. Try to be a little more understanding and empathetic towards that.
To reiterate, this sort of jealousy is one that a lot of people experience, actually. It's a pretty normal human thing to feel and while it obviously is NOT the most healthy way of thinking about things. It makes sense within the context of a teenage girl experiencing the most emotional time of her life and falling in love with someone after having nobody.
Furthermore, it is not like it is never shown or implied that Adachi tries to change herself, or attempt to take action for Shimamura's sake. Adachi has done things in the light novel and anime that are completely out of the realm of her comfort entirely because she doesn't want Shimamura to hate her and because she wants Shimamura to be happy. Adachi is self-aware of how she acts. She is aware that her behavior isn't healthy. She takes a look at herself and thinks, "Hm, maybe I should actually try my best to work on my problems, to try to not be insane so I'm not a burden to the people around me." That sort of thing. This development happens a lot more in the light-novel than it does in the anime obviously, but there are still a few moments like this in the show.
I think it was pretty blatantly obvious to me anyways that when reading the light-novel, and in some parts of the anime, a lot of the messaging was, we as humans sometimes have a lot of complex negative emotions. And even though they may not be healthy, if we have any desire to reform and become better people, we struggle through them and try to get through them the best we can in the hopes that we get better. Especially for the people we love and for ourselves. I really loved watching Adachi's character for this exact reason. I rooted for her, I wanted her to try her best to reform and improve as a person. She struggles a lot. And if you are an anime only watcher I can understand your frustrations towards her as a character, without spoiling much though she does improve in the light-novel, she improves a lot of her problems a lot later on. It requires a lot of reading and time to get to that point, but that's how human beings are. We don't fix things immediately. If we have un-healthy, negative emotions. Which Adachi certainly has. It takes time to improve ourselves and become better people. It takes years even. And within the context of the light-novel, this is the span of her improvement.
I am not defending Adachi's actions throughout the light novel or anime if you still don't like her as a person. That's completely fine. I understand that she is clearly not for everyone. But I don't necessarily think it's fair to be unfair towards her efforts. I hope this review was at least a little bit illuminating for her as a character.
You may also be wondering why I gave the anime a '7' then if I seem to love this media so much. Fair question, it is because even though I found the anime to be pretty enjoyable. Adachi To Shimamura's anime did not do the light-novel justice to me as it is a fairly hard source material to adapt. Why is that? It's because a lot of the important factors of the Adachi's and Shimamura's character come from the very frequent inner monologues they have in their heads. These provide a lot of insight and context into their character and how they think as people. Their beliefs, dreams, random thoughts about how they feel about something. There are a few inner monologues in the anime but nothing that even comes close to the level of Adachi To Shimamura's light-novel. I empathize with the anime creators though, because if it was the case that they would of adapted these inner thoughts. It would of taken a lot of time and resources because they are quite long monologues sometimes. However, I believe these to be vitally important to the story, almost entirely necessary to understand adachi and shimamura as characters. So for the reason of the anime cutting out important details. I'm unfortunately giving it a 7 despite their best efforts.
This was my first time writing a review. So excuse me if my formatting or thoughts weren't organized.
Thanks for reading!
