Story
Love is the main part of the story. Any type, you name it: confused love, selfish love, unrequited love, and just plain love. This is such a dramatic anime, but what happens to the characters makes it very realistic. Frustrations of feeling alone, the pressure of everyone around you, the anxieties of where you’ll be in life, are all things the characters have to deal with as the progress through the story. It’s one of the sweetest romance stories I’ve come across, actually. There’s no fanservice, rarely a peverted thought. Only the heart-wrenching and bittersweet notion of love.
Art
The art, I thought was gorgeous. The animation went long so smoothly, and I loved the color choices, everything looked like watercolors. I also really liked the way the eyes looked, especially of Hagu. They were very pretty an dmade her look doll-like.
Sound
The sound was great. The ending and opening themes were nice, even though I liked the first ending better than the second ending. I still liked both. The background music was sweet-sounding, a lot of piano music was used of the opening.
Characters
The characters are all believable. I ended up disliking some and rooting for others (which is partly why the ending left me dissatisfied though it was predicable). Yamada’s unrequited love for Mayama was understandable, but irritating that he didn’t love her back. I realize you can’t force yourself to love someone. But maybe this is one of the realistic aspects; there are not always happy endings. Anyway, I liked most of the characters. Morita and Yamada were my favorites, I think. Morita is just so unique. It makes me wonder what goes on in his mind. As for Yamada, I felt sorry for her and I kept wanting her to end up with Mayama throughout the series, even though it was easy to see early on that it was sort of hopeless. Takemoto is basically the protagonist, since he narrates the most, even though the story doesn’t focus entirely on him.
Enjoyment
Okay, this took me a while to get through. I started it around in December and I’m just now finishing it in May. Still, just because I took it slowly doesn’t mean it was boring for me. I really did want to finish it, and I’m glad I did because it was a thoroughly enjoyable series.
Overall
This was a very great series, portraying realistic relationships between ultimately believable and likeable characters. I loved it.
