December 5, 2023
There's a lot to like about this show, but the pacing is agonizingly slow. It starts off sweet, but fairly bland, and only begins to really get interesting about 7 or 8 eps in, imo. As slow burns go, I preferred 青い花 and Just Because!. As gloomy MCs with severe social anxiety and communication issues go, Sawako reminded me of Hitori Gotō from ぼっち・ざ・ろっく! pretty often (though they're totally different genres). The characters are mostly likeable. Some of them are interesting. There's endless cute, sappy moments, and plenty of comedy mixed in with actual serious story lines. There's also plenty of moments that felt totally unbelievable, or just left me scratching my head. While I didn't hate it, it felt like enough of a slog that I'm not going to try season 2.