Since there hasn't been a review yet, I'll do it, avoiding spoilers. First of all, the romance is minimal, so if you're looking for a cliche shoujo romance, this isn't really it. It's a SOL story about self-discovery more than anything. And no high school characters.


This series had a lot of great potential, but I don't think it had the opportunity to be everything it could have been. You can tell that the characters have a lot more to offer. All of them have serious issues that need to be addressed, and it would have been very interesting to see them played off of each other more, but we barely got to scratch the surface with them. Because the ending was so rushed, some subplots ended up feeling completely useless, and most characters' feelings and motivations were left ambiguous. I guess there's some poetry in that because it's a pretty realistic story, and things don't always get a satisfactory explanation in real life, but it still left me feeling dissatisfied and imagining all the things that could have been.


Don't mistake this for a negative review, though. I found the major characters very sympathetic, and Shouko is a very relatable protagonist for a lot of young women out of high school. I'm glad I read it, and I recommend this to anyone who wants a shoujo "romance" that isn't all sparkly backgrounds and doki doki silliness.