Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?

Episode 12

I won't be disappointed in a show for moving in a direction that I dislike. I try to understand what it is doing and judge its capability to accomplish its goals. I was confident that this show would end with a time skip. They would learn the need to decide between making adult decisions early to ensure a future where they can accomplish their dreams together or prioritizing their romance. There was plenty of precedent that the show was moving in that direction.

The ending isn't necessarily bad, but everything wraps up messily. Nothing is satisfying in how it resolves character arcs. Perhaps it is caused by the anime attempting a definitive ending while the light novel is still ongoing. It feels like the creator had a specific way they wanted things to end. Still, I am thankful that the story we get is simple enough to be wrapped up in twelve episodes.

Yu and Himari's character resolutions should've been reversed. Weirdly, we get a long speech about how Yu has been incredibly indecisive throughout the entire show and how that has not been fair to anybody else. Yes, he is currently being indecisive and it was clear that he didn't have his priorities straight, but he was always ultimately true to his feelings. The problem is he was trying to balance those feelings with his dream and it wasn't working out because of his immaturity. His character arc should've been about choosing one over the other or figuring out a way for him to have both. Instead, the story almost makes it seem like he was being unfair to Himari because he wasn't clear about his feelings sooner, which was something that SHE was doing, not him.

Himari should've been more honest with her feelings and realized that her indecisiveness was causing problems. If she had not spent so much time confusing Yu, there is a good chance that he could figure things out a lot sooner. Almost every major narrative decision she makes throughout the show has been predicated on pure selfishness. Until the very end, the show never really berates her as much as it should for her actions. The show instead decides to focus on her insecurities and how she's scared she doesn't have that much to contribute to Yu as a partner. That is something that was brought up, but that was never the main bulk of her problem. We could've had a show about how her insecurities were the things that were holding her back from confessing her feelings because she didn't feel like she was good enough. Almost all of her problems came from her immaturity and inability to admit what she wanted. She was a self-sabotaging character until the very end, not a tragic victim of her insecurities.

Then there's the way that everything resolves at the end. It is some of the most blatant hand-wavy storytelling I've seen in quite some time. The side characters show up at the last minute to save the day. Yu and Himari become a couple, and everyone lives happily ever after. It's such a toothless ending. It's the kind of ending that makes me feel like I wasted my time, because it doesn't matter what conclusion our leads came to. I'm not even sure what conclusion they came to. What was the main thing that they overcame outside of the practical problem of not having Himari already move overseas? Is she going to be less insecure?

I like Yu's speech at the end about how growing up is about exploring different options and letting your dreams happen rather than focusing so much on one goal to the point where you cut everything else out. But it doesn't feel earned and I'm not sure what that message means within the context of the show itself. Perhaps the moral lesson is that you should be allowed to live your life and pursue your passions or love however you want. Whatever.

The entire time this final episode was going on, I kept asking myself two questions. The first was “Why is this soundtrack so good?” I haven't commented on it that much, but this is probably one of my favorite soundtracks of this season because of how it's able to invoke such genuine emotion. The second question was “Where is all of this going?” I might take a peek at the light novels for answers. Looking back on the show as a whole, I don't get a lot out of it. It wasn't terrible and there were some nice character moments with solid comedies, but I won't remember this show once the new anime season starts.

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