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This is how you choose to end your show?

Impressions:

Hey! Whaddya know? My prediction was dead on. The show didn’t end in any way, it simply stopped. Hell, Haru barely even showed up this episode. And wait for this one. The last scene before the ED; feelings on the stairway. Good god. If you’re going to pretend like the characters, their relationships, and their emotions are the center of the show, then at least try to do something with them instead of a fat lot of nothing and then the same damn scene you’ve already used at least 6 times prior.

But this time, with snow!

Final Thoughts:

Yet another romance that failed to go anywhere or do a damned thing. The comedy was decent enough at the start, but unfortunately, that too faded just about as quickly as the progression did. While it seemed to move right along at the start, that ground to a halt around episode 3 so everyone could fuss around not doing a damn thing but talk about how maybe now wasn’t the best time to address their teenage hormones.That didn’t stop them from having stairway confessionals every other episode though, which were all the more awkward because, again, nobody was actually doing anything. If you’re going to be having your characters constantly musing about and confessing their feelings, you best be giving an actual impetus for it. Deciding to mope and then deciding "Maybe I’ve moped enough for this week," is not an impetus.

Compound that further with a whole bunch of poorly developed side characters whose existence was only defined by their love for the main character(s). They were certainly given enough screentime, but that’s not the same as focus or development. The metric being "Would the show have changed without them in it," and even for Natsume, the answer is a "Not really." Like practically everything else past episode 3, most of the time they were just background noise about the magnificence of Haru and Shizu’s love even while those two hemmed and hawed in between their stairway speeches.

So basically, while it seemed at the start to be a bit better than the usual pack of girly romances about the wallflower meeting and catching the rebel bishie, it soon fell in line with them and became practically indistinguishable from a dozen other shows because the writers were too afraid to develop any character or relationship past where it was in episode 2 yet steadfastly made the characters and relationships the centerpiece of the show. Hoo-rah. Score one for conformity.