Yuri Project
joined Jul 14, 2016
Seriously, although my only evidence is this otherwise inexplicable pattern, I’ve come to believe that noble idiocy > time skip > reunion is Lezhin editorial policy for yuri series rather than simply poor authorial choice. It’s not uncommon for a serial narrative to botch its ending (kdramas do it just like this all the time), but when yuri plots from one particular publisher falter in exactly the way over and over it starts to look like more than coincidence.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was motivated by a business policy, like how much time authors are given to wrap things up, but it's not exactly uncommon outside of Lezhin also. Some stories that immediately come to mind are Netsuzou Trap and Cross Heart but I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.
Maybe it's just a convenient way to setup an ending in advance that you know you can quickly wrap up when needed. Or just a way to raise the stakes at the very end when there's no other obvious source of drama. Since I haven't read too many Lezhin series, and of them this was the only one that ended like this, I won't speculate too much about, but if all the ones you mentioned did end in the same manner, that's definitely suspicious.