Endings are hard to write well and even more so with a slice of life type series like this one where there isn't really a perfect ending point. I feel like a lot of people are just upset there wasn't a clear confession, when I think it would have been even more (pleasantly) surprising if they actually had a serious confession since the whole time they were playing it off for laughs and subtext without any sign it was gonna be anything more.
My problem wasn't the lack of a confession, but extremely short build-up to the final arc. The series has effectively wrapped up in 3 chapters, published within 2 weeks of each other, with little warning that this was coming. Chapter 24 was the big whammy where Harumi and Azusa's identities got revealed out of the blue (harhar), and even then, the way it was written was ambiguous as to whether this was the finale, or just the start of an new arc. In hindsight, it is clear that the identity reveal had been the author's intended endgame all along, with the title drop obviously planned from the very start. However, the skip in pacing between chapter 23 and 24 is breakneck, with little in the first 23 chapters indicating whether the series would last for another 3 or 100 episodes.
As I mentioned before, the author seems to be an explorer-type writer, so he simply wrapped up the series with a pre-planned conclusion when he ran out of ideas (or, more likely, decided to work on something else). I get why he would do that, but it doesn't make the story's ending in itself any less abrupt.
last edited at Jun 2, 2021 4:53AM
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