TRUE! Or at least in my case it was... Rin and Daikichi DO get married. Ugh... but as mind-blowingly disturbing this is, I'll first state the positives and emphasise that, before the ending, the time skip half of the manga is not a complete train wreck!

Positives:
1. Everybodys characters are believable grown up. Rin is mature and smart as expected, Reina sweet and a bit on the thoughtless side, Kouki (although his character design took a bit of getting used to at first) is also believable. Daikichi coud definitely have used more screen time but the parts where he shows up are the highlights of the chapter imo (plus, his involvement in Kouki's life serves to show how much of a surrogate father he becomes to Kouki too).
2. Yes, another "high-school" manga *groan*... BUT it surprisingly didnt hold the endless Festival-Christmas-Valentines Day madness as shoujo mangas normally thrive on. Instead, the kids actually spend most of their time studying! Lol, can it be more realistic? :P
3. The way the romances for Daikichi/Kouki's mom and Rin/Kouki was dealt with. I think its safe to say that everybody was rooting for both these pairings (the former more than the latter maybe; Kouki's feelings for Rin felt more like puppy love to me). I was really sad when both pairings decided they couldn't be together, but I felt it was dealt with in a very mature way. Daikichi and Kouki's mom agreed to put their kids before themselves, reminding one that in reality all romances hardly ever get their happy endings, and in Rin/Kouki's case, it serves to show their strong trust in each other when they manage to easily fall back into their sibling-like relationship, and that for them its always friendship first, love second.
4. More on Masako and whats happened with her recently which proves really interesting.
5. Despite the *cringe* feelings that Rin starts to develop for Daikichi, I really empathised for her. Definitely confused, torn with herself, had not the ending been executed as poorly as it was I might have forgave her her state of affairs considering she realized the implications of it fully and didn't even want Daikichi to find out in the first place.

And now... to the negatives (in order of negative-ness!):
1. Kouki's mom remarries. WHAT?! After saying that she felt too old for marriage and too taken up with Kouki to even consider it, WHY would she remarry anyway? No sufficient reason is given for it and I feel that its just unfairly put forth by the mangaka to give her character's relationship with Daikichi some sense of closure so he can "move on" to Rin.
2. Kouki actually encourages the relationship between Rin and Daikichi. This was really horrifying to me, especially the line he gives to Daikichi, "Better you than Yunohara (orwhateverhisnameis)". HOW CAN IT BE BETTER THAN THE OTHER GUY?? Daikichi is as much a surrogate father to Kouki as he is to Rin, so this pretty much killed the character of Kouki for me somehow...
3. The ending. Sigh, well the closest I've come to this sort of a relationship in any other manga is in Inuyasha, with Sesshomaru and Rin. Now that I've read the ending to this manga, I can *now* totally understand why some fans of Inuyasha hated the idea of the two becoming romantically involved with each other when Rin grew up (I was all for it :P). But given the quality of execution in Inuyasha, I feel its safe to say that I'd have loved if Takahashi showed them ending up together anyway, and I'll tell you why. Sesshomaru, no matter how kind he becomes towards Rin, never REALLY is the father figure missing in her life the way Daikichi is towards this Rin (lol I just realized I've been talking about 2 Rins all along here, sorry for the confusion ^^;). So yeah, Daikichi, even when its proven that their blood relation doesn't exist (where did that come from all of a sudden? O_o), and despite the fact that I don't have much of a problem with age gaps in relationships (hey if you could stomach the Souichi/Masako relationship way in the beginning, you could stomach this too), is still for all intents and purposes Rin's FATHER! And then Daikichi's response towards Rin... ugh totally killed his character for me too. Where's the resistance? Why this sudden caving in and whats your reason for loving Rin that way now *two years gap be damned*??? People say they should have shown more romantic gestures towards each other like kissing and holding hands to justify their new relationship, but I disagree. Given the talk abt pregnancy in the last chapter, I was disturbed enough about it without adding a kiss or two between the couple.

Point 1: The Daikichi whom I fell in love with for being the awesomeness that he is lol, is clearly (and has been since volume TWO) in love with Nitani-san (Kouki's mom). Who I might add quite clearly returns his feelings. But of course post timeskip and for reasons which are NEVER explained, mangaka marries her off to some random dude in order to accommodate the ridiculous ending. I could've swallowed the theory that they "sacrificed themselves" for Kouki and Rin ... but wait due to Rin's spoiled selfishness they were never an item so errr ... am I missing something here? Nitani-san can't marry Daikichi but she CAN marry some random dude?

Point 2: In every sense aside from blood, Rin is Daikichi's daughter ... Anyone reading this story can understand that within the first few chapters. The managaka made it so clear that he treasures and protects Rin as a parent with every ounce of his being ... and you're telling me this same hardworking, practical and protective father, turns around twelve years later and is suddenly able to view the seventeen year old CHILD he's raised in a sexual sense and MARRY HER? Are you F'N kidding me?

Point 3: Rin & Kouki ... this was so poorly done it was incredible, like watching a train wreck I swear. The managaka used the FLIMSIEST logic in the world to excuse how in the span of like a week Rin went from loving Kouki who she's had a crush on since they were SEVEN, to suddenly being steadfastly in love with Daikichi. Apparently for Kouki, despite being blatantly and almost RIDICULOUSLY devoted to Rin and telling her every five seconds that he likes her, having a nasty conniving ex-girlfriend is reason enough to just decide to never give him a chance.

If the thought of a guy ending up in a romantic relationship with a young lady that he has been raising for the last 10+ years, as his own daughter, makes you uncomfortable...then it just does. It's a pretty disorienting development, so it's a normal reaction, for crying out loud. As a matter of fact, it's as normal a reaction as liking it. It would be great if readers would actually review the friggin' manga and leave all of the psych evaluations out of the process. Good grief. What is it with people criticizing other people's opinions on this series? o__O??