I started reading this after seeing ads about a romance “ten years later” so I knew there was gonna be a time skip / the school part was only going to be some of the story.
Well, the school part was all of season one and a lil of season two so it was a lot of the story, actually.
As someone also ten years out from high school I haven’t read school romance in a longgg while, so once it seemed like a whole romance was gonna play out in high school I considered dropping this, but I’ve really enjoyed it and am glad I stuck with it!
I really appreciate how “real” the author makes it without it getting too frustrating - the characters are kids (from my pov lol) and it’s their first serious loves. They make the mistakes and have the worries that people that age / stage do. And yet they’re still moving forward and trying their best with both their relationships and their careers. They communicate their feelings the best they can and while they fumble and trip sometimes, those feelings manage to be conveyed. The feelings from the three main characters - FL, first and second ML, and to a degree the FL’s sister too - are all nuanced, relatable, and genuine. How the love triangle comes to be is not only believable but also refreshing in how none of the three are antagonistic or wishy-washy.
I wondered how the author was going to set up the time skip with the characters given a whole romance already played out while they were in high school, but she did a great job in making a believable “end” to the high school portion, and an interesting new “start” to the ten years later.
I hope this ends up becoming a bit more like a josei now with the characters’ ages, and that the same quality of writing continues!
The art is also gorgeous as another big plus!!
Oh, the she’s the writer of a web novel + whole magic part is severely underutilized and I wish it weren’t there honestly. Especially with the magic phone, feels like the author largely pivoted from that premise early on and then just threw mentions of it back in to somewhat use as a plot device at times. Hopefully magic + the characters that go with that are minor in the future and the author wraps that part up somewhat well.
Only other con I can think of is I binged all 110 episodes currently out, and if a similarly long after time skip story is gonna play out that’s gonna be several more years 🥲