really fucking good, lots of insight into things like relationship anarchy even tho that wasn't the intent or the framing, super cute, the "which side of me is the real me" stuff was a bit meh and too much of the focus, but overall really fantastic. I would love to see a more mature show focused around Riko and Akari type characters (87)

RW1: okay first time around my review was a bit overly romantic (in the overly idealized sense of the word). absolutely deserves praise for willing to dance in the queerplatonic and for the representation of (a/grey)ro / (a/grey)ce povs, but still very caught up in amatonormativity and even allonormativity which is a lil disappointing. the "sell out my entire existence to make you happy" style of love is really dumb. still almost surely the best romance anime at unraveling and challenging typical conceptions. non-romance plot is similarly good at starting the process but ultimately remains entangled. still an absolute shame the anime never got finished. (87 score based on comparative evaluation on other entries, but weaker commitment) RW2: much weaker than previous watchings. potentially interesting questions raised about the nature of identity, cool display of queerplatonic relationship, nice that it deals with asexuality (which is criminally underexplored within the romance genre), but yea it kinda just super falls flat. possessiveness is boring and un-interrogated, i'm fine with it as a theme but its deeply underexplored and unquestioned. it was interesting to go through and see the multiple different perspectives about "masks" and identity, but it ends up in the same old tired authenticity ideal. nice that its more complex and messy, and still fun to see the queerplatonic, but honestly just really disappointing on rewatches, especially as my own thinking has developed over time. still important to me, will likely always be 'favorited'. (82)