°•D2O•°

This is one of the only animes I've watched where the ending changes every single episode depending on the happenings. And honestly, up until now there's always been some sort of progress in Nakamura (except for the episode where he was jealous of his teacher???) and so the endings are always relatively happy, especially the field trip episode where Nakamura was showcasing his pictures of the first day he officially spent as friends with Hirose (adorable!!!!).

Honestly I've really loved how accurate Nakamura is to the irl queer experience, especially as a weird little weird man. And if he is anything like me he is going to become less creepy and weird overtime lmao. He is still small after all. I love how he's also scared others will judge his interests, he's always felt left out even if he's a relatively regular guy, the same way I was back in middle school. Also he has the same bangs I used to.....

Either way he is a really realistic character (at least to me) and I love how he develops and grows every episode even if it's little by little. But this last episode, he discovers that Hirose started dating this girl he's never met, who's really cute, and this fact takes a lot of time to settle in, he's been processing it for many days. And crying about it for many nights. I love the work his voice actor did with the ugly crying, honestly the animators nailed it too. He doesn't know how to feel. He's suddenly the most realistic he's ever been.

Now, the endings have always been happy and been different, every time showing Nakamura in his room doing something related to the episode, vibrant clashing colours, a popular song in the background that changes each time. The vibe overall is immaculate. But in this last episode, he left his room in the middle of the night to get some fresh air, and while he's talking to himself he remembers that as long as Hirose is happy, he is too. And even though he's still sad, he's gonna be alright. The ending has been colored normally for the first time, no vibrant colours, no music except for whatever is playing on the TV downstairs, Nakamura still hasn't come back home, Icchan is sleeping in his tank. We can hear Okuto's sister and mother speaking over dinner. It's like in the past episodes he's been living in some sort of fantasy and in just this one he's been snapped back to reality.

Honestly, I felt the necessity to make this post because wow, this is really so important to me, just staring at the screen in the dark and watching this silent ending after everything that happened. Big props to the mangaka honestly, big props to the voice actors, animators, artists, everyone who worked on this. Just wow.