Nostalgia is a good couple because both Ritsu and Takano are deeply flawed characters that fell in love anyway. They each have their own individual trauma outside of their relationship. Ritsu has an inferiority complex, anxiety, and has faced scrutiny his entire life by friends and strangers alike for being born into a wealthy family. He is not wishy washy or a bed person for being wary of entering a relationship with Takano again, especially considering Takano's relentless persistence. Likewise, Takano faced emotional and possibly physical neglect due to his parent's nasty divorce, seems to have a nasty mix of insecurity and a superiority complex, and has abandonment issues unrelated to Ritsu. He is not a bad person for being scared that Ritsu will leave him again, although he expresses that in the worst possible ways. Frequently. Their high school relationship is often trivialized, understandably so, but the fact that they fell in love at all during high school was nothing short of a miracle. As for the breakup, the whole point of Nostalgia is that neither of them is specifically at fault. They were both young and dumb like all teenagers are, (and adults, that never goes away), and while it could have been avoided, the blame doesn't lie on either of them in particular. Nostalgia works because Ritsu and Takano are such human characters and their flaws balance each other out and in this essay I will-