…ya know, I don’t think my anxiety is that bad anymoreOVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Rintaro Tsumugi goes to a delinquent boys school, Chidori Public High, and has a reputation for scaring people off with his seemingly intimidating face. He then meets Kaoruko Waguri, a shy girl from the preppy Kikyo Private Academy next door, and despite their schools hating each other, the two strike up a nice friendship!…if one of them can get a word out.OUR TAKEWe’ve got another romantic drama anime (with a real mouthful of a title, good lord) to cover and Netflix was nice enough to give us the first two episodes to start with! So, first off, it is a very pretty looking show to be sure, so whatever issues it might have later are not going to be aesthetic at the very least. It also does a solid job of introducing our two leads and likely future love birds, Rintaro and Kaoruko, as two people who clearly have trouble communicating their needs, feel anxious and rejected by society, and always seem to expect the worst out of situations. We only see the plot so far from Rintaro’s perspective, but I’m sure that will change later once we get a chance to see what’s going on with Kaoruko from her end. Unfortunately, the big problem I’m seeing with this show right out of the gate is that it is laying a lot of things on PRETTY THICK. Rintaro thinks people don’t like him, so whenever even the slightest inconvenience pops up, he jumps immediately to the worst possible conclusion. The animosity between the schools is made quite clear early on, but we need to see students from both sides talking shit about the other CONSTANTLY, in case the point was not made explicitly clear multiple times.And of course, Kaoruko really seems to like Rintaro…for SOME reason. Not that he’s a bad guy or anything, but I’m gonna really need some fleshing out on that. I get it, the genre of this show is romance, which the arc of trajectory leans towards two people finding a spark of instant intimate connection among their humdrum or unfortunate lives, especially in high school. But despite my continuous sweet tooth for candy and soda in my regular life, this story may just end up being too sweet for me. Not that I need it to be bitter to even it out, just that I would like some logic and non-romantic character focus in addition to all of the emotions being turned up to eleven all the dang time. But at least we’re already a sixth of the way through it, so we can hopefully hurry through this before I get a case of type 2 diabetes. And if I do, well, I already lost one foot, so I wouldn’t mind losing another to gangrene to make me symmetrical!