This series caught my attention the other day, and in poking around to try to gauge whether or not I wanted to watch it, I read this thread, and wondered what might make someone “anxious” about it.

I caught up on it last night, and now I know. Sort of.

I can’t entirely pin down the reasons why, but this is an oddly stressful series. It somehow goes beyond a standard failure to communicate - it’s as if they don’t even speak the same language.

And in some ways, Kohaku is an unusually dangerous shoujo romance MMC. The norm for the ikemen lead is that he only appears to be a self-absorbed player and he’s actually a decent guy from the start. But Kohaku really is a self-absorbed player, and it’s just that he’s started to realize that he could be something better.

And as far as that goes, Yoi is at least somewhat safe from his worst impulses, at least when she’s not paralyzed by a sense of weakness, since her instinct is to immediately drop into prince mode and stand up to asshole guys.

But then that’s another source of stress, since Kohaku is sort of like an infant, just barely starting to feel his way around this newfound world of actually caring for a girl.

I don’t know - it still feels like I can’t quite get a grip on why it’s so stressful, but it is. I like it all in all, but still…