When the viewer is immersed in the this world of a melancholy 17 year old former track star the first thing that strikes you is the beauty of its story vision rendered in some of the best animation I have ever seen! It sweeps you in and tells the impossible love at the core of the story in a amazingly choreographed - dance of nuanced life as art - in everyday settings.
Its splendor never lets you go and its detail and emotion never seem anything other than perfectly natural and sincere. The angst and the outburst and subdued emotion and awkward reactions all ring so genuine that you never question them. Even the injury and its psychological impact (an injury I have unfortunately endured.) is perfect in its current beneath the surface that not for a second do you doubt its authenticity.
Some have faulted the portrayal of the man but unless you have walked a mile in his shoes to understand his impossible angst and certain doom living within his failure or find that you at least empathize with it, than you you should move along and not waste your time with this series.
If you get him then you heart leans on his for the hard choices to come and this too is true to the situation in a very simple and profound way.
What it leads to, is a rarified human relationship that will uplift all the characters and the viewers too, in an indelible and unforgettable way to be at a very minimum a treasured memory of something truly special.
