Was the piercings and the tattoos a form a self harm for miyamura? they never really touched on this and throughout the season he went from an alt/goth kid to like... a preppy dude. if they were forms of self harm for him i'm glad he moved away from them, but then i wish the show had gone into that a bit more. if it wasn't, i hate this trend of how general media paints the narrative that alt/goth kids are only this way because they're lonely or considered weird and that as soon as they have 'love' and 'acceptance' they become conventionally attractive and socially appropriate again ? this is not the first coming-of-age story i've watched where this happens which is why i'm pointing it out. piercings and tattoos are forms of self-expression for a lot of people and the fact that that was taken away from him by the writers as he gained 'self-confidence', as it were, kind of hit a nerve for me.
otherwise, a conventional wrap up of a high-school/coming-of-age story. none of the characters mentioned college or what they would do after graduating so the story really didn't have a hopeful, upward direction or -end of a chapter, start of the next- vibe most high school graduating stories tend to have. also maybe the showrunners had to fit all of the manga into a season so everything was super squished together and rushed, but i found it incredibly difficult to feel much attachment to any of the characters because they had so little screentime/the stories they experienced were sort of told then dropped so they could do the next arc. i wish they had slowed things down and let things develop more and breathe (or had been given the chance to do that, with more episodes/seasons).
