The definition of "not like the others" and healthily ""toxic"" (oddly they're way more healthy in their stuggles, weirdness and passion than most drama couples, especially the ones who are usually portrayed in BLs).

A+ storyline and main characters, A+ cinematography & OST (seriously the OST is THAT good).

Really clever and psychologically oriented, so well-crafted and written as this perfect circle which makes the rewatch of this show even more interesting, meaningful and endless cause you'll notice new things and details that you've probably 100% missed during your first watch.

Both characters are objectively kind of unlikable/flawed on the surface but you can't help but loving them and feel attached to them cause you get to understand them both individually AND together, and loving their both very pure and twisted unusual unconditional love they have for each other. The coming of age story of two lonely boys who are saving each other, and about the deconstruction of the idealization of love without removing the light sub/dom kink/relationship they have with each other despite themselves.

I often see people throwing around the word "soulmates" when it comes to their fave fictional couple, but I think that's really the case for those two whether you'll like them or not. They're so complimentary as if they were born for each other and I don't picture them functioning and be happy without each other also because they're both a lot to handle and difficult to reach to any other person.

A really good part one out of the three ones from the novel.

The only down is how short the episodes are and with only 6 of them which is a challenging format for such a complex relationship, but they've still managed to make it more effective and meaningful that some other shows who have 16 eps of 1hour/45 mins length each.

This show is so underrated and hated for no other reason than people not understanding the characters separately or together. Usually hated by tasteless people who will call it "dark", "disgusting", or "toxic" (which basically equals trashing and not respecting the LGBT kink community to me but that's another topic that could be extended here) while it's not, and they're the type of people who prefer boring BL trash with no depth and with all the non-con /r*pey tropes in it. Sad...

sidenote : the unreliable narrator trope is a weakness of mine so I really enjoyed finding it here, I'm not even talking about the switching of pov, it's more subtle than that (an exemple: the cherry blossom petals scene with the idealized version of Kiyoi through Hira's pov vs. the second time we're seeing it. i won't elaborate and i'll stop there otherwise it'll take two other paragraphs).