A lonely otaku meets the girl everyone thinks they know, and discovers she's nothing like the character they imagined. The show doesn't waste time on will-they-won't-they games. It commits to the relationship early and then does the harder work: showing what it actually costs to love someone real instead of a fantasy version of them. By episode twelve you're watching two people figure out how to stay together when the initial rush wears off, when real problems show up, when being in love means changing who you are. The animation is cheap and the character designs are forgettable. The emotional writing isn't.
Hikari Tsutsui lives in a comfortable bubble of anime, manga and video games, content to admire fictional girls while real life passes him by. His one friend shares his obsession, and together they get through high school as social outcasts. That changes when pool-cleaning duty, handed out as punishment, pairs him with Iroha Igarashi, a beautiful and blunt girl with a reputation for fooling around with boys. The other girls can't stand her, yet she takes a clear interest in Hikari. Before he can process what's happening, she proposes they actually date. What follows is Hikari's crash course in real romance, as feelings he has never had before push him out of his shell. But there's an expiration date built into their relationship from the start: Iroha is moving away in six months. The show mixes comedy and warmth as Hikari learns what it means to care about someone who is going to leave.
