Beautiful coming-of-age story with an interesting blend of traditional anime artwork and a kind of rotoscope-blended background scenery. It is impossible to not love the stories' protagonist Sora Suzuki, she is a lovely young girl of 12 or 13 and drawn with amazing expressiveness for an anime. I also really enjoyed the performance of her friend Gouta Midorikawa. It seemed appropriately dramatic and realistic. For me, the story had some serious flaws that are hard to forgive. One of the main supporting characters in Sora's circle of friends, Asagi Honomi, is constantly harsh and high-and-mighty. She is paired up with KurodaKouji who obviously likes her, but she never gives him a chance to get close to her. She misses no opportunity to criticize him, yet he still seems to pine after her. I wish the relationship had been allowed to progress to a final conclusion that the viewer could understand. Also, the classroom teacher is always formal and never breaks from this demeanor. Where is her humanity? Why is the assistant instructor so odd? We never get an explanation. Finally, the ending is sad. Very, very sad. Almost pointlessly unnecessarily aggravatingly sad. Why did it have to end this way? Why??? What is it with the Japanese story writers and their preoccupation with train-wreck story endings? I am deducting another point from Story for this alone.

Still I recommend watching the series. It ends too soon, but it is fun while it lasts.