First thoughts after watching I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class Episode 12

This note includes a spoiler.

I watched I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class episode 12. And this was the last episode of season 1. This episode was 6/10, and the entire season was 8/10. This was a great romance anime. This episode covered a few events for Maki and Umi before closing the season, and also showed there might be a next season.

The last episode ended at the beginning of the year, but this episode showed Valentine's Day, White Day, and Umi's birthday. On Valentine's Day, what I thought was that Maki's cooking skill was actually good, so how could she give him a chocolate he would be satisfied with? And in this episode, it was revealed that Umi's cooking skill was not good, or at least she didn't cook often. So she tried to cook something difficult and challenging from the beginning, and failed to do it. I thought Maki should help her make the chocolate together, and he did it so I was kinda satisfied with this small touch.

Then, on White Day, Maki returned something to others. Somehow, there were meanings for gifts and Maki tried to give snacks to each person matching the meaning. For Umi, it was a lot of candy, in both color and amount, instead of cookies.

On Umi's birthday, Maki gave Umi a hairpin, but it looked expensive for a high school student. But it was a good one and Umi wore it. What was good in that scene was that Amami also noticed Umi showing sides of herself Amami didn't know, so she wondered whether Umi had a boyfriend.

And it was the end of their first year of high school. If there is a second season, then the classes will be reshuffled, so this group will be split up.

Overall, this anime was good. There were not many big events, as you would expect from a model slice-of-life anime, but the episodes made progress slowly and steadily. Also, unlike other romance anime, the relationship between Maki and Umi really progressed enough. Interactions between characters were more natural and not awkward, and the main characters didn't talk in their heads too much. So the story was one of the best among romance anime. Well, one weird thing was they loved sharks a LOT.

Animation was also great. There were not many action scenes, but the background art and its animation, and Umi's eyes, were drawn and animated gorgeously. Sometimes, some characters looked weird to me in the animation, but it was acceptable.