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I wasn't that impressed by True Tears, but it was short enough and had enough of an ending to make it worth watching. It falls apart around episode 9, where the various faults and weak characterization became too apparent for me. It was a decent attempt at a "realistic" highschool romance anime, but it never really felt satisfying.
The characters were poorly-defined, and mostly boring. Shinichirou starts off feeling a bit like Naota from FLCL, but by the end he could have been replaced by a plank of wood with "player goes here" written on it. What the girls see in him is beyond me. The girls themselves have barely any life or personality, except Noe (who's personality seems conveniently malleable). I suppose these problems exist because the anime avoided most standard characterization cliches, but didn't replace them with something that would serve a similar purpose (like backstory).
The character interactions were often tedious, especially due to constantly repeating this classic situation: X asks or tells Y something important, Y doesn't hear it or ignores it, and X decides to drop the subject. Without confrontation the show begins to feel artificially prolonged and loses it's realism. By episode 9, it's become obnoxious, and it feels like the writers themselves realized this and decided to wrap things up by finally choosing a direction.
At least there is a suitable ending, and not a terrible one. Because of that, and the fact that it's short, True Tears is worth the watch. It has nice production values, but this isn't the type of anime where those can easily cover it's characterization flaws. It's saved by being smart enough to not be too lengthy, and by having enough dignity to avoid most cliches while not being too melodramatic. I'll round it up to 7/10.
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