^ People also said the same whe it come to Haruka an Kud's arc,now look what happened.
Removing romance isn't always necessary bad.Look on the bright side,we might get to see Kurugaya arc filled with wonderful friendship and nice stuffs we've never seen before in the VN.
Seriously,they aren't going to dump friendship away just because it's Kurugaya considering how far and deep they're going with it.
So like even if there're still romance,I bet friendship will still take about at least half of the arc.