Finished watching it today. I'd like to thank you guys for advertising
Cross Game as you did, I doubt I would have even noticed the series without that. Yup, those things happen. Truly a great anime ! I really regret not picking this up sooner, I would have liked to follow it weekly, I'm sure it would have made me love it even more. "Marathoning" a series this long is just not the same.
That said, I still loved it a lot. Pretty much everything was perfect, though I expected to see more romance and less baseball (this really bothered me in the early stage of the series). The best thing about the series for me were its characters, and that's also where my only complaint lies: Mizuki. What the hell was the point of his character, other than giving me urges to strangle him? I thought he'd be a love rival when he first appeared, but it's made clear pretty much right away that he has no chance whatsoever with Aoba, which makes him useless, and he sort of dissapears into the background after a few episodes. And in the few instances he appeared, it was just to be obnoxious. I was thinking the whole time that Azuma would have made a better rival and... that's what happened later
. It should have been that way from the start. In a way, it makes Mizuki's character even more pointless. Speaking of Azuma, I think his character development is the one I enjoyed the most throughout the series. He can even smile now !
Akane is another character that bothered me at first. Bringing in a Wakaba clone out of nowhere seemed like a very lame trick to use to easily introduce a new love interest for Kou. But I actually warmed up to her pretty quickly, and as opposed to Mizuki, her character was actually very useful. I think she greatly helped Kou, Aoba and Akaishi get over their issues. Though I still find it creepy that everyone was interested in her just because she's Wakaba 2.0, at least at first. Must have been really weird for her...
Aoba is easily my favourite character. There's so much to say about her... but I'll just post this quote from the final episode:
Hmm, I think I'll stop here or I'll go on for hours if I get started on the good points. Ended up writing more than I intented to already
PS: I really liked the pictures Poko-kun posted a few pages back. Nice cosplay !