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I am pleased with this arc. The close friendship between Kaoru and Junichi is convincingly portrayed, with a natural trust and sweetness that would have been enjoyable even in a story without a romantic ending.
In a larger perspective, it seems that Junichi has "leveled up" in his love, from the dog-like instinctive love in the first arc to a somewhat more human "natural love" in this one, although he is still somewhat led by his glands, as is often the case with boys his age. I hope this is the beginning of a gradual progression. In Buddhist lore, it is assumed that people can improve even without remembering their incarnations. Even though these arcs are iterations rather than incarnations, they are still cumulative in the mind of the onlooker, so I have a faint little hope that we may see Junichi becoming gradually more mature and expansive in his love. I suspect he will at least need it in the final arc, which (judging from small hint so far) will confront him with a greater challenge than he has met before.
Then again, I may be wrong. At least I had the pleasure of watching a fairly realistic depiction of friendship blossoming into love. The world could need more of that. (Marriages between friends are statistically more likely to last, although nothing in this world is certain. It makes sense, given that they already know 100 bad things about each other before their romance starts...)
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