Not only does Sentaro just vanish out of nowhere to never return, but Kaoru suddenly acts INCREDIBLY out of character, thus ruining his chances for a relationship with Ritsuko and utterly destroying the essence of the romance of the story. Then they all go their separate ways and never meet again until they're all adults. What is this ending supposed to do? The romance was probably my favorite part, as it was the most compelling and made for some great character development. Not only did it come to a very unsatisfactory conclusion, but the way it was done was so sudden that all it could do was piss me off.