Aggretsuko - Haida x Retsuko. I just discovered this anime and watched on a whim, but boy, am I glad I did. Despite its seemingly cutesy appearance, it's a series that's tonally mature and well-written in how it portrays the characters, their relationships and their lives. It's a remarkably relatable anime. What really got to me is the latter half of the first season where we see a love triangle form and an accompanying dynamic that...struck a chord in me as an NS fan. Heck, the "Sasuke" of this triangle even has "Sasuke" in his name (thankfully, he's not a psychopathic megalomaniac, just a bland and socially oblivious idiot...which could describe Sasuke as well, but moving on). But unlike Sakura, who clung to to her preconceived image of Sasuke and seemingly ignored his faults, Retsuko realized that her infatuation on Resasuke was based on her idealized version of him, re-interpreting his most distasteful qualities and habits as endearing traits, ignoring the fact that they had nothing in common, and trying to make him seem more appealing in her imagination. Once she understood that, she broke up with him.
Meanwhile, Haida (the Naruto of this triangle) has harbored a crush on Retsuko for five years and is one of her best friends. He also came to a conclusion that while the two of them may have been good friends, they didn't really know each other well outside of work. At the end of the first season, Haida has a revelation that's similar to Retsuko's, but unlike Retsuko, the sides of herself that he's witnessed and found captivating are real (whereas Retsuko deliberately deluded herself into attributing positive qualities to Resasuke, when he had none) and he finally musters up the courage to ask her out so that he can understand more about her and find out if a romantic relationship between them is possible.
Sadly, we don't hear her response, but the prospect is that she'll likely tell him to give her time since she just got out of a bad breakup, but the chances that she'll accept his proposal in the future (and ultimately reveal her "Inner Sakura" to him, a part of her that she's prominently ashamed of) are pretty good.
Edited by Kagomaru, 22 July 2018 - 09:43 PM.