Taking the dust off my reviews because this story deserves the 5/5.

I knew from the get-go that this would be a charming little story, but damn, it managed to impress me the whole way through. The characters were great, the setting was cute, the mystery was genuinely compelling, and it was a romcom that's ACTUALLY FUNNY.

I think what I enjoyed the most about this story is that it kept a whimsical cutesy aesthetic the whole way through but did not shy away from its more serious topics. If you think about it, the idea of an amnesiac lover is kind of inherently depressing, isn't it? So how would such a lighthearted story tackle this without making light of it? By bringing shadow to the sunlight :3

Shanna started off as a no thoughts head empty kind of character who relentlessly forced her optimism on Rondy, her amnesiac boyfriend who went through a sudden, extreme personality change after exploding himself like a dumbass. Because of this, he felt uncomfortable and almost icked at times since she was basically appealing to a version of him that "no longer existed".

Rather than cure his condition through the power of love, the story basically had Shanna stop with her relentless optimism to... well, face reality. If this version of her boyfriend has a radically different personality, tastes, and even memories, is it even the same person? At some points it felt like she mourned the Rondy she used to know, which is a real, depressingly common response in situations like these. Not only that, but it also showed Rondy mourning himself, which again, is sadly commonplace in these scenarios.

People with radical personality/memory changes after accidents often feel like nobody likes them since loved ones tend to get fixated on their "former selves" so to say. It got to a point where I genuinely felt like Rondy would try to explode himself again to go back to normal, and knowing the story, it probably wouldn't have worked... and that's also what I liked about it so much. There is no easy fix to these things. It's okay to feel sad about it, but sometimes the best thing we can do is to accept that things can't go back to the way they used to be, and that trying to force loved ones into a mold doesn't help but hurt them.

I really liked how the entire cast and the setting complemented these themes, and how the whole mold shtick applies to several relationships and even complexes from them. The villagers were all initially cute sidekicks, but ended up showing their core wounds as the story went on, which is why their ultimate resolution hit so well.

Now, this story has a villain which.....e ghhhvvv.... I'm still of conflicted about, but they ultimately ended up working despite the reveal chapter being my least favorite. It's not that it didn't fit, but I was having a blast and then the "twist" villain got a 180 shift in personality which I guess activated my fight or flight given how the whole sequence followed 2010s Disney beat by beat.

Having said that, I do like the ultimate resolution and how we can basically infer what'll happen to them, even if they didn't get their comeuppance during the story.

But yeah, I'm glad I found this little gem. It really feels like it could be a children's book or a cute little videogame that randomly turns mentally ill halfway through. Every element complements each other. More importantly, the themes and topics it explores wrap everything into a tight little bow... and YET, if we removed the bow, not only would it detract from the overall experience but dismantle it completely, which is a sign that every element is exactly where it should be, at least to me.

Do yourselves a favor and pick this one up, hornyfeed, thanks.