Lilaika

If you like enemies to lovers this might be for you, but this series also heavily relies on the second chance romance and misunderstanding tropes, neither of which I am a fan of.

What didn’t help was that I enjoyed the parts where the main characters were teenagers in high school more than when they met again as adults. The constant bickering and fighting as children and then teenagers was done so well, but despite them constantly competing and fighting they were actually kind of friends which made that part more realistic and enjoyable in my eyes. The bickering and fighting continued when they met again as adults, it was still well done, but there was now so much unresolved resentment that I mainly just waited impatiently for the reveal of what happened in the past and couldn't enjoy the bickering as much.

This might have worked better for me as two separated series. I generally struggle to understand why there would still be unresolved feelings after almost twenty years. Reminiscing about the past, sure, not getting closure back then and it being stirred up, fine, but with how it was presented why they went their separate ways as teenagers, it just wasn’t a good enough reason for me to still feel so strongly about each other and the whole situation almost twenty years later.

I might still have finished watching this were it not for an utterly annoying supporting character.
This character does several incredibly unkind or downright cruel things because of liking someone who does not reciprocate those feelings and it pissed me off immensely. What that character was doing, as well as the premise of having unrequited feelings for someone for about twenty years, is something I just cannot relate to at all and it is an incredibly stupid trope in my opinion.
I get that having an unrequited crush hurts. But willingly hurting your friends because of that by omitting information, spreading false information, and sabotaging them, makes you not only a bad friend, but also a mean person in general.
And frankly, if someone really has an unrequited crush for almost twenty years, they should consider getting professional help if they really cannot move on from that person after such a long time, especially if they use those feelings to justify their mean and petty actions.
It is not like that character only did those unkind and mean things as a teenager which still would have been bad, but in that case I might have been able to show a little bit of leniency. But no, as an adult that person is just as petty and continues to be a bad friend and a selfish person, and justifies it all with their romantic feelings for all these years.
Liking someone for a long time does not entitle you in any way to be liked back and you shouldn’t claim to care about someone if you purposefully hurt them for your own gain.
It was also lazy writing as this character seemed to have no other traits except having an unrequited, decades long crush and behaving really despicably because of that.

I usually don't rate shows that I drop, but since I can't upload a review without a rating, I had to give it one. There were some really enjoyable parts, and while it had started to stagnate a bit before I dropped it, I probably would have continued watching were it not for this utterly useless nuisance of a supporting character.