I find the idea of having a relationship with a high-schooler disguising. This is a boy we're dealing with, almost a child, he's troubled and immature and it was painful to see him fall apart because of this relationship. Not all big age gaps are harmful, but it this case, I can't find one scenario in which this is ok. The way it's shown how he devolves from a normal kid into to a manic, quite violent kid possessed by jealousy makes think the show is condemning and not romanticizing this kind of relationship. It shows he is completely unprepared to deal with this kind of relationship.

I empathized with her dissatisfaction with her relationship, I found her boyfriend quite repulsive, and I also understand not wanting to work for one of those horrible soulless companies but you don't fix that by grooming a boy for pete's sake. So she because equally deranged for not realizing how messed up it is to be with that boy. Her coworker's situation is not the same. The age age seems significant but at lest her boyfriend is an employed adult and his parents are aware of their relationship.

The series was well made and filmed and it portrayed quite well the struggles an an aging woman in Japan. The societal norms are so strict and it leaves so little room for a woman's fulfillment that it's easy to understand how suffocating that can be.

It though this was all going somewhere but then it lost me at the ending. Where it hinted they reunited and it put a spotlight on one of the better moments of their relationship where they were both candid about their dreams and it was a tender moment where his age isn't so apparent because we can all have dreams well into old age.

I also find it very unlikely that he would end up directing a movie that gets displayed in her cinema. In reality, he would have been so consumed by their relationships that it would have long lasting effects. He would have dropped out of school, become depressed and erratic. It's impossible for a healthy outcome to come out of this.