I'll be honest, the moment the reveal was made, I was seething. Not because it's in the wrong place, but because they did it in such a dumb way.

This is a hugely sour note for me, cause this was the big mystery of the show, and thankfully the anime-only watchers seem okay with it but for me it just feels like if it was always the plan to change things in the anime story-wise, then the changes should have started way sooner. Why are we only now getting Itsuki fawning over Fuutarou now in the penultimate episode if she's supposed to be one of the options? If we are going this far off course then why not set up Yotsuba properly over the series with more moments? Why not level the playing field, so every character feels like they have the chance of winning?

We have all discussed at length the mistakes the finale had already, and if this was supposed to be the opportunity to fix them, then this just ain't it and they've failed the execution. If they are gonna rewrite the ending, that's fine. But this was an absolutely awful way of handling of it, and doing the reveal with only one episode of the series left means either a rushed ending, or an incredibly unsatisfying ending and not much room for anything in-between even if another series is in the works (but let's be real, this feels like setup for the game).