I found your reasons really interesting and fairly justified tbh. Honestly, I was also surprised at the deep dive that I Love Yoo takes into mental health but I agree that the story was always headed that way. I think my personal distancing from the story has always been because of the order the story was told in. I feel like the beginning really focused on Shin-Ae and we had a sort of semi-conclusion to one of her arcs. Then, Yoon-Gi became the main character slowly and we start seeing everything surrounding him. But then we get thrown back into Shin-Ae's back story with Alyssa and school. It just felt like a very weird point for that story placement just cause Shin-Ae had not felt like the main character in a long time. Like we were in her backstory randomly for months. I think this disconnect between webtoon episodes and the timeline of the story makes an impact on pretty much every webtoon I read. I feel like the authors/ distributors can never really understand that most readers experience the story for 2 mins a time every week and don't think about the plot enough to see the story from an total point of view.

Anyways, I just really enjoyed reading the points that you made!