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Sound! Euphonium is my favorite anime of all time. I mean, it doesn't have the genius writing of other shows I've seen or the crazy action sequences of some of my favorite animanga. 
But at the same time, I could never imagine talking about my favorite anime without mentioning this show. Sound! Euphonium is human, I relate to the characters, I'm moved by the soundtrack, and I admire the life in the art style; it's astounding.

Which is why it crushes me to not be able to rate this a 10 like previous seasons. 'Cause don't get me wrong, this season is great; but it just doesn't ... stand a chance when compared to the beauty and marvel of the previous seasons. 

There were two HUGE problems with this season, one: there was no music in a music-themed anime. This show is definitely about a bunch of other important things as well: friendships, love, recovering from trauma, overcoming difficulties, and finding yourself. But the main theme is still music, which is why it was foolish of this season to skip almost every major performance and only show parts of minor performances. Aside from this though I must say that the overall soundtrack was great since it was mostly new songs that had not been used in the previous seasons. 

Problem number two: the pacing and drama were off. What could've been some interesting drama within the club was ruined by poor pacing, which in turn led to this season suffering and becoming consumed by the drama that took way too long to resolve. In any normal 12-episode show the drama would be resolved within a few episodes since there wouldn't be any episodes to waste, in this season however it just kept dragging on and on until the end. But in all honesty, it's also a little understandable since the writers most likely wanted to emphasize the "beat around the bush" personalities of the characters involved in the drama. But even so, slower pacing only worked in the previous seasons since they were both dedicated to Kumiko's first year, there were enough episodes to waste on slow pacing, unlike in this season. And in the end, it just made A LOT of this season feel like a sequence of awkward moments without any resolution/explanation. 

With that being said, I do still think that this season is worth watching, because like I said it’s still a good season all things considered. It may not be the same as the previous seasons, but it is still charming in it's own way and definitely a good watch.

This review contains minor spoilers.

The story was great. I watched the movie last year and I actually disliked it until I read the manga which completely changed my mind. I can't recall if the movie had the same ending as the manga but the manga definitely had more content than the movie.

The art was incredibly beautiful. I literally stared at some of the bigger pictures for minutes because it was so good. The character designs were really nice and I liked the way Midori Motohashi drew them when they were blushing and how she sometimes drew these big pictures of the park.

The garden of ... words also uses small subtext that's fairly easy to understand. Such as how Yukino recognized the schools emblem on Takao's shirt. But the most beautiful use of subtext was how shoes and walking were used in the story. Yukino lost the ability to walk properly which basically means that she can't move on from the past because of fear of the things that hurt her before. Takao intends to make shoes that will make her want to walk again and this means that Takao pretty much just wants to help her with her worries and help her move forward.

So like I said it uses subtext but not to the point where you have to sit yourself down after reading it and think "what the hell did I just read?" which I think is a really good thing.

The ending was really nice and showed that even though Takao might believe that he's too young he still managed to help Yukino and made her able to "walk to the ends of the earth."

So overall I really enjoyed the garden of words.

"Distancing yourself from others, acting like you're above them or that you just don't care. How could this way of living ever be the correct one? You can't hope for a genuine connection if you're afraid of getting hurt or hurting others. If you truly care about other people then getting hurt is inevitable. But that's not something to be sad about. The pain and struggles you'll go though just means that it was in fact, genuine. It wouldn't be otherwise."

Sounds simple right? You have to open yourself up and hope that others will reciprocate those feelings. Easy isn't it?

It's not. This is the ... single fact that needs to be learned by Hachiman in OreGairu. But yet, he can't do it. And it's not just him, a lot of us can't. OreGairu shows us, the audience the value of finding genuine connections with other people. It shows us that they're worth fighting for even if it's scary not knowing how things will turn out.

This anime has taught me one of the most life changing lessons in my entire life. And now I'll search for something genuine too.