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I enjoyed this anime a lot, but I was also a little bit disappointed. Given the rating, I expected a lot more.

The art was good, the story was good, the animation was okay, the character development was good - but none of them were great. They were all lacking. You know the saying 'show don't tell?' - they told a lot and showed a little. There were great opportunities to show memories and thoughts and feelings alongside music, but instead they opted for still flashbacks - with no timing or consideration of the music. It could have been a very powerful, emotional anime, but instead ... it was just a good one.

They obviously had a strict animation budget, and I believe this hindered the character development a bit. Characters develop a lot over the course of the show, but we don't see a lot of it. We don't get to see many of their intimate thoughts and feelings and moments, and when we do, they're repeated again and again, only adding small details.

I didn't feel like the score worked well with the animation. The music and animation and art were rarely considered together. I felt like the music moved the story, but didn't enhance it. I expected the music to move me, but with all the choppy dialog and lack of powerful imagery, it didn't.

I would have liked to see more real, genuine, relatable moments, carefully shown and timed with the music to really tug at the heartstrings. I wanted to love the characters more. I wanted to relate to them more.

A lot of the show's elements didn't work well together. It brought in too many characters and didn't have enough time for all of them. It felt like it should have been a 50 episode anime. The ending was anticlimactic, possibly due to poor consideration of music and animation.

I liked this show, but I didn't love it.

-- some spoilers discussing where the anime and manga diverged --

No one has written a review after viewing all the episodes yet, so I thought I should. Despite all the fillers in the first half, it was the second quarter that ruined this series for me. They had canon, manga material to work with - and they completely butchered it, rewriting it so that the story made no sense and the characters were out of character.

The story is about Amu and her love life just as much as it is about the Embryo, and it's important to the story and character development that we see ... that Amu is starting to fall in love with Ikuto, who loves her for who she is. The manga is a lot more obvious about this than the anime. In the manga, Amu is obviously falling further and further in love with Ikuto, and as he leaves to search for his father, she rushes to him at the airport. He kisses her and tells her 'I'll definitely make you fall in love with me - be prepared' before he boards the plane. This was obviously a very important moment, but was cut completely from the anime.

The airport scene was replaced with Amu telling Tadase how much she loves him and not Ikuto, which makes no sense at all. Amu even admits to herself that she's falling in love with Ikuto, and her Shugo Charas realize it as well, so why such a butchered ending? I can't see how the third series is going to fix it, either.

There were also a lot of other 'Amuto' scenes cut from this series and a lot of romance between Tadase and Amu added. From the bedroom scenes between Amu and Ikuto, where they snuggled a lot more than is shown in the anime, to Amu wrapping her arms around Ikuto, and Tadase realizing that she's in love with Ikuto as well. They were replaced with 'shout your love contests' and dates between Amu and Tadase. Amu is meant to be developing from a 'confused and lost' girl who had a crush on the popular 'prince' who only loves one side of her, to a mature character who has fallen in love with somone who really needs and understands her. The anime completely ruined this development, and Amu hasn't matured at all like she has in the manga.

The music and art weren't bad, although I don't think Ikuto's songs were as sad as they were described in the manga, and I preferred the music from season one.

All in all, I was very disappointed, and recommend that Ikuto fans read the manga instead in order to understand the true magnitude of Ikuto's and Amu's relationship.