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I watched this anime as a child during the early 2000 and I was obsessed with it. The aesthetic, the love story and dramas... It was delightful. I had never read the manga until now, as an adult. I must say that the manga is very different from the anime, but I kinda liked it better. The nostalgic memories of the anime are very dear to me, but as a more matured reader I am satisfied with the story and the character development on the manga. The relationship of Miki and Yuu is very sweet, and despite the time in which it was written and ... the obvious presence of sexist stereotypes, I felt like Yuu wasn't such a possesive and manipulative male protagonist as you would expect from the genre. He was very respectful and you could tell that he really liked and loved Miki for who she was. And the same way around. I really liked their relationship, and the love triangles that appeared so much on the show weren't too melodramatic on the manga.
The only thing that truly disgusted me was Meiko and Namura sensei's relationship. Ugh. So pedophilic.

Watching this anime was torment to me. And it conflicted me. I read the manga when I was a teenager, and I absolutely loved it. I had a special affection for the characters and the story, I kinda knew that there were a lot of sexist themes and behaviours, but it was something that I could avoid because, well, at the time I thought it was harmless. Now, however, I couldn't stand the narrative. It was awful to watch. Tohru fullfills a very obsolete model of what a woman should be, being submissive and forgiving, just overall very passive. This series is special to me, ... but watching it as an adult makes me realize that it is not worthy of being relieved in this day and age. It just doesn't bring anything new.
It was lacking a lot in realistic development, considering that there are sensitive topics such as loss, suicide and bulliyng. I felt that the characters were very cartoon-like. In the first part of the story Kyo and Yuki behave exaclty the same, you can only differentiate them by their looks; they are overly protective towards Tohru and they fight. That's it. They lack depth, and all the characters fall in this dynamic: they are a mere cartoon of what a person actually is. And the comedy is ... non-existent.
It pains me to write this. This makes me wanna read the manga all over again to check whether the adaptation was just bad or if it was me who changed. Maybe I'm just too grown to like it now.