Some of the reviewers here seem to have a problem with the situaton here. Hello this is the 21st century. Japan frowns on this but they have pretty lewd sex shops in the city ( Tokyo ) which don't even exist in some of the major U. S. cities here. The teacher and the student fall in love. Their feelings grow for each other as the years pass. This isn't an infatuation but really love. After 3 years if it really was an infatuation they would have moved on . The mother was really more worried about what people would think not so much for the sons sake as he didn't care, but for her own reputation. The mother wasn't really a good mother to begin with. First of all she deprived her son of contact with his father and then she says that she made a mistake falling for a married man with a family. You can't compare the 2 situations as the teacher wasn't married nor had any children. Then she continues to torture the boy. Then the boys so called friends . With friends like that you don't need any enemies. Runa was jealous but what was she expecting for him to love her. It would have been a disaster. Also Shotaro, he expected her to be in love with him when you can tell from the beginning that she wasn't. Then that character Joffe he shouldn't have gotten involved in famly matters as he was not the boys father, he even helped the mother to keep the father from contacting the boy. He was just as criminal as the mother is. People need to understand that age is just a number. The acceptable age gap to me is 10 years and no more than that. The only 2 people that were for the relationship were the boys father and the ex's boss she was in favor of that also. Everyone else was just too behind the times. The ending was terrible as the scene should have shown the mother giving Hijiri her blessing for all of the pain that she put the girl through. People think that she was a predator but if you noticed in the entire series she remained faithful to the boy and didn't entertain the thought of anyone else. The ending should have been longer. Most of the stars were for the actress she is dropped dead gorgeous in a sweet way.