*light spoilers*
Short review: The story is simple but complex, with little satisfaction but with a lot tto say about many topics.
The art is average, which is okay, since the main way the story is conveyed is through the text of poems.
The characters can be annoying and persistent, unwilling to change and open up, but feel natural, I can imagine the people being in my life and feeling like real people BECAUSE of their faults as well as their pros.
Long interpretation review:
The Poem of Aster and Hana truly is a poem. Just like a poem you can interpret many things from it, there are many points of view with which you can look through the steps and at the characters, and just like a poem there is no true way to review this, that's why keep in mind that everything here is super subjective.
The story gives off a very mixed feeling of being both very fast paced, and yet very slowly progressing, things happen and all mean something, but not all events and actions in the story have a direct consequence. It feels like rather than trying to give off a feeling of satisfaction to the reader through consequences, it keeps one thinking about the actions taken and events that happened and their happenstance. There are three main parts to the story, the story of hate, the story of love, and the story of choices. The story of hate seems very straightforward but isn't, hate isn't something born from nothing, it has a defined reason and defined target, and yet it seems to eat up everything around it like fire in a forest, but unlike with a fire, we try to deal with hate ourselves rather than relying on others unlike when dealing with fire, even though they are the same and need to be dealt with the same way.
The story of love and the story of choices overlap somewhat, more often than not we cannot control feelings of love, and unlike other emotions love isn't a fully positive or negative feeling. It can both be a light shining behind an angel coming to save a lost shepherd, but it can also be a burden. And that is to either side, the one giving AND the one receiving. Love can develop in many ways and at different places, and yet it is one emotion. While we cannot choose not love, we can make choices that affect our and other's love, we can act to pursue and give up, accept or refuse, and there is no single right answer to either giver or receiver. Choices make people, they are scary because we inherently wish for a status quo, and yet they must be made. People must decide on many things, and the choices you make are ambiguous. The story has people make many choices, most of which hurt others, and yet those choices don't lead to misfortune. The story has a 'good ending's despite no one making 'good' choices, persistence, obsessions, possession, isolation, all of these choices are made and worked through. A bad choice doesn't mean a bad ending, a choice is just that, a choice, how a choice shapes your life story, is only decided by the next one, and the one after that, so there is no reason to be disproved about a single, or even a multiple wrong ones.
The story is complex and a review is hard, but I hope that without making out too much of the story I properly conveyed what my feelings from it is. There are many things that I have taken from this story, despite it not being super enjoyable or fun to read, there is something to be gained from it, unlike other enjoyable stories. And the choice which one is worth more is only yours to make.
