As expected. Very often confessions are meant to be a finale of these types of manga.
Look at:
- Kubo won't let me be Invisible
- Quintessential Quintuplets
- Tomo-chan
Which would be fine if it was a shorter story or it was simply about the characters being friends the whole way while it was obvious where we were ending up or if it was a "true" harem where the final couple was at least somewhat believably in question. The issue I had here is that we
knew from the beginning where things were going and we knew that they were inching towards a confession, but then there was all that drama in the middle inserted. There was the sudden sorta-fake relationship with senpai. There was Sayuri's confession arc. There was the BS bait-and-switch "Fuyuki's leaving" arc that resolved itself with 'ha ha, she's only gone for like 3 weeks' as if that shouldn't have been at the forefront from the beginning. It's that at no point in all the meandering, distracting, detour plotlines did I ever for a second think that this was going to end up anywhere but where we did. And because of that everything in the middle felt like a waste because it was as if the author was told to try and fake us out into thinking maybe he'd end up with another girl but at no point did it ever seem like their (the author's) heart was in it.
end with the confession if you've built to the confession really well and explored everything you can to get there. Or, preferably, don't end with the confession because a relationship is just a brand new adventure with uncharted territory to explore if you've made enjoyable characters. But don't end with the confession after you've wasted like 60-70% of the series' running time on things that weren't really worth it in the end.
honestly, this felt like the publisher put a metaphorical gun to the author's head and told them to just keep stringing things along while readership was high, then as soon as it dipped it was like "well, that's done. wrap it up now." instead of just letting them tell the story they wanted to from the beginning.