YMMV / Sand Chronicles

• Angst? What Angst?: Ann desperately tries and sometimes successfully invokes this by doing her best to move on after mother's death and lead a happy normal life, however many of her eventual issues and flaws end up relating to it in some way. She's finally able to move on completely after her near-death experience.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Many fans prefer Ann with Fuji instead of Daigo, probably because Fuji's very considerate towards Ann. Fans were delighted when she finally (yet briefly) got together with Fuji, and were disappointed when she returned to Daigo in the end.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A variant, as the scene is a flashback and shown to readers long after you know what happens; in an omake in volume 9 where it shows Fuji receiving a Christmas present from Ann who by then has broken up with Daigo, and at the end he thinks to himself, "God, Buddha, Santa, if you exist... please give me a future with her." The killer is that you know exactly that he won't get one with her.
  • A variant for the same reasons above, in the first bonus chapter in volume 9, which focuses on Miwako's past, a 20 year old Miwako happily announces to Hiroko (Daigo's mum) that she'll be moving with the man of her dreams (despite having just met him) to Tokyo - it's her relieved expression and her saying "I'm finally getting out of here!" that kills it, since readers know she'll eventually return to Shimane divorced and take her own life out of misery.
• Ho Yay: In the bonus chapter focusing on best friends Miwako and Hiroko's past, Miwako describes the object of her Love at First Sight situation Masahiro (Ann's father) to Hiroko and says he's a bit like her, which pretty much says Hiroko is her type.
• The Woobie: Ann. At age 12 her parents divorce and she and Miwako move to the difficult country town Shimane. Soon afterward Miwako commits suicide which sends Ann into a Heroic BSoD for a few days. Years later, after much thinking, Ann painfully chooses to live with her dad in Tokyo for high school so she can keep him company and thus leaves Shimane. Despite her best efforts, this strains some of her relationships, especially with boyfriend Daigo. They have a fight and make up, but Ann then breaks up with him out of fear of tainting his happiness. She tries to move on and starts a relationship with Fuji who's liked her since the start, but it fails because she can't get over Daigo. Later she tries to get back together with Daigo, but he simply tells her to be strong and move on. At age 26 she finally finds love again and becomes engaged to Sakura - however his bad personality proves too much for her and when she brings it up he angrily breaks off the engagement. Afterward she is so depressed and emotionally a mess that she makes a spontaneous visit to the sand museum, except it's closed and so she decides to walk in the nearby the beach instead. She accidentally cuts herself with broken glass in the sand and lies there awaiting her death, which she narrowly misses. It's only at this point, after nearly 15 years of haunting her, that she can finally let Miwako's death go. And that's a brief outline.