>>50142734I mean, I agree. Which is why I said that spaghetti spilling would ruin the pier scene, because its strength was in how earnest their care for each other felt, and such cartoonish elements would detract from it. Yet without the spaghetti we're without clear visual indicators of romance, which opens it for the audience to interpret it as romantic or not.
I personally treat it as romantic because of who the character is, and it's a very mature portrayal of romantic love. But the text does not make it explicit and the reader is free to see otherwise.