The project originated from an informal conversation between screenwriter Yōsuke Kuroda and producer Mitsutoshi Ogura, in which Kuroda expressed his desire to create an original work in the 'youth' or 'romantic comedy' genre.

Kuroda wanted to work with character designer Taraku Uon from the start, to the point of stating that he could no longer imagine the work with characters designed by anyone else.

Kuroda defined the series as an 'orthodox romantic comedy' with a foundation inspired by fairy tales, choosing to focus on a reduced number of main characters in order to develop them better.

The setting was chosen to be the city of Komoro, in Nagano Prefecture, instead of Ōmachi (already used in previous works by the same authors) because chief producer Nobuhiro Ōsawa was originally from nearby Nagawa, and several staff members came from Saku, a city in the same prefecture.

The city of Komoro actively collaborated in the production through the Komoro Film Commission, and several real locations in the city (such as Kaikoen Park, the Aioichō shopping district, and Otome Station) appear repeatedly in the anime.

In the fourth episode, 'Highschool of the Dead', another work on which both Kuroda and character designer Masayoshi Tanaka had collaborated, appears as a film screened in the fiction; the production committee of that film is also credited in the end credits as a 'collaboration'.

On March 1, 2012, the 'Natsumachi Omotenashi' project was founded in Komoro, a local revitalization initiative linked to the series, with the creation of tourist maps and merchandise for visiting fans.

To promote Komoro and the surrounding areas, a train of the Shinano Railway line (series 115, unit S2) was decorated with a livery themed after the series and put into circulation for one year; it was the first time the railway company had applied a personalized illustration to a train outside of standard advertising.