I love Makoto, like she is by far my favorite character of all time, but I didn't like her because of her confidant. Her confidant, while understandable where it's coming from, is not enjoyable or interesting. The rank 1 leads you to believe it'll be something similar to Elizabeth in Persona 3, where it's Makoto and Protagonist going on trips together to have her open up, but then it takes a hard detour. It's completely not what you think it'll be, and becauae of that it becomes one of, if not my least favorite confidant in the entire game, next to Ann's. However, what redeems Makoto is the moments you spend with her during the story. Her character shines a lot during the story, and she has not only shows how capable and reliable she is, but shows off how she does need protagonist and the teammates help from time to time, as well as having some of the cutest moments in some of the side stuff you can do with her. Sure she takes the leader role immediately upon joining, but I felt that Naoto from Persona 4 did something similar to keep the player on track until the end. I will at least say that Makoto doesn't seem to know all the answers right off the bat and is just as much trying to piece together everything that is going as the player and the teammates are.

TL;DR: Makoto is a great character, is very loveable, but has the worst confidant IMO. She is saved because the main story and side stuff do her a lot of justice.