Tsuki ga Kirei

Tsuki ga Kirei is a boring adolescent romance that masquerades as something more than it is. It's avoidance of standard romance tropes is not an act that by default renders a romance any better, or even realistic or compelling, if it's still utterly lacking in anything substantive whatsoever.

The main couple have a serious lack of chemistry that plagues the show from front to back. Their reservations and quaint interactions are cutely refreshing and much more in line with the actuality of young love than your typical anime portrayal. That said, I still don't understand why they liked each other in the first place or ... why that feeling only grew over time. They were awkward, but it wasn't just a cute display of awkwardness, as they legitimately had nothing substantive to talk about, ever. It felt almost ironically shallow. Nothing particularly exciting happened either, which is both astounding and damning in this show's bewilderingly positive reception. I personally don't watch television or film to be bored out of my mind while in some desperate search for trope-avoidance tactics. There are surely more valuable things to do in this world than conduct pointless meta-analysis on how a boring anime is actually good because it isn't generic. Uniqueness and quality are not mutually exclusive metrics.

Tsuki's side characters are also extremely undeveloped and not impactful in the slightest. The show employed an interesting technique of having brief side character stories shown after the ED of each episode, but these were far too scattered and simplistic to provide any insight into the actual characters. 'Twas nothing more than some quick laughs arising out of character interactions from characters' faces you sadly may not even recognize or ever see again. Back to the main show, the two romantic foils, who had actual relevant screen-time, disappointingly ended up amounting to nothing more than stale obstacles. There was also no discernible difference between the two's roles in the series. Furthermore, there really wasn't a discernible difference between the two main characters themselves other than gender. The pseudo-plot is that these are two very goal oriented kids, longing to fulfill their dreams but gratefully burdened by unexpected love. The actual plot is that these are two regular kids who aren't particularly interesting to watch nor display no distinct, marked instances of actual romantic relationship.

The art style is a blatant ripoff of Kimi no na Wa. Which is good, in the sense that Kimi no na Wa has a great art style, but somewhat shameless nonetheless. The fonts, the lighting techniques, the environments,.. everything screamed budget Shinkai. I sure hope he gets royalties from this show for inadvertently providing the entire visual framework. There was also a very prevalent usage of CGI for background characters in Tsuki ga Kirei, which was wholly unnecessary and distracting. The CGI was awful and not befitting of modern animation standards. There was also no real need to have crowds of background characters populating every scene. The environments were perfectly fine on their own. The music was decent but nothing notable and the voice acting was very poor. I haven't heard so many audible groans, breaths, and bodily noises since I last watched Dragon Ball Z. Why write actual script when you can pencil in dumb, nonsensical noises?

Watch Kimi ni Todoke or Ao Haru Ride if you want to see shy young people fall in love organically, albeit dramatically and with a theatrical flavor, as is the nature of entertainment media. Those shows are compelling, in part, because high school is an interesting romantic setting. Middle school is not. Please do remind me of a middle school romance you witnessed that wasn't (in retrospect) hilariously shallow and forced. Tsuki ga Kirei is the most forced romance I've ever watched, personally, and that's not enjoyable.

Aah, I wish someone told me before I started watching this that it's SoL on ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIDS.

NOTE: Before going any further, I just want to disclose that I'm not the biggest fan of SoL, especially when comedy is sparse. So just remember that this is from a perspective of someone who generally tends to avoid these types of shows. Also, I'll be diving into spoilers, as I don't think I'll be able to convey why I just couldn't stuff last 2 episodes otherwise. So, with that said, let's get this over with.

Story: 1/10

Now, I could write something generic here, like "well, truly, there is no ... story" or something along the lines of "whatever little story there is, it sucks", but the problem with Tsuki ga Kirei runs much, much deeper when it comes to the general narrative. Not only is it pretty cliche in terms of where plot points begin, how they climax and where they end, but it is absolutely ruined by its snail-slow pace. Now, again, this is one of the reasons why I tend to dislike SoLs in the first place: lack of forthcoming narrative. I believe that all stories should have, well, a story. It doesn't have to be epic. It doesn't have to invoke thunder-like emotions. But, it has to have a story. Otherwise, it's just a string of sketches, and it has no point. And that's the problem with Tsuki ga Kirei: it has no point.

For an example, first 2 episodes (~40 minutes), have about 5 minutes of material in the terms of narrative. Which is why nearly every new scene has like 15 establishing shots for no reason. 5 minutes of narrative, with absolutely no comedy worth a dime, stretched to 40 minutes run time. I don't understand. What's the point? Is this supposed to convey some deeper meaning I'm missing? Is it about how life is truly mundane and how little to nothing happens in our daily lives? Perhaps. Maybe that was the intention. However, there are better ways to convey this, and stretching it to 40 minutes certainly isn't a way. Maybe there's even more to it, but I'm not seeing it. I just kept trying to fill in the blanks with my own imagination, but I don't feel like it was supposed to go that way.

From episode 2 onward, this speeds up somewhat, but the whole narrative is so bare bones that nothing of true consequence happens. First and foremost, what's even the point of this story? It can't be coming of age story, as characters aren't old enough for that. It can't be relaxing romance because it's boring. It can't be comedy because it's not. It can't be melodrama because it has no drama. Is it really just 'daily lives of middle school kids who kinda like each other for some reason and decide to date'? If you ever took classes on storytelling, the very first thing you'll learn is to avoid cliches. Second is that your story generally needs to have a threefold structure: incisive beginning, cumulative climax and natural ending. Whether it's in the terms of the entire narrative or just short arcs within it, if you decide to stray from this formula, you better have dozens of years of experience when it comes to writing, or whatever you do will amount to nothing. Which is the case here.

In terms of romance here, I don't get it. Ayame and Azuki have no chemistry. They are just awkward teens that kind of decide to date. And I mean really 'awkward' of the 'awkward' kind. They're both shy, indecisive, reclusive, silent. These couples are some of the worst to write about because they have nothing captivating about them. Who will ever say that Ayame or Azuki, as individuals, are great, or even memorable, characters? No one. This isn't the case of two terribles making something great, just enhancing their template terribleness even further. All the moments they share are stuffed to shit with silence and awkward glances. I get it. That's how teens are. However, it's not interesting. Whenever we reminiscence of teen days, we don't talk about awkward relationships where nothing of consequence happened because even we forgot about it. And that's another problem here: nothing is memorable.

They don't have a moment together where you go 'haaah I'll remember that for good while'. Even their 'kiss' scene is cluttered with 'artsy' foreground and background to the point that the focus of the entire scene is indiscernible. I get what the show was going for, I really do. It aimed to convey the awkward days, the innocence of youth, but there's a reason why every other show that does this adds more to it: it's because that concept can't stand on its own. Hell, even in movie form, it can't stand on its own, let alone for 12 episodes. As someone who generally hates 'drama for the sake of drama' in shows, I was PRAYING for something to happen, anything. But even when it did, the show played it so safe I wondered what the hell was the point.

Okay, I feel like I rattled on about the story for a bit too long. I'll probably get back to it when I get to the characters, but, for the time being, let's move on.

Art: 5/10

Art has two sides: good and bad. Whenever there are only a few characters on screen, it's pretty decent. The pointless white highlights on every character were unnecessary and distracting, but it was okay. The show does have some decent moments (my favorite scene is actually the opening scene as it pans over rather interesting architecture), and bolsters some pretty decent background work.

However, it all falls apart whenever we see a group of people. CG people. It clashes with background far too much, it's amateurish, it's absolutely ugly, and even people casually watching it will notice. And, as the show loves to have 26 establishing shots for every scene, you can bet your sweet ass that those CG monstrosities will be showing up in every episode. I know it's expensive to animate such scenes, but at least put some effort into CG. If you can't handle it, don't try to go for the 'impressive' perspective to awe the viewer when details ruin the entire scene.

In terms of animation, it's similar to art. It has some competent animation, especially when it comes to running/dancing, but outside of it it's pretty basic. There were several atrocious scenes when people were running outside of track, but animation is salvaged somewhat with the aforementioned background work, as I oftentimes just ignored the characters altogether and looked for details in the scenery around them.

Sound: 9/10

By far the best part of the entire anime. Even if exclude those random 2 music videos that show up because, well, episodes gotta be 20 minutes and holy shit how else are we gonna make that happen, sound on the whole was good. Music accompanied the scenes properly and it set the mood the show was going for. To be honest, most scenes that should otherwise be completely terrible were oftentimes salvaged by the music alone. It may be just me, but I generally tend to like slow piano pieces, which this show has plenty of, so it sat with me well. Not much else to say, really.

I'd love to comment on VA's, but I bet half their scripts read 'uh' 'ah' 'umm' 'eh', so why even bother?

Characters: 5/10

As is the norm with these half-assed attempts at making romance of generic teens appealing, the show focuses on the 2 least interesting characters of its entire cast. Why? Why do these shows do this? Why focus on literally the most boring aspect of your narrative? I don't know. Maybe, again, it's some metaphor that reflects our own lives, maybe it's just something I don't get because I can't relate to it, but I was far more intrigued with everything else except our leading duo.

Azumi is defined like this: shy guy who writes.
Akame is defined like this: shy girl who runs.

There. That's the characterization. There's no depth to them and, whatever depth there appears to be, is just teen angst rearing its ugly face. They are defined by their hobbies and their base characteristic. Relationships between two shy people are AMAZING for two shy people, but they're some of the most boring relationships to look at as the third party, especially when you have to stretch it over 12 episodes.

Again, it may be me missing some deeper narrative, but I highly doubt it. I don't think it's me missing deeper narrative, but it's simply not a show meant for me. I get that. I'm not 14 anymore and, if I'm being frank, I hate my 14y old self. I'm pretty much full-fledged adult at this point, and these 'cutesy' 'coming of age' stories just don't do it for me anymore, especially if they're so lacking in comedy. I enjoy seeing relationships, not awkward attempts at them. I enjoy seeing characters that brim with 'character', not two stick-dolls who can barely hit 'audible' in terms of volume of their voices. I enjoy narrative with a point, not attempt at basic pandering.

I don't understand why this show is rated so highly. I don't understand why its characters and narrative and 'message' are so praised. They're basic. Take every 'awkward couple' of every romance anime, and you have it. Honestly, I even found Kimi no Todoke less boring, and it's not like Kimi no Todoke is epitome of even passable narrative. The reason I found it less boring is because it had comedy. Its characters bounced off of each other to create the comedic narrative because it was lacking elsewhere. However, Tsuki ga Kirei doesn't have that. I think I chuckled maybe once during their interactions. Was that the point? Maybe. I'm generally not the type to say 'oh, it's fine as long as you enjoyed it', as that statement encourages more of the same. I want aggressive, challenging stories. I want characters with depth, and I want to see them tackle issues in accordance to their character. There's none of that here.

Even though I've been shitting on our main couple, it's not like side characters are any better if I'm being honest. This mainly stems from the fact that we don't see them often enough. I don't get it, though. Pretty much every episode has at least 3-4 minutes of establishing shots, so why not just use it to give your side characters SOMETHING? Those post-credit bits aren't enough. It's like the creators realized that the story lacked that comedic narrative, and just slapped some randomly irrelevant comedic bits in the end and said 'great, let's do it like this'.

When that Chizu whatever best friend asked our MG 'can I confess to your boyfriend', I was honestly looking forward to their fallout. Not because 'I choose my 1week BF over my BFF', but because that's just not something you do as BFF. But nope. Why have SOMETHING interesting happen, when we can have 83 establishing shots of pointless scenes instead?

Tsuki ga Kirei is jam packed with nothing. It's a string of mundane events that offer no depth. It's an attempt at 'ordinary coming of age story' that fails to understand that ordinary doesn't equal boring and uninteresting. I spent most of my summer vacation at home, and I had way more fun than any of these characters. And that's just fucking sad.

Enjoyment: 5/10

I didn't enjoy the show, far from it, but I'd lie if I said there isn't any merit to it. Young people nowadays lack shows like this, and I appreciate that about the show. Doesn't mean I excuse all its shortcomings, but still, it's something. It's a show that tells young people that it's okay to be boring and ordinary. And, even if I disagree with that, I can see its point. At least it's better than your generic harem and echii crap, so if you're gonna watch something, at least watch this over that.

I don't know how the show ends. I'll probably never find out. I've been skipping scenes since episode 4, and stuffing through 40 more minutes is just not something I can do (well, 50 more minutes, as I just quit halfway through ep. 10). Whether it ends in a happy, sad or bittersweet fashion, I don't care because I don't care for the main characters. Whether their dreams come true or not, I don't care. They're 14. What the fuck are they thinking is going to happen? I don't know.

That pretty much summarizes my 'thoughts about the show': I don't know. I don't know whether there's some deeper narrative that I'm missing because I'm not the target audience (both in terms of the genres and in terms of the characters). I don't know if there's deeper meaning to the show's lack of any form of narrative. I don't know whether CG people are supposed to represent how our society is robotic, or whether it's just cheaper to make it that way. I don't know whether I'm dead inside, or it's just the show. I just... don't know.

Overall: 4/10

Whichever it may be, I know this isn't a show I'd recommend to anyone. Perhaps, if I was 14, I might have enjoyed the show more. But, I doubt it. I was very much different when I was 14 than our main duo, or even any other side character present here. It may be just me, and the show is truly a masterpiece that I'll never get, but at least from the technical standpoint of the writing, the show is not good. It has terrible pace. It lacks proper narrative. It uses bare bone foreshadowing (ep. 3 oh, we might be moving to Chiba = it's gonna be a major plot point for the couple later on. Whoever missed this... eh, whatever), it's stuffed with nothing, it doesn't have decently written characters, and myriad of other things that I'm probably forgetting, because I'm already forgetting the show itself. I don't think it's as bad as, say, Your Lie in April, but it's definitely far more boring than it.

That's really all I wanted to say. Maybe I'm truly turning into an old man... I just... don't know.

I watched Tsuki ga Kirei, also known as The Moon is Beautiful or NyQuil PM. Here are my thoughts:

I tried. I swear I tried. I tried my very best to like this show. I dropped it TWICE – once shortly after it aired, and once again when I gave it a second chance around 2019. I picked it up a third time in 2022 in a desperate effort to see what the hype was all about, yet still I was disappointed, although did finish it. I did my very best to like this show, and watched it in a variety of states of mind only ... to be met by unwavering disappointment.

For those unaware, this is a pure romance show focused on characters in late Japanese middle school (around 14 years in age I think).

The male lead and his female love interest are both ridiculously boring characters. They both have the personality of a three-day-old bowl of gruel. They have terrible chemistry and their interactions are mindnumbingly boring. I never felt the slightest spark of romance between them, or any emotion at all for that matter (besides boredom and frustration). Their entire relationship feels unnatural and artificial.

The dialogue is painfully boring and tedious, way WAY beyond the point of endearing shyness. This is not the cute reluctant youthful romance I was lead to expect. The two leads are absurdly deadpan – their affect is so flat I thought they were on enough antipsychotics to put a schizophrenic elephant into a coma (and if that doesn't work they should just broadcast this anime in the beast's habitat – this show is so forgettable it could invalidate prior studies on elephant memory). Furthermore, a huge portion of their interaction takes place via phone messages, which maybe is a blessing in disguise because the character animation is so bad. Which leads me to my next point...

The visuals of this anime are poor. The character CGI is awful, and I'm usually willing to overlook this. Seriously, those scenes of the school campus with the CGI-animated students were so poorly done. Besides the rare background frame, this show has poor visual production quality. Also worth mentioning is that I did not like the character designs – those sameface characters with the beady eyes were consistently unpleasant to look at. This is compounded by the bland school outfits and totally boring colour palette. Even outside of the CGI scenes, the character animation is crude and often off-model. Like, I can excuse poor animation if the show makes an effort at some kind of art style, but this show has neither! The colour palette and character designs are ugly and the animation quality is messy. I will concede that there were sometimes nice background frames (the ep.8 festival date is a good example), but that certainly does not excuse the appalling character animation. A lot of the visuals in this look like they took a real-life photo, passed it through an anime-style visual filter, and then added some hideous CGI-animated characters. The visual contrast between the characters and their environment is often quite stark. Even in scenes that take place on the street, the CGI-animated cars look like they belong in a console game released in 2002. Infrequently the focus of a frame is well targeted to create a nice cinematic effect – unsurprisingly these moments don't have any characters in the shot. Also I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ridiculous amount of phone messages in this show resulted in some consistently boring and tedious screenplay. Seriously, when phone screencaps are a central focus of the ED sequence, you can't deny something has seriously gone wrong with this so-called 'romance' anime (and that's not even mentioning the unfunny 'comedy' skits they add after the ED).

The commercial success of this anime is a total mystery to me, but clearly the return on investment must have been great since the animation budget was planned in Zimbabwean dollars (perhaps the elephants really were running the show, with autocratic rule too).

As I already alluded, the voice acting for the two leads is totally catatonic, and because they dominate the screentime and script, the rest of the cast is largely irrelevant. Regardless, none of the supporting cast VAs impressed me. As for music, I remember there being at least one okay insert vocal song, but otherwise the OST seemed fairly unremarkable.

Storywise, the sources of conflict are quite cliche. It was a pretty generic school romance in this regard too. There was nothing in the writing that I found praiseworthy, and the story overall feels formulaic.

Later in the series, competing potential love interests are introduced for both the male and female MC. Ordinarily, I would not enjoy this, but the two leads have such awful chemistry that I actually enjoyed (relatively) the presence of these other potential suitors. Seriously, both the alternative love interests had better chemistry with their respective targets. I think in both cases this was largely due to the pairing of an outgoing extroverted character with a shy soft-spoken romantic target. This is in stark contrast to the original couple, who are both quite introverted and reserved (and boring!). On a similar train of thought, I gotta say that I liked the amusement park episode way more than the others, perhaps mainly for the reasons just outlined. Or maybe because everyone in that episode communicates in-person instead of relying on those awful tedious text messages. In any case, episode 7 when they go to the amusement park, that was probably my favourite episode of the entire series (which isn't saying much).

It's worth noting there is little comedy in this, which is certainly not something I can say about other romance shows. Regardless of all my criticisms, I will always praise the absence of inappropriate comedic relief, particularly here because it's so common in romance shows like this. Similarly, I appreciated how wholesome and pure this show was. There was pretty much zero sexualization at all or so-called 'fanservice'. This anime was consistently innocent and sweet, regardless of all its flaws; it consistently had a 'puppy love' feeling to it. I think this is one of the main reasons it was so well received, but that also illustrates the scale of unmet demand for this kind of thing – I'm sure a show with the same premise as Tsuki ga Kirei but competently executed could be very successful.


My overall rating: 3/10
Tsuki ga Kirei is one of the worst romance shows I have ever seen. I'm mystified by what people see in this show. From my perspective, it brings nothing to the table; I see nothing of artistic worth here. There are some brief romantic moments but they're not nearly enough to compensate for the time invested. The two leads are unbelievably weak characters, and more importantly, they have zero romantic chemistry whatsoever. Additionally, both the screenplay and dialogue are incredibly dull, and the character animation is jarringly dreadful.

What words would I use to describe my Tsuki ga Kirei viewing experience? Exasperating, frustrating, BORING, irritating, unemotional, tedious...

I feel like most of the people praising this anime are just projecting their own memories onto it. Since the show and its characters have zero personality whatsoever, it is certainly a good projection medium (perhaps this is a positive feature for some viewers). I also imagine that this show would be potent self-insert material for some people. Maybe I am the wrong audience for this kind of thing.

Spoilers ahead.

Interesting premise, interesting characters, a serious plot about teenagers having to overcome certain difficulties in life to succeed in whatever they want to succeed in. All in all, it’s a very interesting anime. It’s one of those slow paced anime titles where they go into intricate details about characters and show things instead of dumping exposition in the viewer’s face. An amazing experience to say the least or so I thought. Most of anime titles nowadays are often bloated with needless fan-service, redundant storylines and overall boilerplate characters which you’ve seen a dozen of times in other titles.

Tsuki ga Kirei stands out ... as an anime. It stands out because of the uniqueness it introduces and because you actually get to see things as they unfold. The premise is quite simple. The story is about middle school romance and social ineptitude. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy and they fall in love. There is, however, a twist to this and it’s that the boy and the girl are both socially inept meaning they have it difficult with other people.

The message of Tsuki ga Kirei is unique, as I’ve encountered very few anime titles which actually have a message to its viewers. You have to read behind the lines to understand the story and to get the message. The message is something along the lines of “don’t give up your dreams and hopes for you have only begun your path”. Let me elaborate on this more because it’s an interesting message. It is an interesting message because of the premise. When you’re in middle school, you’re around 14-15 years old. Your life hasn’t even begun and nor are you close on reaching anything in life. You’re far from the truth and the harsh world. Adults know this and know what’s to come for you but you don’t. Your parents often set pressure on you, because they know that you’re capable of reaching anything in life; and the rest of the world also sets pressure on you, or so you think. You have to decide what you’re going to do in life when you’re only 14-15 years of age, in some cultures at least. This is a very difficult decision to make, as you’ve not experienced enough and haven’t done anything but studying and learning new things. This is exactly the case of Tsuki ga Kirei.

The main character Azumi Kotarou loves literature and aspires to become a writer in the future. He’s still a beginner in writing though and has a lot to learn. He doesn’t give up and continues to follow his dream despite being letdown by others. He’s an interesting character and we get to know him more by his actions, rather than what’s told to us about him. He’s incredibly shy and doesn’t really know how to talk with girls. He likes Mizuno Akane who goes to the same class as him and manages to overcome his shyness to confess his feelings for her. This leads to him having a weird relationship with Akane. Both of these characters are socially inept and are really shy.

Mizuno Akane is the love interest of Kotarou. She’s a sprinter and loves running more than anything else. She’s incredibly shy as well and has a hard time of telling what’s on her mind to other people. It later becomes a problem for her and she tries her best to deal with difficult situations.
There’s unfortunately not much to say about Akane, she likes sprinting and is extremely shy but tries to battle it in different ways. It isn’t really elaborated as to why Akane is Kotarou’s primary love interest and the one he wants to date.

What makes these characters interesting? They become interesting because we actually get to know them, we see how they interact with each other. We see how difficult it is between them to have their relationship as it’s not really an official one, or rather none of the parts have made it public to others. This is what is interesting about their relationship. This particular aspect raises a lot of questions, questions like why didn’t they openly admit to everyone about their relationship, what is the reasoning, and so on and so forth. I think that most of it succumbs to their shyness. They both seem to have a lot of problems in communicating with others and openly talking about their feelings. This sort of peculiar relationship is what makes this anime stand out even more and makes it unique.

I cannot say that this is a masterpiece of any kind however. Stories like these have been told since the day of dawn, some bad and some better. The problem I have with this sort of story is the fact how over serious these characters are portrayed as. They behave and act like adults despite being in middle school and being 14 to 15 years of age. They have complex relationships which any sort of teenager wouldn’t be able to understand fully. The main problem I have is how the show is subverting expectations. They introduce these characters as basically adults in a middle school setting however when something goes wrong or not in their favor, they start acting like children. These characters fail to live up to the expectations.

Kotarou is surely an interesting character but he’s also very lackluster. He aspires to be a writer and is shy. That’s his entire character summed up in one sentence. He doesn’t have any sort of charisma or anything particularly unique about him, yet he somehow manages to spark interest of several girls at the same time. He isn’t a very well established protagonist either because you cannot distinguish him from a random character in the very same show. He likes literature and often quotes famous Japanese poets which honestly comes off as pretentious.
The rest of the cast and other characters are unfortunately not so prevalent in the show. Side characters barely get any screen time and when they do, it’s only for a scene or two in the episode. I would honestly expect more development on the side characters, because they are equally important if not more given the premise.

This whole premise and the seriousness of characters would be more suitable in a high school setting where characters are finally finishing high school and have to be prepared either for the real life and what’s about to come or university. This high school setting could also potentially introduce other problems that some people experience, as in moving out from your house to study, student loans and debts, saying good bye to your friends which you’ll probably never meet again or ever have the same relationship with again. That premise is grounded in realism. That’s what Tsuki ga Kirei tries to establish itself but falls short almost immediately due to the entire premise not making much sense from the very start. In my opinion, this story would have been told a lot better if it were in a high school setting.

Another thing that is sort of not relatable in this show is the overemphasis on high school and how much of an important role high school takes in one’s life. I will have to agree to disagree. High school is definitely a shifting point of your life, you become more mature and more prepared for the real life so to speak. What I can’t understand is how they set high school as this unachievable goal which you have to strive and give everything up to make it. When in middle school it’s important to make the right decisions, the decisions you make, make you who you are. This show tries to be grounded in realism but simply can’t due to the set premise.

The best way to describe the story of the show is to divide it into two parts. The first part of the show establishes the characters and builds up relationships between said characters. It is where Kotarou decides he likes Akane and wants to date her. Akane likes Kotarou. They eventually end up together but have difficulties communicating with each other. Their shyness problem creates a lot of issues and ends up burning bridges between certain characters. Many of the mishaps could have been avoided by simply telling your close friends what’s on your mind. It is not that difficult and you don’t end up in a weird situation with your close friends, they are your friends after all. Communication is key in many situations but two socially inept people do not seem to understand that.

Most of the conflicts essentially boil down miscommunication and misunderstandings. There isn’t anything advanced and this goes on for the first half of the show which is quite disappointing because there was much more potential in the show.

The second part of the show is where Kotarou and Akane finally start dating and getting closer to each other. Many quintessential parts of their relationship are skipped. In one episode they can’t even talk to each other and in the next it feels like they’ve been dating for more than ten years. This sort of inconsistency and no development feels lazy and could have been done a lot better.
Because this is an anime about middle-school romance, there will be drama. That was exactly what I was looking for in Tsuki ga Kirei but I understood that I was wrong. There was barely any drama in the show and when there was, it amounted to nothing. It honestly felt pointless to even have it in the show, because nothing was changed and no lesson was learnt. The characters are exactly as they were before the incident happened as they are after the incident. This doesn’t leave any room for character development or growth which is exactly what you’d want to see in a show about making decisions that have impact on one’s life. You want to see how characters constantly grow, develop and learn from their previous mistakes.

This show lacks comedy which is a shame. There is absolutely no comedy, jokes or anything remotely humorous happening in 12 episodes. It is truly a shame because comedy could have made the viewer feel a bit more relieved and at least have a laugh. The over serious tone this anime sets doesn’t feel genuine, it feels forced and unnatural many times.
The pacing is too slow and the show quickly becomes boring and unwatchable at times. I started skipping certain parts of episodes because of how slow the show was but managed to still fully understand the story. It’s because there is very little substance to the plot and most of things happening are very predictable.

The production value of this show is another hot topic as I’d like to point out that the animation isn’t perfect. The usage of CG in this show is utterly horrendous and made want to drop the show on several occasions. They’ve used CG to populate certain scenes with people and make them feel more realistic, which is quite a shame to be honest. Not all places have to be crowded and with the given budget, they should have probably not wasted any time or effort on doing what they did. The animation is decent when there isn’t more than 2 or 3 people in the scene. The sprinting animation was splendid though and I have no complaints about that. I wouldn’t say it’s unwatchable due to the animation or anything like that, you just have to get used to the really weird art-style and budget of this show. I only got used to it after 3 or so episodes.

The music wasn’t anything special. Nothing memorable. It was as generic as it could get.

I didn’t really enjoy the show. It was lackluster, it was boring and it was honestly a waste of time. Watching 12 episodes of this felt like spending 10 years of my life in agonizing pain. I really do appreciate the message but ultimately it amounted to nothing. As everything else to be frank. Characters didn’t grow. The story wasn’t there. The animation was most of the times utterly horrendous due to the usage of CG. The art-style was an insult. It felt like they used the same template for Akane as they did for Kotarou. They look absolutely identical, except for the minor changes to the body parts and hairstyle. I feel like this show lacked proper execution and some clear direction. These two things are unfortunately difficult to achieve, especially when your show has a low budget. What could have been an interesting premise turned into complete and utter dog shit.

To wrap it all up, if you have a lot of time on your hands and want to watch a show that ultimately amounts to nothing with a magical happy ending, watch Tsuki ga Kirei. This show isn’t for everybody. It isn’t completely terrible and isn’t amazing by any means. I’d say this show falls under the “watchable” category. Watchable as in, it is possible to watch but you wouldn’t feel satisfied. Similar stories in other titles have been told a lot better. You have to be a masochist to watch this show from start to end.

Plot was pretty good and artwork was pretty superb. However, that's as far as I can go with this anime. In general, the plot was not very well executed. The MC is a butt-hurt little boy who was pissed by the fact that his girlfriend rejected a guy who tried to steal her away from him. Shows no gratitude for the fact that she did not dump him for another one. Furthermore, in other scenarios, he is not very direct with his responses, almost to the point of incompetence. There are much better anime out there like Clannad and Tsurezure Children.

I watched this because I wanted to watch some good romance story and this had a pretty high rating, so I was like, let’s watch this. What a waste of my time….

The story was very standard, but if executed well, it would be enjoyable. It was not though, so, unfortunately, I was bored throughout the whole story.
I watched this with a friend and we made a comedy out of it; it was just that ridiculously bad for a romance story.
It was supposed to have some really bad struggles and shit, but this was just weak and pathetic and not really that much of a ... struggle. It was a pain to watch how the characters made problems out of things they shouldn’t have made a problem out.

The art was like 2.5D or something. I did not really like it, but I don’t judge too much on art. It did look stupid at some moments, but yeah.

The characters were the worst of this show. The main characters who fall in love with each other are plain; I did not care for them one bit. If one had died it would have taken me a while to notice.
She was sometimes so stupid in misunderstanding things and make a problem out of it which was completely unnecessary.
He, unfortunately, did the same. It’s like they copy pasted their charactersXD
Then you have the potential rivals…. They were so forced. It’s like they just felt the need to add rivals to the story when it wasn’t really needed. At least make them interesting if you add them. I don’t even know what their personalities were like because they had none.
Also, the obsession the main character had with her toy was so weird. I thought it was weird from the beginning, like why?
And then she bought one for him tooXD

So, this story was a wasted potential and please don’t watch it if you’re looking for some good romance story. This is not it!!!
You can watch this with a friend for some comic relief thoughXD

I really really wanted to like this anime… and I did, not just a whole lot.

Perhaps my expectations were too high since this anime is rated pretty high here on MAL and a few people had recommended it to me. After reading the premise, I was expecting a cute slice of life about two kids going through their first love and seeing a bunch of awkward moments. And that’s what I got! I just didn’t expect it to be so boring.

Plot was Incredibly simplistic, even for a slice of life. Basically, it’s about a boy who wants to be an author for literature and a ... girl who runs track and how they fall in love and start going out. Many find the simple premise a strength and I agree that it can be enjoyable as long as the characters are dynamic and developed throughout the story. Unfortunately, I did not get that with Tsuki Ga Kirei. There is very little drama, and almost no conflict.

The main issue that I have with this anime is that the leads are so dull and have zero chemistry, I honestly could not figure out why they liked each other. I think they had two conversations before there was a confession, and they just kept giving each other longing looks without saying a word. They are both shy in nature, but I cannot ignore the fact that they really don’t have any real problems in their lives besides their relationship. They are both part of a group of friends, they are good at their respective clubs and their families are supporting to their goals. Kotaro’s mom was a bit of a nag, but you know that she means well and just wants him to take his future more seriously. There is nothing really interesting about Kotaro and Akane, they are not charismatic or have any other traits besides their respective interests.
The side characters are forgettable, the only standouts are Roman and Chinatsu, I think I liked them better than the leads and wished they got more screentime. I don’t remember any of the other kids’ names, they had no impact whatsoever.

I did enjoy the art style though, the backgrounds were well drawn with a lot of details, and the lighting and cinematography was impressive. I know that people were complaining about the CGI, but it honestly did not bother me too much. I did notice a couple of slips here and there, specially during character close ups, but nothing too bad. For the type of show it was, the animation was satisfactory.

Overall, I don’t think I could recommend this show. I’m honestly surprised I stuck until end, but only because I was hoping for some decent development. Watch Kimi ni Todoke instead if you’re looking for a good romance with shy and loveable characters.

TLDR/Summary: Boring, milquetoast in every respect, and completely derivative, Tsuki ga Kirei manages to do nothing but tell the most basic story with bland characters. It fails to have any depth in any facet as well as lacking any shallow, surface-level appeal, making this show uninteresting and unable to set itself apart. The glacial pace of scenes and bad character design only exacerbates theses problems. At its best, this show is plain white bread. At its worst, its a stale loaf without having any drinking water.

The problem with this anime isn't necessarily that there are problems (which there certainly are), but more that it ... lacks any strengths. In wracking my brain for positives, I could only come up with two things that I would actually call good: the characters typically acted realistically and the kiss scenes were done pretty well. That's it. You could maybe also argue the music, but I ultimately found it mediocre.

Now that I've gone over all of the positives, its time to delve into where this show really fails. Many of these failures could possibly be overlooked if the show was charming in other ways, but it failed to do anything spectacularly well to look past these shortcomings.

Firstly, none of the side characters had any personality. They were all very bland and had no input on any of the outcomes in the story (with the possible exception of Koutaro borrowing the phone or him getting jealous). None of their actions really mattered and none of them developed or even showed character traits. The whole point of realism as a genre is the characters and if you fail here in any form of media aiming for a realist portrayal your work will be boring. To be fair, this would be fine if your main couple can pull the personality of the show by themselves, but they definitely can't.

Second, the plot was predictable, shallow, and uninteresting. If you are going to do a plot that has been done a trillion times before, the only way to make it worthwhile is to deviate somewhere, whether that is concept, character interactions, or even quality. Tsuki ga Kirei doesn't. To call it milquetoast would be putting it lightly. It didn't innovate with its plot points, characters, interaction, setting, or even directing/portrayal. It was a cookie cutter plot, cookie cutter characters, etc. These can be fine each on their own, but if there is no unique aspects anywhere it creates a feeling that the story is not one worth telling. For the same reason I would not tell a story about how I went to the store and came back with a carton of milk, Tsuki ga Kirei is a bad story where very little exceptional, interesting, or unpredictable things happen.

Third, the pacing was horrible. I watched the majority of the show in 2x speed, and it still felt like characters were talking slowly and scenes were dragging on. I actually enjoyed the show more like a 4.5 than a 3, but the fact that it felt only normal in 2x speed was certainly a knock. Additionally, the show took 3 full episodes to stop being complete garbage which is too many when you only have 12 episodes.

Fourth, the character designs (specifically the main). Most of the faces were the exact same. Ultimately, this isn't actually that big of an issue, but it was exacerbated by making the two main characters look almost exactly alike. This admittedly may not be a problem for everyone, but it is a huge issue to me when we are supposed to see these characters as unique.

Fifth, a lack of development or depth to the main characters. This also extends to the side characters, but is clearly of more importance with the main cast. They never change in any way or show any moments of human complexity. To be fair, change isn't absolutely necessary if you make a point of resistance to change or create a change in viewer perception of a character, but none of this happens. Even if a character never changes, if their complexity as characters is displayed that is often enough to be engaging, but they were utterly bland and simple characters. To be fair, you could argue the characters different displays of emotions (predominately jealousy, embarassment, or fear of rejection) were these complexities and in a way you would be right. The only problem is they were just standard reactions, with no more complexity or depth than if an author simply wrote "He felt jealous." It was the equivalent to the tsundere heroine meme that is "It's not like I care about you or anything, baka." Its just basic and uninteresting unless there is more going on or some context, which there isn't.

Additionally, I had some pet peeves that weren't drastic errors, but should be noted. The credit ending was sweet and endearing, but didn't fit the tone of the show imo, Akane's actions to me are too diabolical to be realistic unless they painted her as an evil character, the story he wrote at the end being discovered is a little too convenient, and the fact that they never brought up his interest in boxing and the Ali poster was a huge missed opportunity to actually add something to the character.

I don't understand how anyone can give this show a 7. That might sound arrogant, but it is undeniable that it wasn't innovative, it was purely basic. If you like basic thats fine, but calling anything purely basic more than just good seems intellectually dishonest. As I said in the TLDR, at its best this show is plain white bread. I can understand how someone can like plain white bread, but rating it 8 or high baffles me. At its worst, its stale, tasteless, and drags on forever.

This anime is one of the reason why i prefer romcom to pure romance anime. But since i saw it has good ratings i decided to give it a try.

It started off really bad. 2 MCs who were still in the middle school, timid, emotionally unstable, and hardly even talk to each other. The development was then very slow up until more than half the series where it went a bit better, but still with boring MC characters with the addition of a bit conflicts and dramas. The ending is still sweet though the timeline jump was rather massive.

Overall it's still a boring romance ... anime with a flat character development. 4/10 from me.

Made by studio feel? But I ain't feeling it.
This is literally the worst romance I have seen, there are probably worst but I would have never expected it to get an 8 on MAL. Like seriously, this has been such a waste of my time and I really can't see why people would enjoy this.

The PROBLEMS
Character: 1/10 - Utter trash, our main dude is so unlikeable and the girl just feels off..... At first, the supporting characters were the ones that acted normal but nearing to the end they sucked just as bad. Overall I felt as if I was watching a show where the ... people fail to be human. Plus why were there so many silent moments? I really couldn't stand that 30 seconds of absolute quiet, like seriously that ain't human-like. Everyone and every action feel very off.

Art: 1/10 - The horrible use of 3D just makes it worse. There was nothing for me to grip on for the show, all I felt was pain right trash. All the characters looked the same, faces is just copy-paste and hairstyle so dry and plain. Plus I have not seen disproportion this bad since One Punch Man season 2. Faces off, weird bodies and just absolute trash animation. I can appreciate some of the nice backgrounds but it is quickly ruined by the shit characters.

Writing/Story: 1</10 - Holy shit are you kidding me this series is literally a copy-paste of any other romance series just stripped off of any plot twist or interest points. Our two main characters, who just met for the first time, suddenly act all awkward for no reason. Bruh, both of them were fine talking to other characters of different genders but nope, still act awkward when only the two meet. What is this barbaric writing, like did the writers have any experience or thoughts on how romance works? Not that I am an expert in love or anything but the way scenes are executed just implies how clueless the writers know what they are doing. Well, my point of view only stands from the anime view and not the manga, but if this was a close adaptation to the manga God forbid me to read that shit.

With that, I really have no reason to recommend this to anyone. All people need to know is that this show is under-budget, under produced, not realistic as in so damn inhumane-like and so many awkward silents.

Should be called 'Watch us as we fail to be human as well as our friends'

Decent to light 1

I've seen people say this anime is good and all, how cute it is and etc. For some reason I'm the only one who finds it annoying, when I myself love romantic animes. I can't believe this anime has an 8+ rating, but people are bound to their own opinion. Today I honestly tried to watch more of this anime (quit watching it 2 weeks ago), but not even 2 episodes in I'm dropping it for the second time. For some reason this is the only romantic anime in existence that I find bad, because of just how much nothing happends.

Honestly , I expected more from the anime. I always have a certain standard for Slice of Life anime , but this one is just way too boring. Other Slice of Life anime tend to get a bit more dramatic when it comes to romantic situations , while this one focuses a bit more on the simplicity of human life. That's what I don't like about the anime , others might like it though. As I was watching the anime I started to feel extremely bored , but in my head I thought "hey maybe the last couple of episodes might be good" but they ... were boring as hell nevertheless. It's an anime to watch when you really have nothing to do. I would say that there are way better anime from the same genre.

Tsuki ga Kirei is a tale of budding love between two middle schoolers. The love story has shyness, jealousy, anger, and sweetness but the thing that makes it a mediocre piece is also a dominating part of it, that's the art and animation. Character art looks horrible with very bad face shapes and the animation felt very odd.

The anime had a nice story at the very least but the execution was not on point. The forced love triangles and jealousy scene were just trying to show more of the stereotypical side of the story. The protagonists were fine but the side characters were just solely ... made for jealousy or encouragement other than that they were just non-existential. The use of CGI in the background activities felt like the anime was made on a very low budget and the CGI gets more unbearable throughout the series. The anime focused solely on the part of shyness in new love but forgot many other aspects of it. A total of 8 to 9 episodes were just about shyness making it boring at one point.

The ending was well done but considering all things the anime did some things better than many other romance anime that follow the stereotypes to the letter. But in the end, the bad animation, the rough and repetitive character art, and the bad unnecessary use of CGI pulled down the whole anime and made it a pretty average series

I would recommend the series to people that don't want a very stereotypical story but keep in mind not to expect too much from it

I am now going to write my based review about Tsukigakirei, since this is one of the worst shows I have ever watched in my 3 months binge-watching anime. I must say to me, it is pretty generic shit.

Let me first start off by saying that I do not intend to hate on the producers and animators and the studio as a whole who created this series because I know that they have put their heart and efforts into creating this, and I know this sounds weird but for me when I make a based review, I also think that I am offending the work ... of the studio, and that is not my purpose to do so.

I'll start then with a basic summary of what the plot is:

"Kotaro Azumi and Akane Mizuno become third year students at junior high school and are classmates for the first time. They are put in charge of the equipment for a sports festival and slowly grow closer via LINE. These two, along with fellow students Chinatsu Nishio and Takumi Hira, relate to their peers through mutual understandings and feelings. As their final year at junior high school progresses, the group overcome their challenges to mature and become aware of changes in themselves."

Pretty basic huh? Well yeah, it actually is.

Story: a pathetic 1/10

The story itself is pretty simple, to be honest, I just cannot wrap my mind around this simple yet disturbingly simple story. I'll divide it into three parts; premise, development and dialogue.

For the story premise, there is no story premise as it is a generic romance anime. This one is fine to me as it seems I have gotten into liking other generic romance animes with the same "no premise". If you are gonna say that the premise is them trying to grow their relationship by overcoming the obstacles of everyday issues about love like jealousy and love interfering with ambition, I have seen that a lot of times.

For the story development, there is literally NONE AT ALL. There is, but it is so little than normal viewers won't be able to see it with the naked eye. Yes, it is supposed to be based off of real relationships, but I do not see the similarities at all. Real relationships require good understanding of each other, and in the anime all they do is nothing but talk about topics that are nothing special, until the end, of course, which I pretty much only liked about the development.

For the story dialogue, this what I hated the most about the three. Shittiest and dullest dialogue I have ever seen. Full of worthless breathing that sums up to almost two-thirds of an episode from the get-go. Dialogues like this aren't real representations of starting relationships. They gain confidence speaking to each other, but it is so little that I want to bang my head hearing them speak one-word sentences and short-word conversations and them breathe air every time they speak a word and say "uhmmm, hmmmm, ughhhhh, mhmmmm" LIKE BRO THIS AIN'T HENTAI. Anyways, kinda going off point. Overall the story is just bad and dull despite it being simple and overall cutesy type of romance, it's simply bad.

Art: 3/10

When it comes to animation, it is bad, when it comes to character design, it is outright scary and worse.

The animation is pretty simple, I like the animation scenes where Akane runs and every other animation with running scenes , it seems realistic, to me atleast. The walking, or all interactive and vocal animations are simplistic and outright pretty good, I might even praise it. The thing is, the 3D animations are what dragged it down so much I hated it as background display. They should have rather used normal 2d background people There was one scene where the figure walking behind the main characters, walked like the Terminator was about to demolish the whole city.

Now let's move on to the character designs, both 2D and 3D. For the 2D designs, scary, and for 3D designs, more scary. They look so unrealistic and bland, I even think Boku no Pico did a better job making there character designs. The facial structure of it is as expected for an anime, but when it comes to particular scenes the have caught my attention, it seems that some character's facial and body structure were so off, there was even one point where one eye is irrationally drawn to it's pair, and the calves have no definition, simply drawn slants that are connected from the thighs. The clothes and accessories they wear, I have no complaints about it. The body structure isn't anatomically correct, but decent enough to be considered in an anime. Overall animation is messy with some good traits but more bad ones.

Now to sound, this is pretty simple to me.

Sound: 8/10

OP is a banger, no cap. I listened to it and got attached to it. Kudos to the band who made this song, they pulled of a good song to a bad series. I think this is the only thing about Tsukigakirei I will ever praise it for. The OP is what made me expect that this anime was a simple, yet memorable and nostalgic one, like an early 2010 anime of some sorts. Too bad the story was not in line with the music. The ED was good too.

Now for Voice acting sounds, I'll rate it decent actually. To the voice actors who managed to cope up with a cringe ass dialogue, I hope you guys are fine and well. Sound effects are fine, not bad for environmental realism. That's it for sound.

Character: 4/10

The characters were very quirky and very cringe-y at the same time. The story made the qualities of each character even worse as they are supposed to be.
I mostly hated Chinatsu, just because I actually don't know the fucking reason why she likes the MC so much. There was no real backstory to each and every character that revolved around the group as it seems. The story dialogue ruined it, or is it just me becoming dumbfounded by it, I don't really know. Overall, the characters aren't to be blamed of being scummy conversation starters, since the story mostly shapes the qualities, quirks and ideals of each and every characters in a story. The characters are badly written and there is nothing memorable about any of them, even the main relationship.

Enjoyment: a literally fucking 1/10

I was recommended to watch this by some random person on Facebook while I was watching a music video with Tsukigakirei being in the background, like an AMV or something along that name. Since I am fairly new to the romance anime world, I decided to watch this anyways because my list to watch was few back then, and I was a new person to anime back then. I had high expectations because everybody also liked it and gave it a high rating on MAL. I decided to give it a go. I started watching it and at first, it seemed decent, but the more I watched, the more I was freaked out how bad it was. I finished it in two days because I restrain myself from watching this shit. It was clearly hard to watch it continuously because of every moment is pure, unfiltered cringe. The ending was a whopper on my face. How is it possible that you will end it on a bad note if it didn't even have any impact to me whatsoever. There was no emotional impact on the ending.

Was it worth a use of my time?

No it was a waste of time for me. I could have watched something better.

Was it worth watching in the first place?

It wasn't to me, but give it an actual try. You might even come to like the series. Give it an actual try before you give your thoughts about the series.

Was it worth rewatching at all?

For the love of anime, please no..

Do you really hate this anime series?

It's obvious. I do not hate it like it's a nemesis to my reputation. It's the type of hate that makes you laugh and be mad at the same time.

Overall: 3/10

For, me this is a decent rating for a shit show. Overall it's bad, it's redundant, it's generic, it has nothing unique to offer, it copies almost every other romance anime with no unique ideas and gather it into one garbage masterpiece. Nothing will ever make this become better and nothing ever will. People rate this a 10/10 because they watch for clout and so that their friends will agree to them, or either some anime weeb who only likes high-rated shows and low rated shows are considered technically shit without even analyzing the whole story.

Wanna watch generic anime series'? Find one yourself on MAL. There is a lot to offer.

Wanna watch generic shit anime series'? Watch Tsukigakirei, or Wonder Momo or something idk.

That's all I've got. I cannot even believe I wasted my time ranting Tsukigakirei.

Yeah, I regret ranting on this series and it is a waste of time too.