Feena Fam Earthlight
Title: Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na -- Crescent Love
Game, Manga, Anime: Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na's first incarnation was an adult visual novel game released for the PC by August on September 25, 2005, and a PS2 adaptation entitled Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na -- Brighter than Dawning Blue --, released by Aria on December 7th, 2006.
A manga version of the story, illustrated by HoeHoe No-Miso began to be serialized in Dengeki Daioh on September 21, 2005, and is still running.
The anime itself is twelve episodes long, and ran from October 4, 2006 to December 20th, 2006 on TBS Japan. It was directed by Masahiko Ohta (who directed the tenth episode of Rozen Maiden), and the animation was done by Studio Doumu (who did the animation for DearS, Please Teacher! and Please Twins!)
Story: Anyways, the basic plot for this series is that, in order to improve relationships between the Earth and the Moon (the moon has been settled at this point in time, obviously, and there's a particularly nasty war in their recent past), the Princess of the Moon (Feena) is going to come for a homestay on Earth. The homestay family chosen is that of our main character, Tatsuya, mainly because his older sister is an assistant to the President (forget her name, at the moment). The rest of the series focuses on Tatsuya and Feena's budding relationship and the challenges they face.
The story is a romantic comedy, hands down. Unfortunately, the screwball comedy is usually achieved by forcing some characters into certain roles, or involves running jokes at their expense. Luckily, it doesn't get too old. And as for the romance part -- you will be rooting for Feena and Tatsuya the whole way through the series (just like every breathing body in the series).
The series itself can be divided into two parts: The first six epsiodes are more of the bonding between Feena and Tatsuya, while the second half is where all the couple's challenges (and most of the good part of the story) kicks in.
This show also focuses on foreign relations, and paralells our own world today a lot, which is something I really appreciate.
The only gripe that I have with the story is that the series waits until the last half to get to the meat of the story, that some characters fall into stereotypes and that genre cliches are used at times. But, for the most part, they're easily made up for by the last half of the series.
Art: This series tends to use richer colors (greens, blues, purples), for the backgrounds and character colors, for the most part. Characters also have at least three different outfits, so there's a good deal of variety. The 2D animation is beautiful, and blends well with the 3D animation, when it's used. I do think that the animators got a little lazy, though, mainly because they made Feena's mom look so much like her daugher.
Music: Not much I can find wrong here. A good deal of the background music is variations on the OP theme (which in and of itself is beautiful), but there's still enough of it that isn't to give variation. If at all possible, I definetly want to find the OST for this. I don't like the ED so much, though, even when it was altered slightly for the last episode.
Seiyuu: Like most series, I can't find find anything wrong with the seiyuu; each character's seiyuu fits them to the letter. One little gem that I found, though, was the Japanese seiyuu for Danglars (Gankutsuou) was the seiyuu for Takano-sensei, one of the major -- and funniest -- side characters.
Length: Perfect. It takes about half the series (twelve episodes long) to get the ball rolling, but when it starts, it more than makes up for it.
Overall: A beautifully animated/composed screwball romantic comedy with a couple you care about that takes a while to get going, but when it does, it rawqs your socks.
Story: 9/10
Art: 8/10
Music: 8/10
Seiyuu: 8/10
Length: 8/10
Overall: 41/50; 82% (B)
