Common Name: Tsuki ga Kirei
Alternative Names: As the moon, so beautiful; Tsukigakirei
Score: 8/10, 5/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Romance, Drama, School Life, Comedy
Summary: Long ago, a poet by the name of Natsume Sōseki acquired the phrase "The moon is beautiful" to mean "I love you" during a conversation between two people. The idea was that love could be expressed without directly stating it. Azumi Kotarou is something of aspiring novelist prone to juvenile insecurities. Mizuno Akane is her school's female track star but quietly suffers from mildly debilitating anxiety. This is the story of young love between two young people who meet in junior high and learn what it means to be in love. It'll be a long and painful road for these two, for what relationship isn't, but together they are stronger than anyone might think.
Review: It's fairly common for me to criticize a show for being too formulaic, too typical, or too simplistic but, for some reason, I'm not convinced those things are necessarily a bad thing in Tsuki ga Kirei's case. While, yes, it is a pretty formulaic and feels like it's going down a checklist in almost every aspect of the show part of me can't help but feel like the show's reliably predictable structure is actually one it's finer points. Tsuki ga Kirei is a classic youth romance story. It's filled with the ups, downs, and insecurities that are standard of the subgenre. There's a guy who likes a girl and a girl who likes a guy. There are another guy and girl who like the other girl and guy respectively. There's a conflict regarding planning out their futures. There are parents who are, while annoying in that parental kind of way, doing their best to see to their family's needs. Everything about this is just so...basic. But I can't bring myself to dislike it for that. If anything, I find it kind of charming.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for a show that expresses teen angst by quoting classical literature.
What really sells me on the simplicity of the show, though, is the fact that this is a show about a bunch of school age kids. It's not one of those action titles that use the presence of a school as a pretense for making the story more accessible to an underage audience. This show does, in fact, capture what it feels like to be a kid. The helplessness against authority. The awkwardness of interacting with others. The internal strife that comes with wrestling with your own feelings. Needless to say, this show speaks volumes to the awkward childhood I had, but I think it has a little bit of that feeling for anyone, no matter what kind of childhood you had. While it presents this accessibility mainly through little side stories at the end of each episode, the show does address that not all middle school kids are socially inept or awkward as our main couple. There are some characters who are more flamboyant, more standoffish, more...how do I put this...sexually active than others. Growing up, particularly in that snapshot of a kid's life, is like an annual developmental Olympics. Some kids will excel in one aspect of reaching adulthood than others but will fall behind in another. That's just kinda how life works, and I feel like this show acknowledges and accepts every kind of experience even though the main characters could be considered a couple of late-bloomers in comparison to some of those side characters.
Just look at these two and you'll know exactly what I mean. On a side note though, it feels weird
that I wanted to shout "just kiss her already" to a couple of middle schoolers.
Here's the thing though, despite how structured and simplistic this show is, it's drama still has some amount of tension and suspense. Since this show is focused on realism, it legitimately feels like the relationship the two main characters build is something fragile that could shatter at any moment. The two of them don't talk much and don't really know what to do with their feelings, so it becomes easy for them to drift apart or put themselves in situations where their relationship feels more like a question than a certainty. Even when it's certain, though, there's a kind of petty fragility to it. Just like any real relationship, anything from a fight to a misunderstanding or a simple disagreement could be the straw that breaks the camel's back with these two and that's simply AMAZING. But kinda sums up my feelings about almost every aspect of this show.
Even in its weaker moments that feel a tad unrealistic, there's a simple and reasonable purpose behind that choice. For example, at the beginning of the show, it feels a little corny to have a young boy justify his actions and expectations by quoting the classic Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai, an author who was/is renowned for capturing the feelings and struggles of youth. Dazai's works particularly speak to the angst and depression of youth, since those were things he dealt with regularly up until he committed suicide by throwing himself into a flooded canal on his 39th birthday. The thing is, though, even if that aspect of the main character feels corny at first, it's simply a fact of who this character is, one that makes sense once we get to truly know him and his obsession with the literary world. However, even if that part of his character isn't enough to explain that level of memorization, his being a middle school student does give it some justification. What is school if not a highly structured organization where a massive and varied curriculum is drilled into the heads of young people? It'd be more surprising if Azumi didn't pick up a classical lit. quotation here and there.
It's worth noting that Azumi seems to be a fan of ALL things classical.
Literature. Local customs. Ideas of romance. You name it; he loves it.
The thing that caught my attention with this show, though, was the idea that it's something of a more modern variation on the classic romance story. Not only that, but it's one that's willing to state things or dumb things down for an older/foreign audience. What I'm referring to is the fact that our young lovers are part of a digital era where cell phones are commonplace. Texting and chat rooms, brought to you by LINE (a texting service akin to Facebook Messenger that caught on in Japan and other parts of the world), make up a big part of these characters' lives. So, I found it rather refreshing to see a love story where characters spent a lot of late nights staring at their screens and making weird faces. It's these little things, little truisms about the way relationships work in this day and age, that lends a lot of realism and reliability to a story.
Pair that level of verisimilitude with the friendly, convincing, and dramatic structure the show's progression and it's not hard to see why I've fallen head-over-heels in love with Tsuki ga Kirei. While it makes sense that the character art is pretty simple and doesn't lend to making the characters stand out really well, it does feel unique and appealing in its own way. While the music doesn't stand out a lot of the time, it was able to properly dictate what I should feel with each scene. The pacing isn't fantastic, but what else would you expect of love story about a pair of wallflowers. So, I guess that's kinda why I don't mind the structure and simplicity to this show--every decision and facet of this show is artfully deliberate. Rather than going for simplicity for the sake of making a quick buck in the industry by piggy-backing off some old, trite idea, this show goes for simplicity because life can be objectively simple sometimes. So, in case I haven't been clear enough already, I cannot recommend this show more. It's just a solid "classic" of a show that knew what it wanted to accomplish and did so in a manner that both fulfilled and defied my expectations. So, if you're someone like me who just likes watching romances, then give this one a shot, but this is definitely one of those shows that'd be great to share with someone else.