Tsukigakirei is an original slice-of-life anime about two shy young teens as they start their first year in junior high school.
That may be all the information you need to either avoid or devour Tsukigakirei episode 1, as not much else stands out but the anime’s strict adherence to a pace so dreamy and lackadaisical, so painfully true to real life, that you may feel briefly transported to a nondescript middle school in Japan yourself.
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The main characters are Akane, a socially anxious girl on the track team who relies on a squishy potato mascot in order to function in public, and Kotarou, a boy who quotes Dazai Osamu a lot and doesn’t show his short stories to anyone, even his friends. Neither Akane nor Kotarou are dynamic, active characters; both of them struggle with getting words out and expressing themselves.
While true to that junior high life, our protagonists’ introversion makes for a snoozer of a first episode. 23 minutes of stammers and stares? The scene where both kids’ families go out to dine and the parents start schmoozing it up felt like it would never end as both Akane and Kotarou try to prevent themselves from expiring of embarrassment. True to life? Yes. Hard to watch? Yes, because my eyelids are drooping. Slice-of-life is one thing, but why do we watch anime in the first place? To watch boring people go through unremarkable events?
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The art style is sweet and nostalgic, with gentle lighting and sweet, endearing doe-eyed faces all appropriate to a slice-of-life anime about puppy love. The first episode does a bucketful of showing and not telling, but unless molasses-paced romance and low-stakes awkwardness is your catnip, you may fall asleep. Tsukigakirei has a strong sense of setting, and its two main characters are good kids who you tepidly root for because good kids deserve good things the world over, but if the idea of watching two characters avoid eye contact at a drink bar for ninety seconds doesn’t spark your interest, just give this a pass.
Look: slice-of-life is one of my favorite genres, but there needs to be some kind of hook, be it March Comes In Like A Lion ’ s protagonist’s unusual career or Flying Witch ’s unusual protagonist herself. Two dopey kids sleepwalking around each other through their first year of junior high is inoffensive and the show is not without its own charm, but there are better ways to spend your time this anime season.
Will you be watching Tsukigakirei ? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
