Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na: Crescent Love

Finally, a romantic comedy done right. Even though I'm a guy, I have seen many romantic animes and this is probably one of the best. This is one of those feel good stories that leaves you with a smile upon your face. There is nothing new here or out of the ordinary but the ending is highly satisfying. So many animes start out strong but in the end they fizzle out. Luckily, this isn't one of them. The comedy is light without going over the top and the music is rather gentle, no pop stuff here. Give it a try, you'll love it. (You can ... also cry if you want to.)

(MINOR SPOILERS, READ WITH CAUTION)

This anime falls under mediocre to me, but not for the reasons you might think. Where should I begin. Well, for starters I will pull out all the smaller thoughts I have about this anime right now, starting with the negatives. But before I do that even, I feel I have been having a bad habit of getting straight to my opinion without going over the synopsis of the anime from my perception, which is what a review should do.

Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro...too lazy to type the whole title, you got here already so you know what it's called. This anime ... covers what life would be like if Earth actually did make it to the moon and successfully cultivated it. The end result was that a good amount of people went over to the Moon to make sure control remained. And all seemed at peace.

Now, you may be thinking I'm spoiling a lot here, but surprisingly, the anime starts off this way. Not with what I just said, but what I'm about to say. And that's that the people of Earth decided to basically go into World War III with the people of the Moon, with the end result being in travesty as several parts of Earth were blown up and vice versa with the Moon. Following the aftermath, a new peace was formed, but with moderately damaged relations between the two planets. And as such, peace is on but a very thin thread.

After this very intensive plot, well, now things are going to get real mellow for a while. On the Moon, royalty is a thing, apparently. The king entrusts his only daughter to go on a mission to Earth to research her surroundings, the people around it and return with a report to decide if the Earth is still trustworthy basically. I assume the worst-case scenario would be that they would just change up some laws between the two planets if she reported something bad, according to my theory.

And with the princess of the Moon heading to Earth, surely you'd think she has some royal mansion or equivalent of her previous whereabouts present on Earth. Nope, she has to do a homestay instead in the home of the most trustworthy being on Earth. That being the primary secretary to the president of the United Nations of course, but who could have guessed that. Oh, and her little relatives as well, one of which is the protagonist. Oh, you thought it was going to be just the princess? Too bad! They're both the main characters. You can't just have an anime covering both the Earth and the Moon and only have one character from a different planet as the protagonist. You got to have one from each.

Now, normally I just categorize the characters with their own long paragraphs by this point, but there's not much to work with, so I'll make it short and summarize all of them in shorter form, which will also mix in negatives with positives. Firstly, Jin. Not much to say about him. He's specifically designed to be comical relief, but it's a little, well, obviously forced. Any time he makes a snark comment at his sister, Natsuki, she hits him with a paddle that reads whatever it was punishing Jin for in big, expressive Japanese. The end result is that, despite Natsuki being the one to hit Jin through whatever expensive object, Jin instead gets docked his pay at his job. Oh, by the way, both of them work for their dad. And whenever something breaks, even if it is not Jin's fault, Jin is blamed. That is the comedy with Jin and that's it. You will get bored of it after the first time you see it.

Speaking of, Natsuki is your supportive female and childhood friend of the protagonist, Tatsuya. Surprisingly, no, he does not end up with her, even though most romances normally do pair up the childhood male and female friends. Instead, she is simply supportive of him and there's no real indication that she likes Tatsuya either. So, no love triangle that I was aware of. Well on the topic of supportive females, that brings us to the final two.

The first is Sayaka, the aforesaid secretary and head of the home. She is very supportive of Tatsuya, though at one time, it felt like there was some awkward sexual tension between the two. And if you remember, yes, I said "relatives" earlier. Sayaka is actually Tatsuya's cousin, and in most anime, cousins normally do get together. So naturally, I shipped these two at first cause he was just as tall as her as well and I have seen quite a few anime that have done plot twists with relatives before, so I was on edge. Shortly after I saw the two, of course, it became apparent she was simply the supportive cousin of Tatsuya and nothing more. And I figured he would have been more interested in, you know, the princess. And Sayaka refers to herself as his older sister anyway, so it would have been strange if they ended up together. She's still more attractive than the princess, though.

The other one is Mai, Tatsuya's actual sibling and youngest of the household. Or at least, that is what the anime will tell you. In the game, they also mention that Mai is adopted, so she is not related to Tatsuya at all. And so yes, that means he could go all on that little sister fix if he wanted, but zero sexual tension is between these two throughout the entire anime, so obviously she was designed specifically to be cute, adorable and nothing more. Oh, she does play the flute, but that literally only happens a literal couple of times in the anime. I think it might have been more significant in the game, but anime normally do have to cut corners to fill in the episode slots.

I could go on more about characters, but I will feel that would be spoiling too much., though I could just mention a minor character you will not really remember too much. And that would be Midori, your typical spunky girl whom naturally has to have green hair to fit the personality trait. I have seen enough anime to know that the green haired women tend to be the most sporadic and I do not know why this is. In the game, however, she is actually a love interest to Tatsuya. I found this out well reading a bit about her since she played such a minor role in the anime as some comic relief, so that caught me by surprise. However, it's only in the newest prints of the game on consoles, as opposed to the original PC version, where she was even more minor than in the anime.

I thought the anime built a good premise with the whole Moon actually being taken over by Earth, since that has always been a goal of mankind to have it inhabitable. I really believed that was unique, but they did not take too much advantage of it. Nearly the whole anime, excluding the final episodes, takes place on Earth and, as I said earlier, it's mostly Slice of Life stuff cause it gets pretty chill. The whole thing about the princess clears up quickly as she simply tells everyone to address her casually and by her name, Feena.

Wow, I feel like I should have told you the names of these protagonists a while ago, but am just now getting there. But yeah, her name is Feena Fam Earthlight. Two things come to mind after I say this name, I'm sure. "Really? Fam?" No, I am being serious, that's actually in her full name. And yes, her last name has "Earth" in it, so naturally she wants to bring peace among planets. What a surprise. Her last name represents that the Earth has some light in it and that it's not just a dark place filled with bad people that are worse than that of the people on the Moon. Or maybe I am just looking too far into her last name. I would mention more about the protagonists other than their names, but since that might essentially spoil a major portion of the story, I will leave you to that. You will see these two in the anime a lot, Tatsuya and Feena I mean.

Overall, I feel this anime did an adequate job with its plot and setting, but could have done way more. I want to theorize that, as usual, it has everything to do with the amount of episodes it had to work with, being the lowest common denominator of twelve that most anime are subjected to. So, I won't punish them for rushing the story if there really was more to it, and I'm sure they could've done more since, as I mentioned earlier, Midori was originally a love interest for Tatsuya, the minor character in the anime that only provides comedy whenever she appears. I will forgive them for that, but not for jumping the gun on certain episodes. I feel at times, it went from Slice of Life to Drama real fast, even when accounting the short amount of episodes. With better pacing, this anime could have been something I would have given a higher score. But sadly, that is not the case.

If you are looking for something different, but don't mind a chill story that has a bit of intensity to it, look no further. This anime will satisfy that need, but not for long. Then again, that is the sad fate of any anime fan is that the anime you love the most usually fall under the horrible fate of being twelve episodes long. I'm fortunate in that my personal favorite anime is more than that, but not by much. For those that did enjoy this one a lot and are reading reviews simply to see how others felt, well, I don't hold any aggression towards you. Enjoy what you want to enjoy and feel free to recommend this to fellow anime fans, for I feel if they are not regulars, they might get a kick out of Yoake Mae- you know the rest. Since it does offer a few twists if they are still new to anime.

I was recommended this by a friend and because I'm a fan of old style (though it was made in 2006, it has a 90s anime feel), I thought I'd give it a go. Five episodes in, and I couldn't take any more. Completely predictable and uncreative, it's a simple generic shojou anime. The concept of the story sounded interesting, but there isn't enough drama to make it sustain anything. It's supposed to be dramatic, but as far as an innovative and fun anime, this is not.

If I was seven, I think I would be mindless enough to not be bothered with characters or ... plot, but if Sailor Moon or Cardcaptors Sakura can even attempt to engage you into a whirlwind storyline with 3D characters, there isn't any excuse for Yoake Mae.