People exist for love and revolution.
What They Say:
It’s the third year of middle school. Kotaro, a bookish boy aspiring to become a novelist, and Akane, a track girl who loves to run, meet in the same class together for the first time. They’re put in charge of the equipment for the sports festival, and slowly grow closer via LINE. How does Kotaro deal with his growing feelings for her? Meanwhile, Takumi has been in love with Akane since first year, and Akane’s friend, Chinatsu, becomes interested in Kotaro. A refreshing story of young love set in Kawagoe.
The Review:
Content: (Please note that the content portion of the review may contain spoilers)
And so begins to slope toward inevitable tragedy. At the end end of last week's episode, Akane received a text from Chinatsu about how she was [also] falling for Kotarou. Not knowing how to approach the situation, Akane decides it's best to not even bring it up to him. Of course, it's easy to tell that she just doesn't want her boyfriend to even be remotely aware of other girls and their potential feelings for him. And as possessive as that last sentence may seem, it really isn't when you think about it. When push comes to shove, Akane is scared -- the same way anyone else would be if they were thrust into the same situation. The secret begins to eat away at Akane's psyche, and with the next track meet rapidly approaching, she doesn't have much time to figure things out.
Meanwhile, things aren't all that easy for Kotarou either. Out of nowhere, he receives a call from a publishing company interested in meeting with him. Knowing well that he must jump at this opportunity, he cancels his plan to attend Akane's track meet and heads off to meet with the editor of ABC Publishing instead. The meeting, however, doesn't go as he expected. The editor essentially tells Kotarou to give up on pursuing his literature and work on light novels instead. Throughout the entire meeting, Kotarou isn't even able to speak. I mean, having someone rip your heart out in front of you and offer you a kidney won't do much good. In fact, it wouldn't do any good. That isn't how the body works...But I digress. The parallels between Kotarou and Akane remain just as prevalent as ever. When one of them has a good day, so does the other. But that notion is also reversed. And, in this episode, no one has a good day.
After miserably failing her track meet due to the mass amount of teen drama cycling through her cranium, Akane finally manages to have an actual conversation with Chinatsu about the whole Azumi thing. And while it seems to be going pretty darn well for the first 75% of it, Chinatsu turns things around and declares that she wants to confess to Akane's freakin' boyfriend. This completely shifts the mood of the scene and leaves our female protagonist's jaw nailed to the ground as she becomes incapable of uttering a single word. Here we have her best friend in the entire world, who she just semi-poured her heart out to, straight-up tell her to her face that she's going to profess her love to her boyfriend. And, as always, the episode comes to a close -- but not before leaving yet another lasting impression on us.
Tsukigakirei is oozing with so much sentiment that you would need a graduated cylinder to measure it.
In Summary:
At what is presumably (But not hopefully) its halfway point, Tsukigakirei remains just as precious as ever. Seeing the relationship between Akane and Kotarou flourish is a bit like reliving when it first happened to you. The addition of Chinatsu into the puddle of hormonal goodness definitely stirs things up but makes for several more adorable scenarios in which Akane must race against the clock to ensure that her affection for Kotarou remains unblemished. There's also a beautiful, Shinkai-inspired musical interlude in this episode that manages to flawlessly illustrate the growth of both Akane and Kotarou in the series thus far. It's things like this that are going to make it hard to accept when the series comes to a close.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
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