English Dub Review: Tsukigakirei “A Handful of Sand”

Give us a hand.

Spoilers Below

Kotaro starts out this episode looking very tortured. I was hoping we’d be past this since our main characters were clearly in love at the end of the last episode, but that is not the case. Even though Kotaro is working on a story for a competition, he’s still never let anyone read his writing. At breakfast, his father is supportive of his hobbies.

Akane is getting ready for the sports festival (as is Kotaro, but he’d rather not be there). While Akane wins her first race, Kotaro slips and falls and scrapes his hand. Then there’s finally some drama! It looks like the nurse’s assistant, Chinatsu, likes Kotaro, while track star Hira really likes Akane.

In another cute scene, the third year boys are on a scavenger hunt. The first item is to find “someone you like”. Roman (with the pink hair) grabs a teacher, and it’s pretty cute. Although, this does cause her some anguish later on.

Keeping up the drama, Akane has lost her stress ball (which is actually a potato?) and turns into an anxious wreck. Without it, she drops the baton in the relay. Everyone makes fun of her, except two people: track star Hira, and Kotaro, who’s found and returned the stress potato. Akane and Kotaro manage to kind of successfully have a conversation! Later, they even text each other, causing Kotaro to punch that light switch cord again.

Inspired by Akane’s bravery at the sports festival, Kotaro decides to finally share his writing with someone. That’s Tsukigakirei’s attempt to bring it full circle by calling back to events from the beginning of the episode that I’d already forgotten about.

Overall, I like the story here. But it’s like it’s been stretched out in random places and left to clump together in others, like Silly Putty. Still, it’s hard for me to blame it because Akane and Kotaro’s middle school romance is still unfolding exactly as it would in real life. This week we’re treated to some after-credits scenes that show Tsukigakirei’s potential.

I love the after-credits scenes and I wish the whole show were like this. In the first one, the girls crowd around one of their friends and ask her about her boyfriend. She brags, “He’s very boyfriend-like”. I appreciate getting to see the varied perspectives on relationships from all the different students. Tsukigakirei would benefit as a whole from more of them. It would also make things feel less disjointed.

I’d definitely watch a whole show of these shorts, with our main characters’ scenes included. There’s some really fun stuff going in here. I hate to see it squandered on long, silent stretches of run-time punctuated by soft squeaks of anguish.