English Dub Review: Tsukigakirei “Howling at the Moon”

Is this better than barking at the moon?

Spoilers Below

The preteen relationships in Tsukigakirei continue to move forward at a sedated pace, at least for our main characters. In this episode, Kotaro is upset because his writing was rejected by a magazine, and Akane is worried about her upcoming track meet, all while midterms are going on. Kotaro actually texts Akane to chat about studying. They even admit they think highly of each other, so it looks like these two are finally going somewhere. Kotaro wonders why he can’t talk this easily with her at school.

Finding himself again in the library, Kotaro flips open to a random book for advice. It says, “At the very least, I don’t believe romance comes down to chance. I believe it comes down to volition.” This is extremely true, at least in this case. These two could have been together two episodes ago, no problem.

Then, in the boldest move so far, Kotaro almost asks Akane if there’s a guy she likes. He doesn’t actually do it, but I was extremely impressed that he even brought himself to type the words into the chat window. It looks like the roles have reversed, as the next day, track star Hira almost asks out Akane before the big meet, but gets too nervous.

Kotaro and Akane run into each other later that night. Actually, Akane had gone looking for him. They sit on a bench and successfully have part of a conversation. Then the silence stretches on before Kotaro finally calls out, “Would you date me?”!

I’m surprised it finally happened! I’m also not sure where Kotaro suddenly found all this boldness, but I’m certainly glad. I was expecting some catastrophic event to happen before we got here, probably involving a triangle of some sort. It’s possible that Hira did ask out Akane off screen and we didn’t get to see it, so I’ll reserve full judgement on that until next week. But I’m very proud of Kotaro and he should be too. Thankfully, this episode was worth it.

But with not much emotion to speak of, I almost missed the minutes of silence and squeaking we’ve been used to. I definitely missed the upbeat scenes with Kotaro’s friends and classmates. I’m split on “Howling at the Moon”, because while I’m very glad to see Kotaro’s bravery, I think at least half of Tsukigakirei’s charm comes from its full cast of characters. We didn’t get much of that this week, but there’s still plenty of time for this story to unfold.

SCORE
6.5/10