Review of Tsukigakirei

Hmmmm, how should I put this, this anime feels like it was done by a passionate and talented, but ultimately amateur And unpolished team and writer. As a preface, I dont know anything about the studio and the original manga/ln if it has one, so if you want a real smart review including those factors, I have to let you down. I can only speak about the anime itself. The story is quite simple, with some minor twists that rather make the plotline artifically longer than add real value, but some of them actually are pretty nice plot points about coming of age/romance/coming of age romance.I personally liked the story, but I can understand if someone would find it too slow or too forced at points. I both liked the ending and hated it. Without spoiling, lets just say, you should watch the end credits of the last episode. Sometimes we cant get what we want in life, or have to compromise. This was a good plot point of the anime, including that even when those happen, we can make the most out of it (Dont worry, minor spoiler, but they stay together at the end, your heart wont be broken).
But as I said before, the story can feel pretty forced with minor drama, which only makes it longer, not more meaningful. Which is in turn an interesting choice, because a good 2-3 more episodes after the last ones could have been easily fit in and would have made it way better, instead of the drama.
I think this is one of those rare shows that actually starts out weak and gets stronger until the end.

The characters are a pretty mixed bunch, more like they vary wildly in portrayal troughout the show, which is a feat in itself, as the anime is only 12 episodes long.
We are dropped in the middle of everything (not the romance itself), and there are many characters, who are portrayed inconsistenly (as mentioned above) so establishing the relationships between the charactera are pretty hard. It does not help, that all characters' faces look the same with different hair and body (more on this later in the art section).
The MC and FMC are at least have a life of their own (which a lot of romance anime seems to forget) and they are pretty okay characters for a romance anime. Especially at the end, they are great characters. At the beginning however they can be pretty annoying. I think the writers wanted to portray the confusion of first love and feeling lust for the first time, but insted got confused of what could the confusion be like, and that confusionception made the characters just flat out annoying. Like my girl (FMC) somehow puts negative effort into the relationship in the first few episodes, while being portrayed as someone in love. Instead of an awkward first love it feels like an asshole and a half (maybe Charlie Sheen wrote the first half of the script, but he forgot the comedy part). She also starts the minor drama, or more like it starts because of something she either did or did not do, and has the audacity to act righteous and offended most of the time at the beginning. Like dude, shut yo b*itch ass up you did that. Luckily after the first few episodes the MCs get better as their relationship progresses (and then the side characters get reeeeeal annoying, but you will see it for yourself, I dont want to spoil it).

The sound is, well..... an interesting one. Remember that I wrote the whole things looks (and also sounds) like a real amateur work? It can be heard on the soundtrack as well. The OP and ED are the standard emotional and beautiful, albeit not groundbreaking songs, I liked them, they are pretty much a vibe, a romantic vibe. The BGM is also oretty good songs on the same principle as the OP and ED, but for some reason, instead of the soundtrack making olace for the scene and supporting it, the soundtrack gets blasted at full volume during some emotional scenes, which completely overshadows the scens and makes them worse, instead of elevating them, like literally I had to constantly adjust the volume. There are also some weird sound choices for everyday sounds, like cars honking sounding weird, shoes sounding weird in some scenes, but you really have to listen to notice those.

The art. Dayumm.
Now this is where the anime really bled out in a puddle. I dont want to drag this out, if you watch the anime you will see the glarinfly obvious things, lets just name a few:
-Shading being a white stripe on the characters' head most of the time
-Weird moving animation (when one of your main characters is a oretty good track athlete, having weird moving animations is a real scene killer)
- Physically hurting CGI and 3D animation, usually when there are a lot of characters in the background. It is like the wii characters, but even more distorted. The best is when we have a member of fhe main cast in the foreground animated normally, and we have these weird CGI wii characters going on about their wretched days in the background. After a while I found it funny and amusing, but really did not help the anime.
- Characters just existing for 10 seconds without moving/talking/doing anything. And not in normal still shots, but in the middle of the conversation. It really kills the momentum of conversations and sometimes emotional scenes, which makes the characters sometime look even more bland and annoying than they initially looked like.

So all in all, this is a passionately, but low budget made, pretty okay story about a coming of age romance. It wont make your head spin, but it is fun and wholesome, with some annoying forced drama moments.
To be fair, I rather see a good story, with shit animation, than a shit story with godly animation. The story here was not THAT good, but it was pretty fun, and I do not regret watching this. It wont be my favourite, but it will be a hidden, niche comfort anime of mine. Worth a watch, but probably wont go around buying merch for it.
Have a nice day