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Title: “Tsukuyomi” Moon Phase Spoken Language: Japanese / Mandarin Subtitles: English Genre: Fantasy / Action & Adventure / Romance / Humor Rating: Parental Guidance Summary: Morioka Kouhei’s ambition is to become a professional photographer. However, he has the unfortunate tendency to capture the images of ghosts and other spirits on film. One day, he visits an old castle in Germany, where he meets a vampire girl, Hazuki. It turns out that Hazuki is confined in the castle against her will. She tries to |
When she arrives in Japan, she goes to Kouhei’s house, where he lives with his grandfather. Kouhei’s grandfather agrees to take in the girl. Due to Kouhei’s own unpleasant childhood experiences, he agrees to aid Hazuki in her quest.
However, other vampires, including Elfried and Count Kinkell, manage to track Hazuki to Japan. They will stop at nothing to bring her back.
Facing the fatal entrapment from the Count, Kouhei, Hazuki and the others barely survive after fighting continuously with the Count. After the defeat of the Count, they are able to enjoy peaceful days for a while.
However, the vampires and demons that are being sent to capture Hazuki will not rest until she is taken. With the fear of not being able to protect Hazuki from abductions by the demons, Kouhei realises that he needs to learn the skills to fight with other demons that may soon appear anytime.
After the apparent deaths of Elfriede and his grandfather, Kouhei starts to learn demon-slaying skills. Hazuki thinks the ties to her adopted family may be stretched to the breaking point and beyond. The final battle pits Hazuki against her own younger half sister Artemis. Can Kouhei pull himself together to help her?
Review: I was apprehensive about buying this anime. I only have “Naruto” under my belt as the first anime I enjoyed. Venturing out to buying other animes wasn’t exactly what I have in mind when I was at BlueMax. I was searching for other stuff when I came across this. The cover looks attractive enough and the synopsis sounds entertaining. But I’m not exactly thrilled if it turns out to be another long running anime series like “Naruto” or “Bleach” or “Gundam”. Turns out it’s something like a short series, like “Buffy” or whatever the newest craze is. Except there is only one season.
The opening episode was quite straight forward. There isn’t any lengthy introduction, what they do or whatsoever. The first two episodes are almost like a mini movie, fast paced, no nonsense, comical effect touching just the surface; enough to appreciate but not to the point it becomes “just another comedy” show. It was done is such a way that makes you want more. And to your absolute delight (as well as your wallet’s absolute horror), there IS more.
Thus begin the mini saga of a vampire living in a family of exorcists, where our young vampire female protagonist winds up together with the male protagonist, a future hope for photography. Absolutely hopeless at his family’s exorcising traditions and decoding finer details of human emotions. In simpler and more concise terms, a nut wit. Which, only naturally, poses a big problem for Hazuki. She was fully intent on making Kouhei helped her fulfil her agenda. Two actually. First to evade the various supernatural captors who want her safely back in the castle she was imprisoned in. The other, to find her mother who disappeared years ago.
Fraught with dangers and traps they managed to overcome, Hazuki and Kouhei began to trust each other more and willing to protect each other, even at the expense of sacrificing their own lives. Despite all these, they are still forever fighting, depicting a perfect scenario of “Denying your true emotions”. But of course, their relationship only proved to get stronger and stronger as they faced every trail and tribulation.
The fact that it is not a long living series also helped as you watch the series, knowing that the series is ending soon but there hardly seems to be any conclusion to their never ending fight. Even though so, it does give a satisfying conclusion to the whole affair. Another weakness of long running series is that, the creators bound to murder a few characters at some point of time, probably because they can’t keep track or they are trying to build up the suspense and mold the character’s…well, character. But this anime doesn’t fall into such trap. In short, it’s a happy ending, unlike Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending”…
However, my only quarrel with the anime is that, it fails to explain the disappearance of Kouhei’s mother and the death of Hazuki’s mother. I thought maybe they would give a satisfying explanation. Heck, I was even hoping for a guest appearance. But alas, my hopes nonwithstanding.
Rating: 4.0 / 5.0 for such an entertaining and well paced anime, although I don’t really understand all those business about basins falling on heads…