Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~

Information of Anime

Morioka Kohei is a freelancer photographer who manages to capture ghost like figures in his photos.  On an assignment with Midou Seiji & Anzai Hiromi, they go to Germany to an article on an old castle.  When Kohei enters the castle, he meets a girl named Hazuki.  Walking around the castle with her, he gets "kissed" or bitten by Hazuki who turns out to be a vampire & tells him he's her servant.  However, Kohei isn't affected by it & frees her from the castle barrier that locks her inside.  As he goes back to Japan, he is surprised that Hazuki followed him back.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story mainly involves the vampires from Germany trying to take Hazuki back to the castle in Germany.  During these times, Kohei, Seiji, Kohei's grandfather Mido Ryuhei, Mido Hikaru, Mido Kaoru, & Mido Yayoi protect Hazuki from danger.  The story has three arcs.  The first arc is Hazuki being hunted down, the second arc involves the relationship between Hazuki & Kohei, & the final arc is Hazuki being hunted down again.

The first arc has Hazuki looking for her mother while being hunted down by two vampires, Kinkeru & Elfriede.  The truth is that Hazuki's mother is dead & only Kohei & a spirit named Haiji knows it.  The hunt for Hazuki gets her captured by Kinkeru at times & turns into her true self, Luna once.  Kohei, who is a Vampire Lover (a person not affected by a vampire's kiss), saves Hazuki in the end by bring her back.  During these times, Elfriede goes against Kinkeru, who's really her father, after feeling for Hazuki.  Kinkeru dies as Hazuki kills him.

The second arc is involves the relationship between Hazuki & Kohei.  During this time, we learn that Hazuki is a daywalker & Elfriede is living at the Morioka residence & helping out with the family business store.  The relationship between Hazuki & Kohei starts to develop into an almost lovers relationship.  They aren't master & servant.  The Mido family gets introduce here for the 1st time.  Near the end of the arc, Kohei asks Ryuhei to teach him priest shrine techniques as he feels that he should do more to protect Hazuki from danger.

The third arc begins with a new group of vampires lead by Hazuki's little sister, Art.  The group burns down the Morioka home.  As the building burned down, Ryuhei tells Koehi to take Hazuki away & run as he & Elfriede go down with the building.  Thinking Ryuhei & Elfriede are gone, Hazuki & Kohei go to the Mido Shrine as Kohei trains himself to protect Hazuki from the vampires.  Kohei works hard, but Yayoi, who we see for the first time, thinks his progress is slow.  We also learn that Ryuhei & Elfriede survived the fire, but are hiding in disguise.  The 1st time Art & Hazuki meet each other, Art tell his she's her little sister & how she hates her for being the center of attention.  From this point, Kohei agrees to release his jargon seal that prevented him from seeing spirit auras.  With the seal removed, Kohei fears for his life as he sees Hazuki's dark aura which happens to be her destiny.  As Kohei suffers from the shock, the vampires broken the barrier surround the shrine's forest by manipulating Seiji with a controlling device.  Because she can't kiss Kohei do to his fear to gain her vampire powers, Hazuki agrees to return to the castle in order to protect her friends.  However, her friends enter the castle to save her.  During this time, Art begins to have a change of heart as Hazuki sees her as her little sister who have been lonely for a long time.  In the end, Kohei overcomes his fears & save Hazuki with his jargon.  With it's overwhelming power, the castle collapses.

The last episode of the story shows the Morioka home & store getting rebuilt.  During this time, the Mido family searches for Art after the fight as the relationship between Kohei & Hazuki look bad due to a misunderstanding.  A gathering party is held at the store & Seiji brings Art to the party.  It turns out the Mido found her a few days after the fight & were observing her to see if she was an enemy or friend.  At the end of the party, Kohei tell Art that she's not alone when he finds her in a room playing alone.  Hazuki joins in when she eavesdropped the conversation.  On the rooftop, Kohei finally tells Hazuki that her mother is gone.  The story ends with Art & Hakuzi taking Hikaru & Kaoru back to the station.

In the DVD volumes, another episode is added (#26).  In this episode, the Morioka house somehow gets stuck in the middle of the ocean.  Aside from figuring out how to get back to land, we learn more about Art & Hakuzi in terms of their sister relationship.

My Personal Review

Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ isn't a bad series.  Although it combines a lot about goth, vampires, & neko mimis, the anime isn't too bad.  Strangely enough, it adds some comedic acts in serious scenes with wash pans falling on a person's head.

Animation

The animation done on this series is really interesting.  It uses a lot of interesting camera angles during conversation between characters.  Bird's eye view, ground view, side view, etc.  There are times where the story calls for some fights, but they aren't shown.  You see background or some other object as you hear the fight going on.  I'm not sure not it's like that.  My suggestion it's probably due to TV restrictions.  If the fansubs I saw were from TV rips, then maybe the DVD versions will add & fix those weird scenes.  Also, the "To Be Continued" scenes were done very nicely.  It's looks like this anime is mainly done from an artist's touch than an animator's.

As for character designs, it's done with the cuteness factor in mind.  Some didn't look good to me though.  What's interesting through is after the ending credits & sponsors, the anime would show a drawing of characters from Tsukuyomi from different artists each episode.

The colours used here is very dark.  A lot of black.  Although it helped create a gothic theme, it was hard to see the animation at times as the characters blended too well with the background.

Sound       

The sound effects were good.  Pretty clean & clear.  The sounds of the characters running on grassy ground is pretty real for example..  Even the sounds of piercing & cutting were good.

The voice actors here are not too bad.  There are times Haiji was a bit annoying.  It's quite high pitched, which may bother some other viewers as well.

Hardly any music wasn't played here, that is if I noticed any.  The opening themes were catchy & cute.  The ending themes with Yuka were terrible.  The music was good, but her singing wasn't.  She sung like she was out of breath.  I understand if it was for a certain number of parts of the song, but not the whole thing!

Story

The story basically involves Hazuki feeling guilty for involving her friends in protecting her from the vampires.  Most of the time, she feels selfish for her actions & her friends tell her that they would stick to her to protect her.  The relationship development between Kohei & Hazuki is pretty solid.  Although they aren't lovers really, they came a long way from being master & servant to friends.  Nevertheless, the story is quite good & it ended fairly well.

Overall Conclusion

Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ is a good anime series to watch during your spare time.  Although I did enjoy it, it's not really one of those series you got to see badly.

Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ gets an eight out of ten in my books.  The story & character development was solid throughout the series.  The cuteness, goth, & neko memi elements actually worked very well.  The only thing about Tsukuyomi is that it doesn't really leave a good impression in your head.  I liked the series, but I wasn't dying to see what happens next.

Last updated on January 29, 2008