Anime Spotlight #42: Tsukimichi - Moonlit Fantasy

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the lunatic Animeister

I'm still unable to escape the moon, Ticketholders!

Along with Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, today's selected anime is one I slept on, though for very different reasons, before finding out that "hey; this thing is still going! Why?," and bingeing it until I was caught up with the then-current run of episodes.

To binge and get caught up with my slept-on content, please visit Just the Ticket, where you can browse by subject tags or look up content by the month or year of release. In that same drop-down menu, you can Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already. Also please remember to leave a comment in the demi-plane at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can finally afford to escape the moon, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my lunar-lit content.

As to those "different reasons"  for why I slept on Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy (which I had to constantly make sure whether it was "moonlit" or "moonlight" because I'm pedantic and forty), I like to visit Mother's Basement on YouTube for seasonal recommendations, series roasts, and hot trash list videos to decide how I will pass my downtime when the weather changes and the flow of "good stuff" starts to dry up. In one such trash list, host Geoff Thew mentioned an isekai series titled The Fruit Of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made, wherein a bullied nobody gets screwed over by a god, ends up in a world of animal-people, and becomes cool after eating a fruit. I forgot the title of that show and most of the relayed plot details, so when Tsukimichi came along and the first episode saw an isekai'd boy get bullied by a goddess and make friends with a pig-girl, I thought it was Fruit Of Evolution, so I stopped watching after one episode.

One season later, Tsukimichi returned, I realized that it wasn't Fruit Of Evolution, and I ended up bingeing the first season and catching up with the second season, thereafter being excited to watch it on a weekly basis.

Based on the usual novel/light novel/manga franchise model of print media (all of which are ongoing, including the anime itself, which will be getting a third season), Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy, a.k.a. "Journey In An Alternate World, Guided By the Moon," written by Kei Azumi, does something fairly new with the isekai formula.

The main character, Makoto Misumi (voiced by Black Clover's Dallas Reid in the dub, who puts on a smoother, more subdued and intimidating voice here than when he voiced Asta) is the average-looking son of two adventurers from the alternate world of Elysion, and is summoned to his parents' world because of a contract they made with Elysion's goddess. Unfortunately, She doesn't like that he isn't attractive, so She strips him of his hero title, takes away his ability to speak Common (the human language of that world), and dumps him on his ass in demi-human territory to hopefully get eaten by a dragon or a giant spider or something.

However, thanks to some intervention by one of the gods of Earth (Tsukuyomi, the moon god from actual Japanese mythology), Makoto gets a monstrous amount of mana so that he can survive in the wilderness, and decides to go all Rimuru Tempest on the goddess by starting a multi-species demi-human community, starting with an orc named Emma (the aforementioned pig-girl, who serves as his strict secretary with romantic feelings), a humanoid dragon named Tomoe who becomes obsessed with Japanese period dramas (so she's like Rule 63 Veldora with a less contemporary fixation on Japanese fiction) and Mio, a gluttonous humanoid spider who cooks purple food (which is anime shorthand for her being a terrible cook until she becomes the first harem girl in anime history to accept that her food is poison and goes on a comedy vision quest to actually learn how to be a chef). In the meantime to the community building, the magical and environmental consequences of expanding and maintaining a psychic pocket dimension, and general harem bickering for his affections, Makoto learns to communicate with human society through conjuring speech bubbles and creates a trading company under the alternate identity of Kuzunoha, all the while trying to avoid the goddess' gaze and getting into typical "overpowered hero owns cocky magic villain" isekai fights whose consequences spill over into the second season.

In Season 2 (slightly more than double the episode count of the first, at twenty-five), we learn that there are two more heroes who were summoned at the same time as Makoto (making this a backdoor "unwanted extra hero was the main character all along" anime like The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic and The Saint's Magic Power Is Omnipotent). First, we have Tomoki, a model with body dysmorphia who can become immortal at night and has the ability to charm people with one of his eyes, so clearly not good hero material, and the series lets us know it. And then there's Hibiki, an "idol" from Makoto's school who rejects her own affluent upbringing on Earth and fights for the challenge and honor of battle and the safety of her party and the innocent, taking her hero role seriously. If not for Emma and the literal calamity monsters in his harem already, Hibiki would be Makoto's Best Girl. The majority of the season focuses on Makoto, Tomoe, Mio, and Shiki (a humanoid Lich, and the only bro in Makoto's harem, though his advances are never really presented in a romantic context, and more like those of an eager-to-please subordinate) training students at a magic academy, the introduction of demon characters (not the terrifying sociopaths of Freiren or the Cockney-spewing foils of Healing Magic, but honorable warriors with generic conquest motivations and grey morality, which is both more and less interesting than the other series' interpretations) and other dragons besides Tomoe, the expansion of Makoto's powers to include a mana suit that looks like a Yellow Devil from Mega Man, and a character-rich and spectacular, multi-episode final fight with the demon army (and most importantly, a ruthless mercenary adventurer who gained her insane power by defeating and making contracts with dragons) where Makoto must hide his true identity from the heroes by wearing a spider-themed Kamen Rider costume. Don't blame me for spoilers because Japanese marketing by its nature must blatantly foreshadow and/or spoil new character transformations in the opening credits sequence; it's practically the law.

While some of the plot beats and character types in Tsukimichi may be old, the concepts, world, and genre twists presented are worth getting invested in, the tone is varied but well-balanced between comedy, drama, and action, and the opening theme music for both seasons (less so for Season 2) is hype banger material.

Season 1: "Gamble" by syudou

Season 2 OP1: "Utopia" by Keina Suda

Season 2 OP2: "Reversal" by syudou

So if you missed out on this series for some reason (like getting it confused with another anime because you listen to YouTube like it's Spotify on your way to work like I do, and your memory sucks like mine is starting to), know that getting caught up has a silver lining.

And once again, please catch up with my past content by visiting Just the Ticket, where you can browse by subject tags or look up content by the month or year of release. In that same drop-down menu, you can Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already. Also please remember to leave a comment in the demi-plane at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can finally afford to escape the moon, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my lunar-lit content.

Next week, I'll be revisiting Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, so Stay Tuned.

Animeister,

MOON!