This week our duo Akane and Kotarou experience their first taste of hardship, also known as the hard truth about their dreams. Both determine to do their best after the pinky promise (which give me chill every time because it reminds me of an episode of xxxHolic about a girl who always breaks promise – an example of how a single quirk from anime can affect your real-life perception), Kotarou had to meet the publisher and Akane for her track competition on the same sunny Sunday. And they both failed, in their own ways. Fortunately enough, their hardships comes from their own struggling to reach their dreams, not from their relationship itself. They spend some quality this week in the corner of the library, when they mostly share their own progress to the other. Those quiet scenes are excellent all around. The duo keeps having a space between them but you can feel the warm atmosphere hanging around. Two sequences of them in the library, the first filled with hope and quietly excitement, the second is saturated by disappointment, both connected by the pinky promise. Such intimate and affecting moments for the two lovebirds. Also, the shorts this week from Tsuki ga Kirei are solid too, now I’m a fan of Miu and Inaba couple because they’re soooo relatable. And cute. While I’m not much a fan of Roman and sensei gags, this one goes reasonably smooth enough. But Sakura’s fantasies short is my favorite short this week.
For Kotarou, the publisher flat out comments that Kotarou isn’t suitable for serious writing, instead he persuades him to try his hands on Light Novel. Looking by his effortless and calm manner when talking these things to Kotarou, he must have done it from time to time: crushing other young aspiring writers’ dreams into pieces. But hear me out, before everyone gets mad at him for being a senseless a**hole, I approve with what he did here. In fact, I’d feel much more angry if the guy keeps selling other’s dreams when he knows they couldn’t make it far. It would be very painful to see a person who isn’t talented enough just keep pushing their head against thick wall. His Mom, as well, clearly disapproves him of becoming a writer. That doesn’t mean he can’t become a writer, it’s just that he has to try harder than before. Likewise, Akane’s situation doesn’t improve at all. I’m glad that she has a courage to tell her best friend that they’re dating, but when Chinatsu confirmed that she knew all along, it confuses Akane to the point of losing her concentration for the competition. Or maybe her sister was right when she said that dating, studying, and running at the same time might be too much for her that she ends up failing every single one of them. Worst of all, she loses the race to Chinatsu, and Takumi is clearly let down by her under-performed records. I love the reactions of Akane’s parents when hearing their sweet daughter is dating (especially Papa – his girls are slowly taken away from him by annoying brats that he knows nothing about. Of course he’s worried), and Akane’s reactions when her sister “exposed” her secrets are really endearing.
Now, Chinatsu. Frankly, it’s hard to read her motivations since we don’t know much what she been thinking, but let’s try to break her actions down a little. Apart from seeing Akane as her best friend, Chinatsu also regards Akane as a worthy rival, both from running track to that love interest. In running, she’s determined to give more efforts and in the guy she likes, she basically declares a “warning note” to Akane (I notice the word “notice” she was using here). As a friend level, her actions could potentially damage the friendship she and Akane have, and I think most of us will say that her pushing for confession to Kotarou to “have a proper closure” is way over the line. You don’t mess romantically with person who already in the relationship, missy. That’s a rule. But saying that, I know Chinatsu is a type of person that when receiving a proper rejection, she’d just smile and move on. On top of that she would never betrays her own feeling, doesn’t matter how others will react to that. In short, Chinatsu confessing her love to Kotarou is just purely Chinatsu being herself, and I certainly don’t blame her for that; I just wish she’d come to understand that she’s being unfair to Akane and most of the time when that happen they become too hard to be friend again. I guess we will have a proper resolution next week. For one thing that Tsuki ga Kirei does absolutely right so far, the conflict never drags out for too long, usually an episode or two in length. Tsuki ga Kirei maintains its beat throughout this episode, fleshing out our characters not by their romance, but by their own struggles with the adult world. And that’s swell because we need to root for them as well-formed individuals before cheering for them as a couple. Keep them going Tsuki ga Kirei.
