Full Moon

I always leave Arina Tanemura works with a lot of mixed feelings, and Full Moon is no exception. I've heard that people compare this one and Phantom Thief Jeanne and argue over which is her best work. After reading both of these, I have to say that I prefer Jeanne by quite a bit, despite having to dock points for the sheer amount of romanticized sexual harassment. Without those points docked, Jeanne would be a 9, while I have Full Moon sitting at a 7. That said, I prefer both to The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross, which was a hot mess.

Mitsuki may only be twelve years old, but she has throat cancer, keeping her from pursuing her dream of becoming a famous singer. To make things worse, a pair of shinigami appear, telling her she only has a year left to live, and they must find the person who will prevent her death and keep them from meeting. However, their appearance doesn't just mean doom and gloom for Mitsuki since she ropes them into her singing dreams. She gets the opportunity to magically turn into a healthy 16-year-old version of herself and begin her singing career.

I understand why many people love Full Moon and why it's so inspirational. Despite its cutesy art, it's a dark manga, covering themes of death, suicide, and abuse. The core idea of the story is how sometimes it's harder to keep living than letting yourself die. Shinigami are people who committed suicide in their past lives, and, while many of them don't remember their past lives in detail, some of them must live with that regret. Now that they have ended their lives to put an end to their suffering, they realize there is so much more they wanted to do. They remember and treasure their happy memories, constantly feeling the pain of being unable to return to those times.

Meanwhile, Mitsuki must decide if she wants to live or die. She has a dream she's holding on to, but what happens when the only thing she was holding onto to pursue her dream is gone? She has had a hard life. Her parents died in a car crash on the way to the hospital when she was born. Right from the beginning, her teacher at the orphanage blamed her for the death of her famous singer father. She was trained to feel guilty for her existence from the very beginning. Then her best friend and first love was adopted and left the orphanage, leaving her to only cling to her memories, afraid to face reality. To top it off, she's terminally ill. She must decide if she wants to die or keep fighting to live.

Full Moon just didn't click with me the same way other psychological shoujo do. It didn't resonate with me the same way Jeanne or even Gentlemen's Alliance did. Jeanne had a smaller cast and tighter writing, so it worked better with the 7-volume limit. Gentlemen's Alliance was able to explore its large cast and many storylines with its 11-volume count. Full Moon on the other hand had 7 volumes, and it became an anime almost immediately after its release. I wondered if Arina Tanemura just had to throw out all the ideas she wanted to explore in order to satisfy the anime producers.

Because if I had to say something about this manga it would be that it bites off more than it can chew. There are tons of characters with a lot going on. We've got Mitsuki and her past love. We have Takuto and his past, Meroko and her past, paired with her feelings for both Takuto and Izumi, Izumi and his past and motivations, whatever the heck Jonathan has going on, Madoka and her childhood lover (I will actually go into depth about this because I hate this subplot), and Mitsuki's agent and her love triangle (I actually had no idea what was going on with that like 90% of the time). As you can see, there was a lot going on.

I felt like the shinigami backstories were usually inserted at awkward times, where I feel like it confused me about their relationships and motivations even more instead of clearing up my confusion. With Takuto, his backstory should have had more relevance than it did. I don't think the reveal about who he was before he died added much to the plot or his character, and it just made the romance weirder than they needed to be. I also felt nothing about his death. He lost his passion, his creative outlet so soon after a friend's death, but the way it was executed and revealed made me not care. It was revealed early enough on and in such an underwhelming fashion that I was expecting there to be more going on with him than there was. Maybe I'm just weird and Don't Get It ™.

Meroko and Izumi's backstories were very emotional and quite frankly beautiful, but they also left me confused. I could understand why Meroko was so clingy and obsessive after being betrayed. She wanted to attach herself to the people she cared about so that they wouldn't slip away and harm her. She wants to believe in them, but she can't seem to let them out of her sight. What I don't understand is the flipping and flopping between Takuto and Izumi in random flashbacks since I don't know what she likes about either of them. I also don't buy the "only being into Takuto to make Izumi jealous" deal because there was nothing outside of Takuto telling Mitsuki that that indicated this. It kind of reminded me of the thing at the end of the Ouran High School Host Club manga where Hunny has some line about Kyoya being into Haruhi with the manga having nothing to hint at that.

As for Izumi, his backstory did nothing to clear up his shady behavior and what his ultimate goal was. I was simply confused. I was trying to take his backstory and apply it to his relationships and his role in the story, but it seemed like they were unrelated. I also had no idea what he saw in Meroko that made him fall in love with her because I genuinely don't understand why they're in love. I think they're great as individuals, but they don't have noticeable chemistry. Meroko also didn't have chemistry with Takuto either. I think Arina Tanemura is just bad at writing romance period since I've only really liked one of her couples (Maora and Maguri from Gentlemen's Alliance).

I feel like many of the relationships also fall victim to the convoluted, disorganized nature of the plot. The reveals came in at weird times where I felt like they were out of place, but the side couples also suffered. We have Mitsuki's rival, Madoka, who's arrogant, but she's proud enough to never fight dirty against Mitsuki. She's also had plastic surgery in order to become a successful idol, but that resulted in her parents disowning her. The last few volumes of the manga introduce her love interest, and they act like they've been dating for a while, but we've only seen him in the background like twice before that. Then there's some reveal about Madoka having an arranged fiancé when she was little, but she rejected him because he was ugly. Then they meet again now that he's had plastic surgery to become famous and find her again. It felt gross to me since it felt like he was lying and manipulating her to get close to her and how she only accepted him once he became conventionally attractive. It was such a shame too, since Madoka had a lot of potential as a way to discuss how women in the entertainment industry are expected to always be conventionally attractive, how society views plastic surgery, and how people only place value on conventionally attractive women. Unfortunately, none of that was discussed.

There's another side couple involving Mitsuki's doctor and agent, except I had no idea what was going on with them 90% of the time. Apparently, the agent was having an affair with her married boss, which I did not pick up on at all. I didn't know who he was let alone that he was married. Arina Tanemura did a terrible job with foreshadowing and context clues in this manga...

The reveal at the very end also made no sense since there was no foreshadowing there, either. It was just pulled out of thin air. I'm not even going to discuss the whole Jonathan thing, since that was also a bit confusing. I did like Jonathan though. He looked ridiculous and made me laugh, but there was also something a bit uncanny about him. I do appreciate there actually being foreshadowing with him. Jonathan is probably one of my favorite characters just because he's so weird.

And now I must address the elephant in the room: the age stuff. You see, Mitsuki's first love, Eichi, is four years older than her. They were 10 and 14 when they fell in love. This was full-fledged mutual love there, and it's just super weird because there is a huge gap in maturity there, with the ages they're currently at. It's a 5th grader and a high schooler. It just was super weird. Meanwhile, Takuto... when he was alive, he knew Mitsuki, and he's at least 12-14 years older than she is. Fortunately, it was just in passing, and she was like 2, and he died soon after. I have decided that he's in his early teens as a shinigami to make things easier, especially since we learn that shinigami do not necessarily become the age they were when they died. Why early teens? I decided that for my own personal sanity to make the relationship less creepy, since Mitsuki is 12.

After the coma reveal, I didn't think it was that bad since she was 15 when he woke up and he was a teenager when he entered the coma and has not emotionally matured at all since being a teen since he was in a coma.

Anyways, the art and fashion are great. I love all the details that went into their outfits. I particularly love Meroko's outfits. Her design was easily my favorite. It's classic Arina Tanemura with the gigantic sparkly eyes. It was more difficult for me to tell her characters apart than usual in Full Moon, though, especially since some characters had multiple appearances throughout their lives. I'd get a past version of a character mixed up with a present one.

I feel like this review is pretty messy and scattered, but I feel the same about the Full Moon manga. It wasn't bad, and I had a lot of fun reading it, especially the emotional parts. It just felt weirdly disjointed and amateurish, which is odd since she wrote Jeanne before Full Moon. I can understand why it's so beloved and why it's so impactful for other people, it just didn't have the same effect on me, and I had some issues with the writing. I think if it had more volumes it would be a more coherent story which I would have enjoyed more.