TONIKAWA: Over The Moon For You

"Onee-chan! Why did you fall in love with a loser like him?" - Kaginoji Chitose

Good question Chitose, can we talk about it?

But first, can people stop praising this anime for being a romantic masterpiece? Because it's really not.

I get that people like how this romance anime brings something new to the table of being the relationship between a married couple rather than your generic harem-esque tsundere moe girl/ dense guy relationship you see in many other romance anime. Still, at the same time, the anime is basically your generic harem-esque tsundere moe girl/ dense guy relationship you see in many other romance anime, but this time with a solidified married couple as the "main relationship."

Let's start with the more unimportant stuff.

Art: (4/10) This is definitely an art style I haven't seen before in anime, most likely because it's supposed to directly reflect the mangaka's art style, but "unique" doesn't mean "good." There is nothing really special about the art minus the art style. The character designs are bland, nothing stylistically appealing at all, just your typical romance SoL anime movements with some awkward movements and reaction faces.

Sound: (5/10) The Opening Sequence is pretty cool, suchasthebeatdroppingfasterthanGodofHighSchool'sMALScore, but besides that, the sound design is nothing extraordinary you've seen in romance anime. Sparkle sounds during cute moments, wacky noises when something "funny" happens, you know, your typical SoL sound stuff with nothing notable to mention.

Now to the important stuff.

Story: (2/10) To start off, this anime REALLY doesn't care about the stuff about how they got together. We get our main protagonist Yuzaki Nasa, who's an ambitious and somewhat pretentious thirteen-year-old student who suddenly gets truck-kuned into another universe, but instead of being isekaied to another universe, we get isekaied into our cute romance story when the main girl, Tsukuyomi Tsukasa (and soon Yuzaki Tsukasa) "magically" falls in love with the main protagonist and with him. This storyline is followed by its most iconic moment "I'll only date you if you marry me!"

And this is where the story starts not making sense. When Nasa gets admitted to the hospital, he misses his high school entrance exams, studies for the next term, all for him just to drop out of school entirely and starts work as a minimum-wage worker "in hopes of finding Tsukasa." Why the sudden personality change? Did he lose it when he got hit by the truck? Maybe you can find an excuse like "he didn't want to work hard anymore" or "got tired by trying too hard", but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the plot holes.

And the story conveniences only start there.

The next thing is about how they immediately get together after two years of being apart.

How did Tsukasa find Nasa? Not even Nasa knows that one! But let's ignore that so we could get into our lovey dovey romance. But wait! Tsukasa managed to get her marriage papers because she wanted to get married with Nasa, where were Nasa's papers? How did Tsukasa even GET those papers when it was clear that she ran away from home, shown in later episodes? HOW DID NASA GET HIS PAPERS? Wait, isn't the legal age of getting married eighteen for males and sixteen for females in Japan? HOW WAS THIS MARRIAGE EVEN LEGAL?!

You get what I mean by plot conveniences? The author clearly just wanted to start the lovey dovey romance immediately that they just brush away the "irrelevant part" of their backstory of how they got together. People might not care, but this kind of thing really takes the reader out of the story and makes the romance between Tsukasa and Nasa comically unbelievable.

But maybe the romantic chemistry and storyline

As I said before, the only difference of this anime from other romance shows is that the main couple is married, that's literally it. They go through awkward blushing lewd hand-holding hurdles, seeing each other naked for the first time, meeting their parents for the first time, you know, the typical stuff you see in any romance anime? There's even a plot point where two girls blush over Nasa and end up kind of sad when they realize he's married

The anime even ends with your generic cultural festival with their "sparkle sparkle moe moe kyun" yukatas but instead of a confession ruined by fireworks-kun, they kiss because they're married, which I guess subverts your generic romance trope, but again, these two characters are married! Please act like you're married instead of first-time dating high schoolers!

Characters: (2/10) Where do I even start with the characters? I already had my say on Tsukasa and Nasa, who are very well in the terms of a generic main girl and harem protagonist, respectively. Tsukasa is a little bit mysterious in the beginning when she abruptly enters Nasa's life by saving it and ends up being a beat-red tsundere girl that gets flustered whenever Nasa does anything remotely cute. Nasa is also your typical harem nice-guy protagonist because he somehow gets all the girls because he's… nice. Wow, haven't seen THAT one before.

And besides the main two leads, the side characters are also laughably bad. One girl, who isn't as remotely bad as the others Kaginoji's, purpose is to try to break them up because she realized that this marriage isn't even practical in the first place. Was she fourth-walling this entire time and calling out how stupid their relationship is? Two of Nasa's childhood (girl) friends' purposes was to be shocked that Nasa is married to a really cute girl, mope a little because they remotely like Nasa, then accept it and then move on without any repercussions or even help the two stop being embarrassed around each other.

Now thinking about it, is Nasa meant to be a self-insert male character where he gets a really cute girl to be his wife but also having a harem filled with other cute girls of a loli and an ara-ara one-chan? If so, then that makes a lot of sense. Gotta keep the Japanese birth rates high somehow, right?

Enjoyment: (4/10) I first got into this anime because people keep saying that this anime is "great" and a "refreshing" take on romance but in the end it's your typical blushing embarrassed romantic couple riddled with your dense nice-guy protagonist with harem bait and moe girls. While the cute moments were indeed cute, the many, MANY flaws to the backstory in addition to the generic romantic nature made this anime a very bad watch. If you don't really care about how two people end up together and just want a "cute couple does cute things" anime, then sure, go give it a watch.