Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You

By Zoe Crombie.

Nasa: a space loving teenager who has turned an embarrassing name into a life goal, and who has just walked in front of a moving truck. The reason for his foolish actions and his ultimate saviour: a mysterious girl who proposes marriage when Nasa suddenly declares his feelings. The result: an adorable, addictive series that begins with a married pair of young strangers and develops into one of the sweetest anime romances in recent years.

When it comes to romance anime, especially if you’re of the more impatient sort, sometimes you just want the lead couple to cut to the chase already. With the seemingly endless flirtations, misunderstandings and revelations that can occur for dozens of episodes before the pair even so much as hold hands, the genre can quickly get frustrating– a likely hangover of romance manga that can take literally hundreds of chapters before the relationships start heating up.

This certainly isn’t the case with Kenjiro Hata’s manga Tonikaku Kawaii (‘Cute Anyway’), usually contracted as Tonikawa for English speaking readers and given the cosmic suffix Over the Moon for You for its anime adaptation. This version of the story produced by Seven Arcs, the studio behind the popular adaptation of the beloved manga Blue Period, stays relatively faithful to its original plot. Genius teenager Nasa Yuzaki is hit by a truck and saved by the girl of his dreams whom he agrees to marry. Years later, the girl, named Tsukasa, knocks on the door of his tiny apartment with a marriage form in hand ready to follow through on the promise they made a lifetime ago. 

However, just because the couple are engaged and married from the first episode, that doesn’t mean that the audience aren’t allowed to indulge in some of the cutesier elements of anime romance. There are chance meetings, mysterious backstories, and the awkward encounters that come with sharing a space – and all with the ice having been broken as soon as the relationship began. The relationship still needs to deepen and develop, but you aren’t stuck with the tiresome wait for the couple to realise their true feelings, covertly fight against a love rival, or break through any number of misunderstandings.

For those of you interested in Japanese folklore and traditional stories, Tonikawa bases much of its theming and elements of its plot on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, primary popularised in the West by Isao Takahata’s adaptation The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Itfeatures a princess found in a bamboo shoot who  comes from the moon and who must return to her heavenly family at the end of the story. From the outset, Nasa notices Tsukasa’s similarities to the legendary princess as he lays looking up at her from site of his accident – notably, her ethereal beauty. But does this mysterious girl have any concrete connection to the myth? You’ll have to watch to find out…

Getting married before love truly develops isn’t an entirely foreign concept for anime viewers. The Ancient Magus Bride was a successful version of the arranged marriage trope that combined a Gothic aesthetic with a surprising sweetness, while the currently airing Spy x Family uses a marriage of convenience for an appealing combination of action absurdity and slice-of-life comedy. But Tonikawa doesn’t come with these caveats; the two characters at the start of the story genuinely seem to love each other from their first meeting, making for a viewing experience that’s much easier going and comforting than most anime romances. In terms of relevant comparisons for manga readers, Tonikawa is also a good choice for fans of Ayuko Hatta’s Ima, Koi o Shiteimasu (usually translated as ‘Ima Koi: Now I’m in Love’), a shojo romance that similarly cuts to the chase with the main couple (spoilers) getting together pretty much immediately.

Tonikawa: Fly me to the Moon is a perfect example of anime comfort food – the kind of warm, moreish story that’s perfect for bingeing over a handful of cosy nights in. Visually, it’s what you’d expect, as a fairly polished shonen style anime with a celestial tinge in its more mysterious moments, and the animation here does a fantastic job as a vehicle for a story that’s sweet, simple, and straight to the point. This is a great series for hopeless romantics waiting for romance to hit them like a truck, and a solid guilty pleasure for those less willing to admit their soppier tendencies – don’t worry, we won’t tell.

Zoe Crombie is an associate lecturer and PhD candidate at Lancaster University working on Studio Ghibli. Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You is released in the UK by Anime Limited.