The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Tsukimichi -Moonlit Fantasy Season 2

After Makoto Misumi defeats Mitsurugi and Sofia Bulga, humanity is saved from the attacking demon army—for the time being. The goddess is aware of Makoto's growing power, and she sees him as less of a nuisance and more of a rival. Makoto continues his journey to further expand his community of outcasts and connect with more of his kind.

Tsukimichi -Moonlit Fantasy- Season 2 is based on a light novel series of the same name by Kei Azumi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

Now, let's be clear here. When you start the second season of an anime, you don't need to go all out to try and hook your viewers. After all, the vast majority of people who will watch your series have already spent at least 12 episodes getting to know your characters and your world. You can afford to go a bit slow. Usually, just introducing the next big problem or villain is enough.

However, this episode of Tsukimichi doesn't even do that. Rather, this episode feels like a filler episode at best. None of the episode's events seem tangentially related to the plot. Simply put, while traveling on the road, Makoto and Shiki stop at a village. Makoto decides to help a girl by defeating the bandits attacking her village. Roll credits.

Luckily, while the main plot is shallow to the extreme, this episode does at least reintroduce the series' cast. While Makoto and Shiki are in the outside world, we get a cute little side story about Mio attempting to learn how to cook. The problem is, as a spider monster who eats literally everything, she has no conventional sense of taste—and no idea about what other races see as edible. Through this lightly comedic story, each of the supporting characters gets a line or two to remind us of their existence and general personality.

But when it comes down to it, this is a thoroughly underwhelming episode—doubly so as a season premiere. It's not terrible or anything, but if I weren't already invested, this episode would give me little reason to keep watching.

This will sound like a backhanded compliment, but I honestly had forgotten so much about the first season of Tsukimichi -Moonlit Fantasy- that it took me a while to remember how much I liked it. Obviously, given how quickly the details of its characters and world slid right out of my head, this isn't the kind of story that will revolutionize the industry or burn itself into the annals of the all-time greats. Still, it can be a pretty fun time when you get right down to it, and sometimes, that is all a show needs to be.

As was the case in Season 1, the best parts of this episode come from the large and likable cast of supporting monsters and demi-humans that Makoto has built up throughout the story. Tomoe and Mio have always had a feisty, combative relationship that I like in anime with harem-romance leanings — it gives me Tenchi Muyo! vibes, which I much prefer to the kinds of stories where all of the "love-interests" are adoring waifs who live to serve their new Master while hanging on everything he says and does. I mean, Tomoe and Mio adore Makoto, too, but you can at least get why they like him. Their constant game of one-ups-womanship leads to funny bits like Mio inadvertently murdering the entire population of the Demiplane with her godawful cooking. This almost entirely irrelevant B-plot exists mostly to remind us of who everyone in this show even is, but you know what? It made me chuckle out loud at least a couple of times, which means it has accomplished more than many of its peers ever do.

As for Makoto himself, he is once again relegated to being the least interesting part of his own show by default, but that doesn't mean his story is awful; it's just a bit by the numbers. His adventure also mainly exists to remind you of the status quo for him as this world's somewhat reluctant superhero defender of the weak, downtrodden, and forsaken. I won't pretend that watching him blow up an anonymous gang of assholes is riveting television. Still, the story provided the unexpected moment of Makoto identifying a werewolf as a "little furry shota," which almost made me shoot my drink out of my nose. So, it's not a total waste of time by any means.

I'll admit that I still don't know if Tsukimichi's low-key approach to storytelling will be enough to sustain two-dozen episodes, but the two other Earthlings that the Goddess has thrown into the mix are bound to keep things interesting for at least a little while. If the show can keep the laughs and the warm fuzzies coming along, then we should be have ourselves a reliable adventure anime to kill some time with every week, if nothing else.