Tsuki no Kanata de Aimashou

I read Touka’s route, which is all I want to read for Tsukikana. Frankly, I have no interest in the other heroines so I’m alright with leaving Tsukikana as is. Overall, I have plenty of bones to pick with Tsukikana, but I can't completely dislike it. It's a heavily unbalanced work and I can see this as a necessary stepping stone if toneworks wants to continue on this sort of path, though I'd be 100% okay if they went back to their old style as it's basically amazing the way it was.

The best part of the VN was when it wasn't focusing on the plot related elements, instead focusing on more quiet SoL romantic moments. Basically, the best parts were things toneworks already perfected before with their previous VNs. Toneworks going with a more plot-focused title is an ambitious move, but one I ultimately view as a failure as it was unsuccessful in capitalizing on fabricating a cohesive structured narrative with proper emotional resonance. Unfortunately, even the SoL elements feel unbalanced, which I guess is Tsukikana’s more inherent focus of having a central heroine. With that, the other heroines don’t really get a chance to shine. This leaves basically everyone but Touka feeling underdeveloped and underutilized in the story.

Like I said before, Touka is the only good heroine. She gets the bulk of the development and focus in the common route as most scenes are centered around her. The other heroines feel like an afterthought, as their scenes in the common route feel like a rotation of sorts. After some scenes with Touka, the other heroine gets a scene where they talk to the Kanata for a short while before it switches to another heroine. There is no chemistry at all between the other heroines and Kanata since it doesn’t have time to grow and the heroines have no chemistry with the other heroines because they barely interact with each other in the first place, leaving the world feeling empty. Back to Touka: she's fun, she's exuberant, she lights up every scene she's in. Her character dynamic with Kanata is really endearing and seeing the SoL moments with them together is heart-warming. She’s the only heroine that gets properly developed during the common route, which helps build up an organic relationship with Kanata, being the fuel for sweet and sometimes funny interactions. Her mischievous and spontaneous nature really help sell her character all the way through and it shows in spades through the work. Her parts are written with lots of emotion and heart behind it and it feels like the writers were really pushing for her (and it worked!). Later on in her route, there are quite a few emotional scenes involving Touka that really hit me hard. One scene in particular made everything click for me and it almost brought a tear to my eye. I love her as a character and her character arc is quite the emotional riveting one. Her time in the spotlight is definitely a worthwhile one, as the emphasis right from the get-go was on her. She’s the glue that holds Tsukikana together as a satisfactory work. Unfortunately, while she is the focus of the VN, she is not the sole part of it.

Despite the Atlas-like effort from Touka for carrying the VN, everything else isn't great. The good Touka scenes are often dispersed among a sea of trite interactions with the other characters and Kanata. They have barely any chemistry with Kanata and the fact that these characters pretty much only interact with Kanata and no one else is frustrating beyond belief. The interactions between Touka and Kanata work because they bounce off each other so well. There is time put into developing these scenes that make them work so well. Without proper screentime, there is no way any dynamic can be conceived at all. For the other characters, there is no such lifeline and since they don't interact with other characters besides Kanata, it kills their chances of being an effective character at all. They have no defining moment to make them shine, they remain as static husks with nothing to offer to the overall narrative. At times, they feel like mouthpieces for the story to get bits of information across rather than tangible characters themselves. The world itself, as a result of that, felt lifeless and empty. There's no sense of vibrancy outside of Touka and it's really a shame since they could have: either one, built up the characters and the world in a reasonable fashion to make it a real breathing place; or two, remove them entirely and let the focus stay on Kanata and Touka. As ambitious as it was for toneworks to try something new, their relative inexperience in crafting a worthwhile experience the whole way through really shows.

The way the past/future mechanic was handled is also pretty terrible, it just feels so off and does not contribute anything substantial to the overall narrative. The future Kanata basically serves no purpose in the story to help the past Kanata change the future. The initial meeting is set up as comedic, not allowing for any serious impact to be had. This cushions the initial proper impact it could have had and ruins the potential of any starting seriousness, instead needing to trudge through bits of trite comedic dialogue before anything of note really begins happening. When things do get serious, Future Kanata plays no part in changing the past, making the whole thing feel pointless. All he offers is vague phrases and doesn’t really push the past Kanata to do anything, instead leaving everything up to his high school self. With the exception of maybe one scene, the listless manner of Future Kanata in regards to his own past is quite vexing. This plays out for the rest of the after arc where it's a lot of meandering around. Future Kanata has his own character arc regarding working with the three after heroines, specifically Kanna, in publishing a manga based on his past experiences. This ultimately doesn't contribute to anything, so its inclusion feels arbitrary at best. The three after heroines don’t really contribute anything either as character themselves, with them, again, feeling like mouthpieces at best. It's especially frustrating when for every one good scene (usually involving Touka in some way), it's followed by 3-4 infuriating scenes. Oftentimes, when something emotionally impactful occurs, it cuts away to a different scene, usually of adult Kanata working, breaking up the pacing at every which turn. This curbstomps all emotional resonance and forces the reader to read more irrelevant material to the topic at hand, artificially creating tension by extending the script size with ungodly amounts of dawdling. They could have cut out the past/future thing entirely and made the VN entirely about Kanata and Touka during the high school arc, added a couple scenes for clarity on some things and it would have worked perfectly, cutting out all the future arc BS since it does nothing to advance the narrative focus and emotional lightning rod.

The science fiction stuff regarding time travel is honestly pretty laughable at best. Any attempt to justify time related material in fiction does not work at all and only ends up coming off as a convoluted mess with no real answer or proper resolution. The last scene soured my taste buds since it attempts to use some questionable time mechanics to justify the merger of memory and experiences into the future arcs instead of using that to satisfactorily tie up loose ends. There isn’t a proper resolution to Past Kanata and Touka’s arc following Touka’s gunshot wound. Instead, what happens is left to the imagination of the reader. When future Kanata gets reunited with Touka, it feels bittersweet in the wrong way because the reader has no idea what happened to Touka to get to this point. The “why” of things is never explained anywhere and getting some answers could have boosted the emotional impact of the final reunion between the time-crossed lovers. Though as I said before, a reunion isn’t really needed since there was no reason for me to care about future Kanata as he had no significant role in the grand scheme of the narrative. Having a scene where past Kanata manages to get Touka to the hospital, the slow and agonizing recovery period and the eventual release from the hospital where they can be together again would have served as a better narrative conclusion and be a better thematic ending point for the story.

Tsukikana is a work based more on emotion than logic and it shows. Many points are frustrating to read through with the many logical errors and narrative mishaps, but in the scenes where the ball does get rolling, either in a quiet romantic moment between lovers or in a dramatic scene where their love is tested, it manages to find its mark perfectly. I just wish it was more consistent and it could have been an excellent work. However, it meanders around a lot, which is annoying as a reader. I just hope toneworks learns from this going forward if they want to continue making plot focused titles. However at the end of the day, the scenes involving Touka, whether it be SoL or dramatic ones, stole the show and saved an otherwise messy, incohesive story.