Tonikaku Kawaii Review

Every so often, a romance anime comes along that’s just too adorable to ignore. Even with an implausible setup, the overall cuteness of it just makes you forget all about it. In the case of Tonikaku Kawaii… or tonikakukawaii… or TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You… or TONIKAWA: Fly Me to the Moon… or, simply, Fly Me to the Moon, we get a healthy dose of cuteness overload but is it too much? Is it completely overbearing? Or does it become everyone’s relationship goals in life?

Let’s go!

The Story

A boy named Nasa is puzzled by why people are laughing at his name. He eventually learns his name was taken from the American N.A.S.A. organization. He vows to become a man so great that when people hear the name Nasa, they think of him instead. As he returns home from receiving his scores from a mock exam to get into Japan’s top-rated high school, he spies a girl so beautiful that he wants to talk to her. He goes to do so and is hit by a truck. The girl shields him and that’s the only thing that kept him from dying on impact. Adrenaline kicks in and he ignores two broken legs and a concussion to chase her down. When he meets her, he asks her out… she says only if he marries her… he says yes immediately!

Despite this, two years go by before he ever sees her again. She shows up and formally introduces herself as Tsukasa and she brings a marriage form with her. Nasa humors her and fills it out. One trip to the ward office later and the two of them are officially married!

From there on out, it’s an episodic depiction of their day-to-day life that deals with such things as buying a futon, buying a television, having a takopa (Takoyaki party), and dozens upon dozens of embarrassing moments for both Nasa and Tsukasa.

Honestly, there really isn’t much to the story at all. It’s really just a show about a newly married young couple figuring out married life together… in the cutest way possible. Of course, there is more to it than just that. When other characters such as Tsukasa’s sister Chitose and her two maids enter the picture, along with Aya and Kaname from the spa… things do liven up quite a bit as they all bring their unique personalities to the show… even if they start off feeling important and just become nothing more than a gag character here and there.

Each episode felt great, though. The stories told throughout were pretty wholesome and when it was time for comedy, it did a fairly good job at it. One of the things that it was good at was separating the type of comedy per situation. For example, if we saw Kaname, we knew that due to her tomboyish attitude, we would usually get some sexual jokes at Nasa’s expense. With Chitose, it would be a bit more of that “over-the-top crazy and screaming” humor that (honestly) I didn’t find all too funny. Variety is good though and since it wasn’t like that the entire time (like it was with Kamisama Ni Natta Hi), I could tolerate it just a bit more.

The Characters

There is a pretty small cast of characters but I think that for a show like this, a smaller cast works best!

Nasa Yuzaki

Nasa is incredibly intelligent; however, as the series goes on, the show kind of forgets that. Towards the end, we get reminded of just how much of a genius Nasa is. I think this should have been done a bit more. Tsukasa even made mention at one point that for as smart as Nasa is, there are still things that he is completely inept at… which seems to be a whole lot because I can only recall two or three times throughout the entire series where Nasa really shows his true brilliance.

Outside of that, Nasa is just a plain teenager who is a bit more mature than most people his age due to moving out and living on his own. Because of his intelligence, he has been able to save money and scientifically evaluate everything in his life in order to give him the most efficient life possible. Despite that, he was a complete and total dumbass when it came to things like video games, or buying a diamond wedding ring, or cooking, or other basic things. While I guess that is a nice balance, as I said, I think they overdid it too much and it caused us to see Nasa in a more normal light than as he was portrayed at the start of the show.

Tsukasa Yuzaki

Still to this day, we don’t know why she really married Nasa. I mean, we do learn that she didn’t exactly care for living at home but it’s never really explored deeply. Chitose does try to get her to come back and once that’s resolved, nothing more is really said about it. I’m pretty sure that the anime didn’t cover the entirety of the manga so I think that reason might be saved for that second season that may or may not even happen. Regardless, Tsukasa almost seemed too perfect as a wife.

Sure, she gets embarrassed often but she really loves Nasa and wants to be with him as much as possible… which is kind of odd given that it took her nearly two years after she saved Nasa from getting hit by that truck. As I said, the entire setup for this show was REALLY far-fetched and, thinking back, any normal reason for these two to meet and get married would have worked given the context for the rest of the show. Still, Tsukasa is the epitome of the perfect housewife and that bothers me just a little bit. She’s good at cooking, caring for Nasa, she gets embarrassed at all the right moments, she takes care of Nasa while he’s stick without question… it’s like everything you want in a partner is literally Tsukasa. The fact that she doesn’t have many flaws is a bit unrealistic. That would be my only problem with this character.

Chitose Kaginoji

Oh God, here we go… the generic tsundere character. Yep… if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Simply because of jealousy, she doesn’t like Nasa and wishes that he didn’t marry Tsukasa. However, the fact that Nasa is a good guy eats away at her. She does, eventually, realize that as long as Tsukasa is happy, she’s fine with the marriage but oof… in the beginning, she goes as far as to kidnap Nasa and even orchestrates a major plan to try and break the two of them up.

She also has that over-the-top screaming humor that I hate sooooo much. We don’t get too much of Chitose and even when she is around, her screen time is pretty balanced out between the rest of the characters so it does help keep her awful brand of humor in check. Then again, she almost has to be like that, otherwise, she wouldn’t be a generic tsundere character that you could find in just about any anime show in this day and age.

Characters like Chitose really make you wish that the anime industry should try and reinvent the tsundere character to be more interesting.

Kaname Arusigawa

She helps run a bathhouse with her family and is a complete and total tomboy. At one point, she was in love with Nasa, and then, suddenly, he got married and destroyed all of her hopes and dreams. How in the hell did Kaname not freak out about this more than she did!?

For someone who lost the love of her life to a girl she had never heard or met before, she sure accepted it quite quickly! That didn’t stop her from teasing the hell out of Nasa, though. She also didn’t care one bit if Nasa was in the bath completely naked. She would just waltz on in there, using her job of making sure the bathhouse is clean, just to get an eyeful of Nasa’s rocket and make comments on it. In fact, Kaname has seen Nasa naked more times than Tsukasa has… and she hasn’t (to my knowledge) seen him naked once… yet.

Still, Kaname was a really fun character and easily my favorite of the series!

Aya Arusigawa

She is Kaname’s sister and another person who helps run the bathhouse. She is the opposite of Kaname in the fact that she’s quite timid and shy. She has a bit of a hard time talking to people… which just disappears at the end of the series for whatever reason. She ends up challenging Tsukasa to Street Fighter V (the actual game with actual game footage because Capcom just needed to put more product placement into more anime ala High Score Girl) and we discover that she’s REALLY good at video games… so much so that she earns Tsukasa’s respect.

Outside of that, she’s just kind of there in the background. We know she also had a crush on Nasa but thanks to her being about as smart as a box of dead, wet rats, she never realized he was married until it was spelled out for her in the most blatant way possible.

Art, Animation, and Sound

The art and animation aren’t going to win any awards here but it was sufficient enough. Nothing really stood out except for the final episode where Seven Arcs blew their budget on some CG fireworks. I did notice that in a few scenes, some of the characters looked a bit oddly drawn (like in one instance, Nasa’s eyes were way too close together compared to Chitose and Kaname who were positioned next to him) so there were some consistency issues.

Other than that, you got your stock of nice-looking backgrounds but that’s pretty much the minimum level of expectation of an anime made in the 2020s.

The soundtrack was completely forgettable with the exception of the opening theme song. The song itself starts off quiet and cute and then hits you with this catchy fast-paced techno beat that it slowly builds up to. It’s good enough to warrant picking up and listening to on repeat over and over again… as I have done. Outside of that, the main OST of the series is just “there” and nothing more.

Overall Thoughts

Even though I was reading and enjoying the manga from VIZ Media, I came into this show with a “MAYBE” when I did my first reaction on it. I was afraid that after the “out there” premise of the show faded that it would wind up as a generic rom-com that didn’t go anywhere or do anything special.

Honestly… that’s what ended up happening but this is an odd case were not really doing anything special worked for the show. It allowed you to sit back, relax, and have a laugh or two as you watched Nasa and his too-perfect wife learn about being married together. You got to interact with their family and friends and you saw each and every aspect of these lives.

While some of the characters were interesting, it was quite obvious that this show was the Nasa and Tsukasa show. I thought that it would have benefitted from some marital drama outside of Chitose trying to sabotage it but it didn’t stop the show from being enjoyable. The show seemed to take off as I’ve seen a lot of positive comments about it so maybe we’ll end up getting a second season. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want more of this show.

If I were to be fair, though. As good as this show was, it wasn’t a must-see for me on a weekly basis. As busy as I am these days, if there is a must-see show that has my attention, I will stop everything I am doing to make sure I get my weekly dose of it. I didn’t actually get that with Tonikaku Kawaii (or whatever alternative name you prefer). Marathoning to catch up was an enjoyable experience as it did make me want to see the next episode but I wasn’t crying tears of sadness because I had to wait a full week to see what happened next when I did, eventually, get caught up.

It is worth a watch, though… especially if you love innocent romance shows with some comedy splashed in!