YMMV / Tsuki ga Kirei

• Anvilicious: Some viewers saw Setsuko and Shou's subplot as the anime's annoying attempt to illustrate that relationships involving sex are superficial and impure, in contrast to the Kotaro and Akane's chaste relationship which flourishes over time. Others just saw it as a funny commentary on lousy teenage relationships and didn't read such a moralistic message into it.
• Base-Breaking Character: You either look at Chinatsu as a pretty vile girl who is ready to steal a guy from her best friend, even knowing that they love each other, or as a very poor Romantic Runner-Up, who was unlucky enough to fall in love with a guy who has already started a strong relationship with someone she cares about.
• Glurge: The general tone of the anime was this for some because of the Children Are Innocent tone and the explicit Stock Aesop that "love is a sacred, tender and kind feeling". Combined with an explicit depiction of sexual relations as something superficial and frivolous, the message seemed to be beaten over the audience's heads. At the same time, others defined this as a typical example of Reality Is Unrealistic and the result of an overabundance of dramatic and passionate romance in anime of the 2000s and the New Tens.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Thanks to this show, the phrase "what a beautiful moon!" became so popular as a euphemism for "I love you" in the western anime fandom, that it becomes very difficult to take the use of these words in any other anime seriously, such as the epilogue of Fate/Zero.
  • As an innocent show about the first love experiences of inexperienced teenagers, this is the last thing you'd expect from a studio that specializes in adapting Harem Genre works and in due time adapted Porn with Plot stories like Yosuga no Sora.
  • In one episode, the representative of the publishing house says to Kotaro that he has no talent and he should not hope for the future in serious literature.... so he can try himself in writing light novels. This sounds rather ironic, given that Studio Feel has become infamous for its adaptations of such novels, and their most famous work is the second season of My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected.
  • Shouya Chiba Plays a guy who fails his exams in a prestigious school, which becomes quite amusing considering that the season after this anime premiered he plays the protagonist in Classroom of the Elite, who falls into a class of losers because of .... failing his exams in a prestigious school.
• Narm: The show can be very difficult to watch if you are older than 25 years, so as an overly realistic image of a teenage first love can give the impression that you are eyeing the lives of real children. It's embarrassing.
• Narm Charm: However, quite a few viewers found it nostalgic for more positive reasons, and added to the fact that the romance issues in this particular story are resolved instead of drawn out, it's seen as a good show.
• Padding: The first episode takes a bit too long in set up its premise and it's not only till the end that Kotaro and Akane have a proper conversation that doesn't involve cellphones.
• Special Effect Failure: Although in general the animation of this show can not be called bad, you will constantly be distracted from the plot by a static image of the crowd or a poor animation of passers-by reminding old computer graphics.
• Tainted by the Preview: After the first official announcement about the development of this show, part of the studio audience was disappointed that the studio specializing in the adaptation of visual novels and romantic light novels decided to dedicate their first original anime to the romantic experiences of innocent fourteen-year-olds.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some believe that if the show had more episodes and Chinatsu had tried to seduce Kotaro while Akane was not with him, the story could have been more exciting and intriguing given the more interesting Love Triangle. At the same time, given the realistic tone of the anime a development like that could have come across as melodramatic or contrived.
• Woobie: Chinatsu. Not only does she fall in love with her best friend's boyfriend, she obviously has no chance, since Kotaro is loyal to Akane and they eventually remain the Official Couple. Moreover, Chinatsu goes to the same school as him and the show implies that despite her broken heart, she still loves him. Thus, for all three years of high school she will be next to a man that she has Unrequited Love for, who then marries her best friend.