Full Moon wo Sagashite

Title: Full Moon wo Sagashite

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Shoujo, Supernatural

What genre do I put FMwS in? It's sort of a drama, yet kinda comedic at times. It can be called a romance, because the main plot line is focused on love, but this doesn't seem to be a major issue in the anime, just a side note. It can be called an Idol anime, because it's about a girl becoming a singer, but please don't let that stop you. FMwS is basically a shoujo. It combines a little of everything I mentioned above. I'd put it with Cardcaptor Sakura standards in my book.

FMwS is about a girl named Mitsuki. She has throat cancer and this causes her to not be able to sing very loud. But out of all the things Mitsuki wants to do most in this world is sing because she feels it will be able to reach her beloved Eichi, who moved to the United States a couple of years ago. In comes in a pair of shinigami, or angels of death from Japanese legend, Meroko and Takuto. The shinigamis accidentally inform Mitsuki that she has only 1 year left to live. The two shinigami help Mitsuki become a famous singer so that she can reach Eichi. Takuto transforms Mitsuki into a teenager so she can perform and not be noticed by her grandmother, who hates music for some reason.

Shinigami cannot be seen by humans but for some unknown reason Mitsuki can see Meroko and Takuto. This often causes humorous scenes where people wonder who Mitsuki is talking to or wonder why objects are floating on their own.

Eichi was in an orphanage with Mitsuki and they were really quite close. Eichi got adopted but before he was to go off to the United States with his new family, he told Mitsuki that he loved her. Now Mitsuki is trying to find Eichi so she can reply back to him.

The anime has it's slow parts in the beginning and occasionally has filler episodes. If you can get past the first quarter of the series, which is the section with the occasional filler episodes then you are on your way to a pretty cute anime. I'll admittedly say that some of the songs get a little overdone and annoying at first, but when the anime switches openings and closing at episode 27, you'll really miss them. Not to say that songs later on aren't great. In fact I think the songs in this anime get better as you watch it.

The manga is slightly different from the anime. The manga came first and also ended after the anime. The manga spreads things out a little bit more instead of giving it to you more towards the end, as the anime tends to do. Some part of me likes the manga better, and some part of me likes the anime better. I think in the end, at this point, I choose the manga. In the manga though, there was a little too much romance between minor characters that I thought wasn't needed, but still rather cute. One of my reasons for liking the manga better is that a third shinigami that comes into the picture named Izumi is a better character in the manga. In the anime he is the bad guy, but in the manga you feel for him and he isn't bad at all. Izumi also comes in towards the beginning of the manga but not until episode 29 in the anime, and then he's not in there that much. Another reason why I like the manga better than the anime is that the manga goes into the lives of the Shinigami more than the anime does. I have a few other reasons I like the manga better but they are to spoilerish to talk about.

I really like a lot of J-Pop and J-Rock so for me this was a good series. The music is all really beautiful, especially the one with the music box. It makes me just want to watch the music box every time I hear the song. I liked how they worked the band that sings the opening songs into two episodes. They had guest spots and even if you don't know what they look like, you feel like you could spot them because the anime versions were done very well. All the voice were well picked. The main voice does not only Mitsuki's voice but her older voice and also sings the songs. No wonder this hasn't been released here. How would they get someone in the music world to do that for an anime? Mitsuki's voice isn't the only good voice in the series, all the voices seem to fit pretty well.