Anime: Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na: Crescent Love

Crescent Love is a Romeo/Juliet drama about a normal Earthling and a moon princess, and the challenges that impede their path to true love. While this story sounds a bit cliche, it actually pulls off a decent storyline full of typical hindrances culminating in a giant cliffhanger towards the end. Overall, this is a fairly average romance with decent plot progression and character development.

Animation:
The animation is good overall. Characters are well drawn, you'll find quite a few cute girls accompanying the typical protagonist, and well proportioned (no Ikkitousen here). Colors are nicely done and you'll find a lot of night scenes (emphasis on moon). There is also relatively little fan service (good or bad depending on perspective). There are some battle scenes (hand to hand and laser-beam wars) some (hand to hand) are decent while others (star wars) look cheaply drawn. These form a very small minority of the production so it isn't distracting.

Sound:
The OP is a slow, calming, hopeful tune that fits with the calming moon, but not with the rapid plot pacing in the latter half of the series. The ED is similarly calming; both are a bit too calming and somewhat sleep inducing. The BGM is not very noticeable. VAs are average for the series; sometimes I felt Tatsuya needed a bit more oomph to his verbosity.

Story:
In a post-war world where scars from a war between Earth and the Moon have yet to heal, the moon princess befriends and eventually falls in love with an Earthling. What ramifications would such a union have for the universe as we know it?

This story is a great work of pacing as they spent just the right amount of time on character exposition before increasing the pace to build up to an epic ending. You have all your obligatory scenes (beach visit, girl as waitress, etc.) while still integrating a developing plot line and some light humor.

Rather than plot twists, the story introduces characters and other such impediments that work against our pair's goal, so much so that you start questioning how the story will end.

The climax and falling action are very short and there are a few wft moments towards the end but the overall storyline was quite good.

Character:
Tatsuya is an ordinary Earthling with an unusual affinity towards the moon. He's not your typical harem guy in that he actually can act rather than just pondering forever (though he does take some time still), and eventually does grow some balls. Feena is the lunar princess who becomes torn between her duty to her subjects and her growing love for Tatsuya. Both main characters don't convey as much depth as those found in KGNE or Love Hina but their interactions are believable and actions (mostly) are in line with their personalities.

I'm not sure what it is about parents either being completely absent or completely bonkers, in this case we have a father who is the latter. In any case, the lively supporting characters serve to provide a bit of humor, though not too much plot wise. Don't focus too much on the supporting cast as they really aren't utilized to their full potential. As a little bonus, the show reveals some surprising relationships at the end of the series.

Value:
This was a fair watch, especially considering the length of the series, but certain wtf aspects near the end kept me from really fully enjoying the series through to the end. Otherwise, this is a good semi-sci-fi based romance about overcoming obstacles (sort of "if there's a will there's a way").

Well here i am writing a review for an anime that was released 3 years ago, i will try to keep myself within 2006 standards as much as possible.

I've found Yoakena while searching for more harem/romance-ish shows, i really wasnt expecting much but i turned out to be better than what i anticipated:

Animation - 5

The animation on the "main" and "important" episodes is pretty much average, the quality drops awfully in the middle episodes, not much to say here besides avoid this show if you care too much about the graphics and appearance.

Sound - 7

Nice soothing opening and ending animations, pretty much average on every other aspect, sadly the voice acting quality seemed to decrease on the middle episodes, wasn't nearly as bad as the animation tho.

Story - 7

Predictable, simple but surprisingly enough, far from being boring. Yoakena tells a heart warming(some would phrase this as silly) story about a race divided between the earth and the moon, an earthling boy who dreams about the moon, the lunar princess who inherited her mother's dream to stabilize the diplomatic relationships between the moon and the earth, and how these two would fight together to achieve it. That being said, while the middle episodes mainly only focus on the romantic developments between the two, you will hardly feel like it's a filler or something like that.

Character - 4

Well... there is hardly any development on the characters aside from the main two, and while a couple of characters were well thought and designed, most of the cast is made of stereotypes. So to break it down: Character Design [1/5] Character Development [3/5]

Value - 5

If you're looking for something innovative or in any way above average, Yoakena wont do, still, if you're looking for one nice yet simple show to relax watching on a free afternoon, this is as much value as it gets.

Enjoyment - 9

Everything else aside i must say that i definitively enjoyed this show, even tho they were too predictable and obviously stereotypes, the characters blend in very well with the environment, the story was simple and way too predictable but was nice and soothing...
In a reviewer point of view feels crazy to give a 9 score on enjoyment while the others were so low, but to put it bluntly, it should've sucked but it was actually good, and i will re-watch this someday in the future without a doubt.