Cover Image: Fly Me to the Moon, Vol. 1

Fly Me to the Moon, Vol. 1

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Member Reviews

This was a really sweet, light romance. I liked that the main character loved space but I just cracked up every time that I read his name. Like of course he's gonna like space they named him NASA. It's like when you know someone is the main character because they have blue hair. Overall, I enjoyed this one. I'm curious to see where the story will go from here so I will definitely be checking out volume 2!

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A young man's life course is altered by the chance encounter with a mysterious girl in this sweet romance manga. After being teased about his name from an early age, Nasa Yuzaki becomes driven by a need to be more famous than the institution he's named after (yes, that N.A.S.A.). But all that changes when he is nearly killed while chasing after a beautiful girl. Before passing out, Nasa begs her to be his girlfriend, to which she says yes, if he will marry her. When Nasa awakes, the girl is gone, and he begins to live a simpler life, graduating from high school and living alone while saving money. One day, the mystery girl appears at his door with a marriage license, so Nasa begins a new chapter of his life as Tsukasa's husband. A sweet take on the "we had to get married" trope that focuses on the practical standpoint of setting up house, Nasa's earnestness will have readers eager for the next volume.

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This was kinda an odd story line. Why would you marry someone you don't even know when you have never had any other relationships. But is was intriguing none the less. It ended in such a way that I think readers will want to know what happens next.

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Well, that was weird. That is my overall opinion of this book, weird. It felt kind of off to me, I don't know why exactly but I just didn't really like what it had going for it. The art was ok but the story was just not something I was into. I like slice-of-life manga well enough but the setup for this one just didn't pan out in a way I liked. The characters were not amongst my favorites for protagonists, they were just too mysterious without being intriguing and too smart without any conflicts. I know that none of this is particularly helpful but I just didn't vibe with this book to either extreme of emotions. It was fine. I'm sure others will like it more than I did and I say hats off to them, but this was just not my cup of tea.

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Honestly this manga was weird. They meet randomly and randomly agree to marry each other, and then they do! The boy obsesses over how cute the girl is, and that's literally the ONLY trait he likes about her. No thanks.

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I like reading Manga and this was a great start to a new series. I am curious to see how it continues. I love the sci-fi/ Fantasy elements.

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I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This is a very cute story, not the type of manga I normally read but it was enjoyable.

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Sets the series off with a bang. Really interesting to see how the female lead is much creepier / more mysterious in the first volume than in later ones. Would like to see the author get back to that.

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*I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

An interesting book. Not my style, so it is hard to review, but it isn't a bad book. It is more slice of life with a fantasy/sci-fi bent with lots of room for humor to come.

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This manga is from weekly shonen Sunday. A really rare pick up!

The premise here is interesting since it features a married couple. The romance is really fluffy, and I love the main character. He makes me laugh with his funny outbursts and faces. I love his wife too. Very cute couple. Would be awesome to be able to read more of it!

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A soulmate is a person that has been predetermined by fate as our perfect other half. Most manga, especially shoujo, tend to delve into this notion. After all, there are a lot of testimonials and anecdotes to either prove or disprove this very theory. As for whether it is real or not, reality has yet to prove it. However, we here in Honey’s Anime will believe that our soulmate -- other than our readers, of course -- exists somewhere out there.

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Nasa's parents thought they were being creative when they named their son after the Space Exploration group. Now in middle school, Nasa put himself under immense pressure to succeed and exceed expectations in order to live up to his name. Then he sees Tsukasa, a mysterious but super cute girl.  Nasa confesses his love for Tsukasa, but she agrees to date him only if he marries her. He immediately says yes, but she disappears shortly after. 

Nasa is involved in an accident, and the ensuing medical treatment leeches his drive to be the best.  He decides not to go to high school and starts working instead, all the while looking for Tsukasa. Three years later, she shows up, marriage license in hand, ready to date Nasa.  He agrees, the two are married, and Tsukasa moves in to his tiny apartment.  The two must figure out who they are, how to live together, and how to navigate life as a married couple. 

This is a really cute story full of relationship exploration that usually accompanies a title about a first love, but this has the added element of the couple being married.  We spend a lot of time up front getting to known Nasa that when Tsukasa shows up again, there is a relief that she came back, rather than a huge question as to why she has to be married in order to date.  There's nothing in the first volume that lends to the "plus" in the publisher's rating, but there is potential for some adult scenes later in the series when the two know each other better. 

Both characters are drawn in a very cute manner, and the cuteness factor goes up any time Tsukasa does anything funny or interesting.  There is a bit of a mystique surrounding Tsukasa, and the mangaka's end note lets us know that there is something strange about her that he decided not to reveal in this first volume, so it's worth continuing the read to figure out what is strange about her.

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This is a cute story, if a little bland so far. Nasa, who has always been teased for being named after N.A.S.A., decides when he's young that he wants to live up to his name, and so strives to be the best at everything. This over-achievement has made him a bit sheltered, and he has no clue about girls. When a girl saves him from being killed by a truck, he falls in insta-love, and asks her out. She agrees, but only if he'll marry her. He agrees, faints, and wakes up in the hospital, recovering from his accident. Some years go by, and he's now 18, living on his own in an apartment, when the girl shows up. They go get married, and a bunch of awkwardness ensues. Does he dare hold her hand? What will their sleeping arrangements be? Is he going to get flustered every time he looks at her? Stuff like that. Very trope-y, not that that's a bad thing. This volume does not answer the big question- who is this girl, anyway? It's hinted that she has some sort of powers, so what's up? There's not a lot going on so far, but it's cute enough that I'll read the next volume, and the art is pretty. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

#FlyMetotheMoonVol1 #NetGalley

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A cute romance manga? YES PLEASE! The art is so pretty. I do feel the beginning is a little jarring... like it just throws the reader into the story and I wasn't sure if I'd missed something or not. Once, I caught on, it was great and the story is cute. Can't wait to read more!

Will go live on my blog: 10/28/20

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Super cute romance manga with fun mystery around the main heroine. Is she an alien or some sort of holy being? I will likely read the entire series as it comes out because I love Shoujo manga but with that comes the tropes that readers love and hate. I'm hoping this series will give us more to love in the next installment.

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Manga romances have been my life-support during lockdown. From the more adult josei and yaoi titles to the more wholesome shojo, I’ve been reading just about every single one I can. Now, with Fly Me to the Moon Volume 1, the debut manga for the series published in English VIZ Media, there is a new level of wholesome achieved. Written and illustrated by mangaka Kenjiro Hata, Fly Me to the Moon puts marriage first in the timeline and readers watch as it develops into a relationship. The debut of this series coincides with the news Crunchyroll announced this past weekend at the Virtual Crunchyroll Expo which shared character art of the upcoming anime.

In Fly Me to the Moon Volume 1 we meet Nasa Yuzaki who has always felt connected to outer space. Named after N.A.S.A. – yes, that N.A.S.A – our protagonist has grown accustomed to being bullied for his name. But instead of letting the bullies get to him, he has instead vowed to shoot past the stars and be more memorable than the organization responsible for being the first on the moon. A tall task, he’s thrown off course when an accident introduces him to the mysterious Tsukasa. She’s cute, she reminds him of Princess Kaguya, and she also has strange powers. So is she the moon goddess herself? Or something all together?

Smitten with her at first sight, he asks her out, but she has other plans. Instead of a date, Tsukasa agrees to be with Nasa only through marriage. While he agrees, Tsukasa disappears quickly after and leaves him to spend the next few years pining over her and throwing all of his plans for success out the window. But, when he’s 18, the mysteriously cute girl shows up again and the story really kicks off – because their marriage does.

Fly Me to the Moon is adorable but it is also very much stuck in the manga trope of a hapless boy coupled with a superpowered, capable, but cluelessly cute girl. While this trope can take on disturbing forms like Yuna and Yuki in Future Diary, I’m very happy to say that this manga avoids the most problematic elements of the trope. While this is one that bugs me to no end, especially learning Tsukasa is 16 years-old from the character information page featured at the end of the book, overall, Tsukasa and Nasa are wholesome. Genuinely, take the most wholesome anime romance you know and dial up the awkward and cuteness up to 10, and there you have Fly Me to the Moon.

The two lead characters are written to showcase the awkward sexual tension that happens when you’re in a room alone with someone you’re attracted to but it never crosses a line into vulgarity or ecchi comedy. Instead, it remains focused on the cuteness of it all and Nasa and Tsukasa’s ignorance of what being a couple means, let alone what being married means. Additionally, this title offers up a slice of life more so than it does pure romance.

Overall, Fly Me to the Moon Volume 1 is adorable and one that I recommend for people looking for an adorable manga. It isn’t revolutionary or groundbreaking, but it does the job it sets out to do which is to introduce you to the characters and get you to feel for their blooming romance.

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A speedy start to the series leaving leaving you feeling that you’ve missed something. This volume sets up a number of questions that will hopefully get resolved as other volumes come along. The male lead, Nasa (named so in the hopes that it inspires him to aim for the stars) appears to be a book smart if somewhat dumb in other areas that is almost immediately dragged along by Tsukasa’s (the female lead that is left deliberately mysterious with no back story) pace. Hopefully this series will start to develop the characters more in future volumes as their relationship provides comedy gold.

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“Fly Me to the Moon” hopes for a smooth landing in a new relationship (Opinions Portion of Article)

Hata spoke during Virtual Crunchyroll Expo about the manga and its upcoming anime adaptation. He said that he wanted to make a story that started with a marriage which he called the last step of the relationship and differed from the pattern from other romantic stories like his own. Few others have similar situations like “Engaged to the Unidentified” and “Please Teacher!” but “Fly Me to the Moon” settles down quite quickly to show how the newlyweds make the apartment more homely. For those who enjoyed “Hayate the Combat Butler” will find the hard hitting gags and other funny moments Hata had in his previous series. Readers will find that Nasa’s wife will also have some strangeness like him. Their relationship is quite intriguing and will want fans to know more about his “Princess Kaguya” while seeing how things will turn out.

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Nasa Yuzaki, is such a funny character. His name means "Starry Sky" because his name sounds like N.A.S.A kids used to make fun of him, and he said he would hit light speed faster than N.A.S.A. I really like him and the mysterious girl who rescued him one night. He falls in love with her, asks her out, and even agrees to marry her Nasa, is a hard worker and super smart.
This is such a cute manga!

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Puppy love, true love, fleeting love. There's tons of ways to describe the many kinds of love we experience while growing up. Many of us know that it's unrealistic to fall in love and stay together with someone for many years. Not everyone marries their high school sweetheart! But what happens when Nasa Yuzaki one day falls in love with the cool, ephemeral beauty known as Tsukasa one fateful evening, and then proposes on the spot? Fly Me To The Moon, or Tonikaku Cawaii (henceforth abbreviated as Tonikaku) as it's known in Japan, is a Weekly Shonen Sunday series that has finally officially debuted in English, to much fanfare. Kenjiro Hata is known previously for his work on Hayate the Combat Butler, an action rom-com with a decidedly "moe" sort of art style. Join me today as we take a look at what makes this laid back romantic comedy land among the stars.

Nasa Yuzaki is a peculiar name--his parents named him with the kanji for starry sky (星空) but pronounced Nasa, in the hopes that he has dreams as ambitious as the universe. He was made fun of for having such a ridiculous name, which in turn kinda made his parents hopes a reality. It turns out, he's a very resilient person, and instead of taking any mistreatment at face value, he decided that he's going to become great enough to eclipse his own namesake. This is the first thing that endears us as an audience to Nasa, and it happens within 12 pages of the first chapter. Nasa is very blunt, earnest, smart, and resilient. These are his core character traits, and the way this specific combination comprises the bulk of his decision making are why the events that go down this book have any sort of consequence or even are entertaining to begin with. After taking a bus to an entrance exam for a school that'll bring him closer to his dream, he gets distracted by a beautiful girl who looks around his age, drinking coffee near the bus stop. On his way to talk to her, truck-kun says hello, and the girl in question says, "No, it's not time for this series to turn into an isekai," and ends their interaction right there. In all seriousness though, this scene is where we first get Moon imagery beyond Nasa's naming motif. As the girl leaves once Nasa's life is secured, he feels intense regret at the prospect of letting her go forever, like the Tale of Princess Kaguya. He catches up to her and after getting even more smitten, manages to ask her out, then propose before passing out. Nasa is very gutsy! He responded without hesitation when the girl said she could only be with him if he marries her. This kind of introduction is just as unrealistic as marrying your high school sweetheart, but with Nasa skipping a few steps in between, and the Kaguya motif, this introduction comes off more like the start of a folk tale or legend than just a normal story. After all, it's easy to accept the unacceptable if it's presented as fantastical from the start, right?

Several years after their initial encounter, Nasa has his own apartment and dropped out of high school in order to save money while working in hopes of meeting her. She arrives on the day he turns 18 and introduces her self as Tsukasa. Frankly, having all of this setup condensed into just 3 chapters is not something I'd expect from a Sunday series. But, there are plenty of jokes and references sprinkled out, which makes the tone of the series much less serious and instead evoke the same kind of laid-back atmosphere you'd come to know and love from this magazine. Once Tsukasa comes back to the story, the plot settles into a rhythm of showing mundane events that a couple living together might go through. That is the true appeal of this series. Nasa is a scholar and, while not socially inept, inexperienced when it comes to love and romance. A lot of this first volume is him and Tsukasa slowly bridging the distance between each other as strangers who have come together through fate and mutual attraction. The transition between a hard to believe, almost folk tale style of beginning, into a more banal, everyday kind of story might be hard to wrap one's head around. You could say it's like trying to have your cake, and eating it--or seeing the moon, and deciding to fly towards it. From the start, though, the laid-back feeling of the series makes the events come off in a lackadaisical or whimsical light. Even when Nasa is on death's door, all he could think about was how cute Tsukasa was, and it gave him the adrenaline rush needed to ignore his leg injuries until he actually passed out. It's very much the kind of writing that comes off as self-serving for the sake of the story. However, what makes it work by suspending our disbelief, is the fact that it's in line with Nasa's character. His earnestness, bluntness, and resilience come in full force at the same time in order to let him squeeze out those words--I really like you--before it's time to conk out on the snowy road.

As far as the jokes go, Tonikaku is rife with plenty of pop culture references, like Hayate also was. What makes Tonikaku stand out though, is the timing of those jokes. A lot of the jokes and references in this series are more blink-and-miss-them. From chapter titles to single panel easter eggs, Hata-sensei goes from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Monogatari Series, Kinnikuman, Danganronpa, and even real life places and names like Don Quixote (Japanese retail chain), or Amazon and Jeff Bezos. The impressive part is that the references themselves at least have some relevance to whatever context they're put in. The Kinnikuman reference comes up when Nasa brings up the concept of "Superhumans" in his ambition to become an incredible human. For Madoka Magica, Kyubey's contracts are referenced when bringing up how easy it is to submit a contractual marriage application, due to the fact that this specific kind of social service option is open to the public at any time of the day. If anything, Tsukasa also said that celebrities take advantage of the fact that people can get married at night, and that could have been from Hata-sensei's personal experience marrying Masumi Asano, who voiced the character Risa Asakaze in the anime adaptation of his own previous work, Hayate the Combat Butler. The cut of Tsukasa's jib is a very welcome addition to liven up her dynamic with Nasa. She can be just as frank, but because of her love of pop culture, does a great job of knowing when to be sarcastic or when to be a straight (wo)man to Nasa's ignorance of the world. One of my favorite jokes is in the extras towards the end, when Tsukasa wants to create a scene with a fake death, using the same Excalibur from the Fate/ series. The scene was Ayako Kawasumi slaying Nasa in a fit of rage when he wouldn't cook for her. The joke is that she voices Saber, a servant for Shiro Emiya who is really good at domestic chores, which Nasa isn't quite as talented in (as far as cooking goes at least). Nasa agrees, Tsukasa is mildly impressed that he went along with her whim, and when he goes the extra mile to craft an actual replica of the sword, she gets very engaged with acting along. The scene ends with him saying he loves her and we get a rare instance of Tsukasa blushing, caught off guard by his willingness to say stuff like that without being embarrassed.

Nasa and Tsukasa are a phenomenally cute couple. If not for their chemistry, and the way that their budding romance palpably develops, this volume would not have been as enjoyable to read as it was. I mentioned Tsukasa blushing at Nasa's willingness to shower her with affection, but for the most part, she is very much a "cool beauty" type of anime girl. She shows just as much worldly knowledge and proficiency in things as Nasa, albeit in different fields, and while you can tell she wasn't as immediately enamored as Nasa was with her, she definitely feels some attraction to him. The spark may have just been from him displaying just how much he likes her, but that doesn't invalidate her feelings at all. At the end of the day, we all want someone who loves us. In one of the chapter extras, we see her response to what she likes about him being the fact that he loves her so much. It can come off as a really cocky or selfish response, but from what we've seen, she really does value the fact that Nasa treasures her so much. As readers, we can tell that she's actually warming up to him by their casual conversations, and willingness to flirt back while keeping the appropriate emotional distance for a couple that is still getting to know each other. By the end of volume 1, we see them going on a first-name basis, and Tsukasa being flustered by the first time due to Nasa adding a -chan honorific because it sounds cute. They're both smart, emotionally mature people, but just a little clumsy. That makes for some super wholesome moments, and what readers of this series should probably expect moving forward.

For a first volume, Fly Me To The Moon had a very satisfying start. It's very much a, "Damn, I love my wife" kind of story, and if that legendary Reddit poster from r/ambien has showed us anything, it's that people love to see husbands be head over heels over their wife. The wholesomeness exuded by this story will leave you feeling warm and bubbly. In its debut issue in Sunday, there was a short extra chapter written and drawn by Koji Kumeta, author of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Kakushigoto: My Dad's Secret Ambition--under whom Hata-sensei previously worked for as an assistant. It mostly comprises of Kumeta-sensei wryly commenting on how unrealistic this story is, and the fact that Hata-sensei's readers likely won't even be able to relate even though they're probably of marriageable age, because they're the kind of otaku who wouldn't get married. Normally, this might seem pretty harsh for a burn, but it was all said tongue-in-cheek, as the series itself grew plenty of popularity by the time the volume was released, even if it came out at a faster pace than most Sunday series. Kumeta-sensei is known for making harsh jokes but even in the short excerpt, his own characters were berating him for being so crass and inconsiderate of his junior. To our knowledge, this chapter hasn't been collected in a volume. Instead, for the Japanese volume release, the table of contents includes the corresponding issue for Sunday that each chapter ran in. Not only that, but we also get the question and answer that Hata gave for that week's issue! There were a handful of 4-koma skits in color, and one gag interview page about a youtuber answering audience questions. Funnily enough, the first volume's release date was actually advertised along with the publishing of the first chapter in Sunday. This was a first for the magazine itself! As for this official English release extras, we got the post-chapter doodles, the Excalibur skit, and it's capped off with Nasa/Tsukasa's original character designs and the Q&A from the end of the volume. It's a shame we didn't get the panel showing us that, had Nasa gotten the Death Note, he would become God within 2 weeks.

For the official English release, you can find it in print and digital thanks to Viz Media. The content is far from similar, but people who enjoy Komi Can't Communicate will probably got plenty of mileage out of this series, due to the chemistry of the main couple and its breezy pacing. If anime is more your speed, you can look forward to the anime adaptation premiering on Crunchyroll later this month!

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