The Winter 2026 Anime Preview Guide

In the Clear Moonlit Dusk

Yoi Takiguchi has long legs, a deep voice, and a handsome face...in other words, Yoi is such a good-looking guy that most people don't notice or care that she is, in fact, a girl. Indeed, she's had the nickname "Prince" as long as she can remember. That is, until she met Ichimura-senpai...the only person who's really seemed to see her for herself. To her surprise, she's not sure how to handle this new relationship, especially when her newfound friend is a prince himself.

In the Clear Moonlit Dusk is based on Mika Yamamori's In the Clear Moonlit Dusk (Uruwashi no Yoi no Tsuki) manga. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

Yoi is the real selling point for me in this story. She is the perfect example of how humans internalize even the parts of themselves they don't like—accept them as key parts of their identities and are loath to cast them aside. In her case, she's taken it to heart that she will always be perceived as a pretty boy rather than a cute girl.

She doesn't like this, of course—she'd rather be cute than handsome like all the other girls in the class. Yet, while she might try to avoid situations that paint her as a “prince” in the moment, she hasn't made any large changes to herself to combat this perception. She hasn't grown her hair out nor has she stopped doing kind things for other people—like holding back the crowd for a girl to pass or picking up a dropped item and returning it (even though she knows she'll get a swooning reaction rather than a normal thanks).

Thus, when Ichimura starts showing romantic interest in her, it's more than just being hit on for the first time; it's an assault on her established identity. The idea that someone could find her cute in her own special way is shocking to her. It goes against her own self-perception—especially as it comes from someone as androgynously attractive as she is.

All this is leading her to the question she dares not ask: if she's not the “prince,” then what is she? If someone sees her as a princess despite how she looks and acts, then what does that say about all the feelings shes accepted or forced down deep? Is it truly okay for her to be treated as a woman and not a man? And beneath all that is a fear of whether or not she could handle the emotional pain if Ichimura's feelings turn out to be a cruel prank.

This is the kind of internal drama we are dealing with in this high school love story—and I am 100% here for it.

Gender really shouldn't be a thing people feel free to comment on. How someone looks or presents themselves is personal, and outside commentary can be hurtful, to say the least. In Yoi's case, she's been consistently misgendered since at least middle school simply because her looks are more on the side of what people consider “handsome” than “beautiful,” and while she doesn't say much about it out loud, it's clear that it really bothers her. She obviously identifies as a cisgender girl, so being called “the prince” isn't something she welcomes, even though she appears to have resigned herself to the appellation.

Of course, she's not thrilled when the school's other prince decides to call her his princess, either. If there's a single impression Yoi gives off in this debut episode, it's that she'd really like to just fly under the radar. But she's the heroine of a shoujo romance series, so that's never going to happen, and that means that the best trajectory this could take would be Yoi learning to tell people when something makes her uncomfortable, whether that's girls pressing gifts on her or Ichimura having some serious issues with keeping his hands to himself. There's going to be a romance plot, sure, but I'd argue that the more important storyline introduced here is Yoi finding her voice.

I'm making this sound more dire than it is, honestly, but Mika Yamamori's series tends to go into more depth than its premise would suggest. And the overwhelming impression Yoi gives off is that she's desperately uncomfortable a lot of the time she's out in the world. That doesn't stop her from acting as she wants, though – she helps people whenever they need it. It never occurs to her that this could be part of why people see her as princely, because she really is a knight in shining armor multiple times in this episode: when she helps the girl off the train, when she stands up to the drunk harassing a convenience store clerk, and even when she just gives someone back a dropped handkerchief. Yoi's a good person when someone else needs help. She's less good at standing up for herself, but she does still push Ichimura away and extricate herself from two situations that make her uncomfortable, even if that means resigning herself to eating lunch with the pushy older boy. It's better than causing a scene in the classroom in her mind.

On the surface, this has many of the usual shoujo romance trappings, with the pushy male lead at the top of the list. We don't know enough about Ichimura yet to know if there's anything more than being treated like a god and coming from a wealthy family behind his apparent belief that he's welcome everywhere he goes, but it's clear he's drawn to Yoi because she's different from the other girls – or at least, he thinks she is. It's Yoi herself who's carrying this episode as she walks the line between uncomfortable and just being herself, and it doesn't hurt that Yamamori's manga art has been nicely adapted. (Though Ichimura's white hair feels too bright.) Yoi may be in what feels like a fairly typical story, but even if it plays out in a rote fashion, watching as she finds peace in herself feels like it'll be worth it.

Do you ever feel bad for all of those poor lesbian and bisexual girls in these anime comedies who fall head-over-heels for the tall and athletic tomboy who ends up getting paired with the one guy who can bring out her feminine, romantic side? I feel like someone ought to start up a Pining for Prince-chan Support Group to help these kids recover from their woes and maybe broaden the expanses of their dating pool. They could even have a club sponsor who was one of those Prince-chans herself, back in the day, except her fling with the masculine bad-boy didn't end up panning out, and—wait, what's that? The doe-eyed student teacher who just took over the desk across the way has that tell-tale sparkle in her eye, and she keeps finding ways to bump into Sponsor-sensei in the hallway and make cute small talk. We'll call it “The Grown-Up Prince and Her Maiden in the Teacher's Lounge.”

I'll go ahead and toss that one into the “James' Excellent Elevator Pitches That Are Totally Up for Grabs If Any Production Committees Want to Make Good Money” bucket that I keep right by my desk for whenever inspiration strikes. Anyways, as you have probably guessed, In the Clear Moonlit Dusk is all about Yoi, one of those legendary Prince-chans, and the doom of all the school's baby gays arrives when Yoi bumps into Ichimura, the rascal with white hair and impeccable romance anime timing when it comes to leaping from school stairwells. As bad as I feel for all of the unfortunate members of Yoi's fan club, you can hardly blame Yoi for falling head-over-heels for Ichimura, because the anime clears the genre's first major skill check by giving us a leading man that is fine as hell. He's also just awkward enough to avoid coming across as an inhuman Adonis, while Yoi also proves to be an ideal romance heroine as we meet her friends and watch her navigate these unfamiliar romantic waters. She's realistically naive without being blunderingly oblivious, and the anime treats her interactions with Ichimura as actual conversations that two improbably attractive yet nonetheless human young people might have.

I've spent many years in this Preview Guide trying to articulate the importance of chemistry in these romance shows, even though that all-important X-factor is already difficult enough to nail down in a live-action setting, never mind one where the subjects being observed are nothing more than a bunch of lines and color splotches on digital paper. Here, though, we have a perfect exemplar. There is a scene in this premiere where Ichimura marches into a convenience store and casually shuts down a punk who is harassing Yoi while nibbling on one of those little plastic soda treat-things in a way that is just infuriatingly sexy. Then Yoi herself jumps in and blocks a cheap shot from the punk on her own, using the shoe's floral insert shots to emphasize that Yoi's masculinity doesn't make her any less beautiful or less relatable as a protagonist. Then the two instinctively clasp hands and make their retreat into the night. The colors are crisp, the animation is lively, and the storyboarding expertly emphasizes small cuts and pacing to make the encounter feel urgent.

That scene right there? Pure, undiluted chemistry. And when Ichimura just directly asks Yoi, “You're this beautiful, and you've never been treated like a princess before?” Friends, if I were a good Christian woman living in the humid South before the advent of air conditioning, I'd be fanning myself with a church pamphlet and praising the Lord for his small miracles. We may have a huge number of romance shows to pick from this winter, but if you're looking for something that prioritizes making your heart race as much as making you laugh, then In the Clear Moonlit Dusk just may be the series for you.

Oh lord, does In the Clear Moonlit Dusk have a serious case of gender, and I am not ready to say whether it's in a good or bad way. Yoi has always been treated differently from other girls because of her height, deeper voice, and “masculine” features, which I'm taking to mean she probably has a stronger jaw than average for her sex. Her physical appearance has earned her the unwanted nickname “Prince,” when she would prefer to be seen as a typical girl her age. In a chance meeting, the school playboy Ichimura calls her “beautiful.” Commence the doki dokis.

Looking at the show purely from a gendered aspect, this is a tangled plate of spaghetti that I'm frankly a little scared to try to pick apart. Prince-type characters have been a recurring staple in shoujo for generations; leading ladies like Oscar François de Jarjayes and Utena Tenjō challenged gender roles, while Haruhi Fujioka and Haruka Tennō allowed readers to experiment with sexual orientation and presentation by proxy. The way shoujo treated them has historically differed from similar characters in male-oriented titles, which typically seek to feminize them. Yoi complicates the character type by her unwilling adherence to the archetype and her desire to be traditionally feminine. Her femininity is affirmed not by her actively seeking to present herself in a certain way, but by the romantic attentions of a boy. He'll comment on how cool she was when she stood up to a guy hitting on a convenience store clerk, but then princess-carry her in the park without her permission.

I can't tell whether this is a gender-normative story that suggests all girls are truly feminine on the inside, or a more nuanced take on the complex interplay between external presentation and internal feelings. I don't know whether Ichimura's acting out of stereotypical male-female interactions is regressive, because it shows Yoi needing her gender affirmed by an outside source, or if it's a sweet way to show that treating someone according to their wishes is an important act of support. In this essay, I will…

BONK

Sorry, I just hit my head and realized I'm working on ANN's preview guide, not a paper for a 200-level gender and media studies course. I'll stop worrying my pretty little head about the feminist implications of Yoi's conundrum for a moment. If we set all that aside for a moment, In the Clear Moonlit Dusk is shaping up to be a solid shoujo romance. Ichimura is a bit pushy for my taste, but he and Yoi have solid chemistry. I wasn't thrilled when he dragged Yoi to an empty classroom, but once they sat down together, their conversation was pretty cute! In shoujo manga, gossip is basically worldbuilding, and the idle chit-chat between background characters left me wondering why Ichimura has garnered such a reputation as a playboy. His flirtation with Yoi is charming, but he still comes across as sincerely interested in her.

The production for the show is decidedly middling. The animation stays on-model throughout, which may sound like a good thing, but the lack of deformation or squish gives it a rather stiff effect. The cool lighting inadvertently emphasized that these characters, though drawn in two dimensions, live in a three-dimensional world. Little stylistic flourishes, like flowers blooming on-screen to imitate the floral effects that are one of shoujo's hallmarks, feel dissonant with the world as well.

It's too early to say where In the Clear Moonlit Dusk will fall in its handling of gender issues. For now, I'll try to look at it as a sweet high school romance and think about unpacking it later.