The God is dead. A mysterious robot named "THE MOON" replaces the God, but what really is "THE MOON"? Only a bunch of kids stands between the human race and the flesh-eating fungus from outer space. Voluntarily contaminated and already doomed, they press forward to the counterattack – love and comradeship are all they have to fall back on. Just before the big push, they celebrate the marriage of two of their number, Sansau and his lover Kateika. But then they fall, one after another. The last sound they hear as they die is the howling of The Moon. Thus endeth 'The Moon'. "The Moon" is a kind of coming-of-age story disguised as a blockbusting yarn about robots. In that sense, I get the feeling that Akiyama was the forerunner of a whole swathe of later works by other writers, from Gundam (in the late seventies to Evangelion in the nineties). But the sad fact is that nobody save a few diehard fans remembers Akiyama's 'The Moon'. Maybe it's because the plotline was so completely OTT. Or maybe it's the way Akiyama kept pulling badly-judged visual gags in what's supposed to be a basically serious story. Also a little fun fact, back in 2006 "The Moon" was going to get an anime adaptation directed by Mamoru Kanbe (The same director behind "Elfen Lied") but they unfortunately scrapped it: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ザ・ムーン#アニメ化の企画