If there was one thing no anime fan was expecting this year, it was the announcement of Moyashimon Returns.
It is, as might be indicated by the name, a sequel to 2007’s Moyashimon. A quirky and odd series about some students and professors at an agricultural university with a focus on fermentation, Moyashimon was generally well-praised for its unique premise, likeable characters and good sense of humour. And while it is generally remembered, it is nonetheless relatively obscure (and I don’t believe did that well in Japan). Basically, nothing about Moyashimon screamed “this needs a sequel!”, so everyone was just really surprised by the announcement. Not that the news was received poorly – Moyashimon was something quite different, an entertaining breath of fresh air and certainly memorable, so more of it was always welcome.
And if you didn’t know already, the main character can see and chat with microbes, which are all very ‘chibi’ and stuff and what Moyashimon is actually best remembered for.
Moyashimon Returns’ story picks up straight from where Moyashimon left off. Sawaki has got his powers back and all is right with the world. Until he notices Yuuki coming out of a hidden passage in the building that is! Oikawa also notices (separately) and instead of just asking about it, they decide to go investigate by themselves. Whacky stuff happens and eventually they find an old abandoned tunnel that basically leads to whatever underground stuff is there. Not too long after all is revealed and it turns out that… it’s a small distillery that Itsuki has made. All a bit anti-climactic really.
After this, Hasegawa ends up being dragged to France (with most of the cast coming to the assumption that it’s to marry her off to her arranged fiancé) right before the harvest festival. The gang uses the harvest festival to try and raise funds to go to Hasegawa and bring her back, and some of these attempts are pretty funny.
Itsuki gets three plane tickets for Sawaki, Misato and Kawahama, ostensibly to pick him up some authentic French cheese and wine, and off they go! They prat around France for a bit, meet a French girl who looks exactly the same as Yuuki, solve her tedious problems, find Hasegawa, kinda save her, and then return home after she talks with her fiancé, discovers stuff about herself and realise that neither of them wanted the marriage in the first place.
I’ll just come out and say it – I found Moyashimon Returns boring. The story is just not told in a gripping way. The ‘tunnel mystery’ is only for about the first 1/3rd, and after that it’s all about Hasegawa in one way or another. Not that Hasegawa is a bad or uninteresting character (far from it – I easily found her one of the most enjoyable in the first series!) but just the way it all plays out makes it like that. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with any of the scenarios, and yes they all are used to create some really funny moments, but none of them are truly executed well. Part of it comes down to the rather plodding pace and constant protraction of events, but the worst of it is that for a significant chunk of the episodes the characters were all divided up. Yuuki was generally rarely seen from the start (but there were reasons established in the first season for that), Hasegawa disappears fairly early on and after our three strapping young lazy-ass students go to France we don’t see the bulk of the cast for several episodes. Instead we’re stuck with Hasegawa’s internal monologues and mild drama, and Sawaki, Misato and Kawahama just doing whatever in France (which does yield some entertainment). Even the introduction of a new character – Marie – does little to improve matters given that her role is just to inject more dull drama. Not to say that drama is necessarily bad, but it was never the appeal of Moyashimon. And even if it were, it’s not well-executed drama. They go through it all with a certain degree of apathy and boredom, and there’s just no sense of engagement or tension. How are we supposed to get invested in it if the show itself isn’t?
This all came into sharp, sharp focus during the second half of the last episode. The cast is reunited once again, and it’s easily the most fun Moyashimon Returns had been for ages. Turns out it’s at its best when all the principle characters are together, just doing whatever, and letting their personalities naturally bring about the humour. When this is so blatantly the case, what good does separating them all do?
It would be remiss to not mention the microbes. Function as something of a mascot and branding for the show, they are one of its biggest and most noteworthy elements. And I’m happy to say that they’re featured far more prominently this time around! There’s more conversation between Sawaki and the various microbes that surround him, and there are many cutaways in which the microbes describe in some detail some fermentation process or product. If it weren’t for those little guys, I would have died of boredom long before even nearing completion. Their bright, bubbling behaviours and appearances really bring a lot of entertainment to their mini-and-occasionally-slightly-crazy seminars, and I always looked forward to the Microbe Theatre short at the end of each episode. My one complaint is that their explanations are so frequent and long that it does occasionally drag the pacing of the story down quite badly. There’s also this attitude of “Oh shit they just said something about fermentation! Quick! Explain each and every little thing about it!” which results in a lot of cutaways that I could really have done without.
I think it really says something about the show that the pre-air commercials, which exclusively featured the microbes in little skits that had nothing to do with the story or fermentation, were substantially more entertaining than the show itself. But then again, they did have Moyashimoe going for them.
As for production values, I guess the animation’s fine. Stylistically look decent. Music was unremarkable. OP was by ClariS and compares unfavourably with their OP for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. ED sounded like a Japanese They Might Be Giants and was quite fun. The use of CG for the microbes worked really well and while it was still obvious it was integrated really quite nicely and didn’t look out of place at all (it helps that they’re not ‘really’ there). But yeah, all rather unremarkable. Some really nice shots here and there, but mostly just functional.
So Moyashimon Returns was a disappointment, being dull and slow and failing to capitalise on what made the first series as entertaining as it was. But then, was Moyashimon ever that entertaining? While it was certainly unique and memorable, I don’t really remember it being exceptional. Solid for sure, but not anything standout. I think that’s a fairly common sentiment – there was a fair bit of hype for this show, but it mostly came about due to the surprise of Moyashimon of all things getting a sequel. Surprise and a touch of nostalgia, for some. I don’t think anybody was really surprised it turned out like this, if I’m honest. I guess it goes to show that even a quirky and fun premise can’t stop a story from being boring. I’d be surprised if it got another sequel, despite the hilariously bad sequel hook at the end of the last episode. But hey, even the show didn’t have any confidence in that.
6/10
[…] Silver Spoon (or Gin no Saji if you’re so inclined) what was met with a bit of an incredulous reaction when it was announced. A series about a teenaged boy attending an agricultural high school? By the mangaka of Fullmetal Alchemist?!? Not exactly the follow up anyone was expecting! But it’s apparently inspired and informed by Hiromu Arakawa’s childhood being raised on a dairy farm, so we could at least expect a fairly accurate depiction of farm life. But with even that aside, there were still some worries lurking. The premise is surprisingly similar to Moyashimon, another noitaminA series about life at agricultural school (well, university) and it wasn’t too long ago that we were burned by its sequel, Moyashimon Returns (which was boring). […]