Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Anime — Moyashimon : Tales of Agriculture

It starts off with an offbeat premise -- a boy who can see microbes, and whose family has associations with the brewing trade, going up to agricultural college; such plot as there is generally involves weird and wonderful fermented foodstuffs from around the world (like kiviak, illustrated on the right); and the intricacies of sake production.

It's only 11 episodes, and could have been fluffy and slightly educational with it; and after 6 episodes, I was willing to rate it as "unexpectedly good". But then the next two episodes got subbed...

Alas

-- after the half-way point, the gross fermented foodstuffs give way to frat-boy antics, sophomoric ecchi humour, and bolt-on by-the-numbers fan-service (trap? check. lipstick lesbians? check.) -- which literally loses the plot. It wasn't about the people, it was about fun with fermentation, and related bio-industrial or similar processes.

Verdict: Disappointing.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

I just finished watching all 11 episodes with my daughter(11 years old) We loved it a bunch. I think the "fratboy" antics made it more down to earth in a way. It was one of the best anime that we've watched in a long time.

cdk