This is an anime that seems to slip beneath most peoples’ radar. My mission is to spread the word.

I don’t know what kind of geek you have to be to come up with an idea such as this for an anime. Moyashimon resolves around main character Tadayasu and his pretty unheard-of ability; he’s able to see, and communicate with, microbes. Microbes are different kinds of bacillae and stuff like that, for those who haven’t heard of it.

Ordinary people obviously need microscopes to spot these, since they’re too small to be seen with the naked eye, but Tadayasu even perceives them as tiny, fat, KAWAII-kinds of things, bouncing around, playing or just commenting stuff about how they react to things (sometimes in hilarious, albeit stupid, ways. Such as “Oh, I ate sugar and pooped alcohol!”).

Anyway, at the start of the series, Tadayasu and his best friend have just entered a school primarily focused on agricultural studies. His ability is obviously worth a lot in this kind of enviroment, and people who find out about it want to use him for their own purposes.

I like Moyashimon because it’s stupid. It’s not all stupid, it’s pretty smart in some ways. It’s filled with facts about microbes (and these facts are extra interesting when they start talking about making sake :3) and stuff like that, and it seems like the facts are correct too, though I can’t be sure. No, it’s stupid in the story-telling kind of way. It’s clumsy, filled with stupid ideas and a weird kind of randomness and you never know quite what to expect. The humour goes beyond stupid. It’s retarded in an awesome kind of way. For example, the first episode starts out with a search for a girl and ends up with introducing the principle by letting him eat a “delicacy”, which of course consists of dead birds’ blood. Dead birds that have been sewn into a large sea mammal. Which in turn has been buried. For months. That’s the cooking process (foods like this actually exists here in the northern countries, although not so much in these parts of Sweden).

Sometimes it’s smart too. In pretty subtle ways. The OP is made with real-life footage and filled with Tadayasu’s microbes to give us his view on our world. This is well executed and awesome. Also, after each episodes the microbes have their own “Microbe Theatre”, teaching us all kinds of stuff about microbes and the like.

Moyashimon is like a puppy. At first sight you’re gripped by an overwhelming urge to kick it, but you can’t, because it’s too cute and cuddly and stupid.

That’s not just me, right?