Microscope Ninjas

They come in the stealth of darkness…to LOOK AT MICROBES.

Moyashimon is massively entertaining AND educational. Well, kind of educational. It’s far more entertaining than it is informative, but that’s okay, because it’s hilarious. I mean, we have the aforementioned Microscope Ninjas. We have “WORMS ARE LIKE THE DRAGONS OF THE EARTH!” We have cow anal penetration (that was seriously disgusting). And we have cute little representations of e. coli. It’s winning over viewers simply by how bizarre it is.

And that’s why I like it, I think. The series does not take itself seriously at all, a pitfall that might have caused a lesser “educational” series to fall flat on its face. Moyashimon is like attending biology class, a class where the teacher wanted to be a professional writer but failed, and so, instead of giving lectures, gives long and hilarious fictional stories about the topic they’re supposed to be lecturing about, and you leave the class vaguely remembering what the lecture was about but thinking that that bit about the Krebs cycle was especially hilarious. Moyashimon, thus far, hasn’t really “taught” me much new about microbiology (yet), but I have a deeper understanding for how sake brewing works. And that I can only see as a good thing when I’m at some party sometime and someone asks the crowd at large in a drunken stupor “So, how do they brew sake anyway” and I can provide a snappy response to both the old and the new methods.

That would assume I was at a party in the first place, though.

At any rate, Moyashimon is a show everyone with an interest in cute and cuddly microbes should watch. Maybe they’ll make little plush toys of them and then I can buy them and put them in my car and when someone asks with interest what they are I’ll just say “Orzyae-tan” and they will look upon me with fear and longing.