Anime: Moyashimon

Moyashimon starts out with an interesting premise, but ends before it has time to go anywhere with it. It gets by through being unlike anything else and some decent humour, it ends up feeling like it could have done much more.

Animation:
The art for most of the characters is pretty bland, and a few of them are permanently drawn with almost no features, which can take some getting used to. The microorganisms, however, all quite cute, and have lots of little nuances in their designs.

The animation quality starts off fairly high, but it takes a severe nosedive for a couple of episodes near the start, which has everyone painfully off model. After that it looks fairly good again, although the character still tend to look slightly off.

Sound:
The opening is pretty decent, but I'm rather more fond of the ending. Also: the voice acting has no real problems.

Story:
The story is the part that suffered the most from forced into eleven episodes. You get a few episodes setting things up, a few episodes of wacky hijinks, a few episodes introducing plot threads... and then it ends. The "introducing plot threads" bit is the most annoying, as there are a number of interesting subplots that could have made the series more interesting that never get much play. Instead, we get the aforementioned wacky hijinks that aren't really funny enough to excuse the lack of depth.

Character:
The characters are a diverse and likeable lot that are the main reason to watch the series beyond a desire for something unusual or a love for agriculture. They all have amusing quirks, and most have a certain amount of depth. Surprisingly, the quirks aren't weird enough to make the depth unbelievable. Unfortunately, the series ends before most of them get much time devoted to them.

After finishing this series it left me with a BIG question mark. It indeed have a start middle and end... But how it got from point a to z I have no idea. I don't mean this in the literal sense that this anime is confusing rather the story really was a bunch of random events thats formed a story of some sorts? The premise seems to follow the popular university students trying to find there purpose in life theme. Where Sawaki and his childhood friend Yuuki enter an agricultural university. The twist of this story is that Sawaki has a special ability to see microbes and can identify them too. Thus his adventures at the university begin.

Animation
I was impressed with the animation. Although it can't compare with top quality animes it had its area to shine. The most interesting thing were the little microbes and how they choose to make them all cute and cuddlely. I also found the rest of the parts were fairly nicely done. The characters didn't have very much distortion and the background and scenes were original and fit in.

Sound
I liked both the opening and ending they were really random themes that fit in. The overall music seemed to stay in the background so I don't have much comment for it. As for the voice acting it worked for the most part so I don't have much comment on it as well. The only character I found a little odd was the professor. His voice sounded he had an accent so maybe they wanted him to seem like a foreigner? I'm not too sure.

Story
As mentioned before the story doesn't really go anywhere. They really don't solve any big issue nor do they attempt to cause too much conflict for the characters. Near the end attempt to create more story but I don't think this worked out very well at all. They really needed to start the development at the beginning instead of focusing on introducing characters and showing random side stories. They also jump around quite a bit for instance one of the characters goes missing for a bunch of episodes and without any explanation reappears near the end. They kind of explain the reason he leaves but it really didn't convince me enough to justify him disappearing from the series. Overall I think the story failed to BE a story and needed a great deal of work.

Character
Since the story in this anime is weak the redeeming factor is the characters and the development. The main focus of this entire series revolves around the situations of each character and interactions with each other. They don't have many serious dialog till near the end of the series but just through the events you see some change as the series goes along. Everything is very slight and they have to make it as broad as daylight before you even realize what they were actually trying to do. The way they choose to deal with the characters was interesting but I still wanted more to actually REALLY enjoy it. Aside from the development I liked the cast of characters as well. The one that stuck out the most would definitely be Hasegawa the rich princess who dresses in S&M. Her lack of soft skills never ceases to amuse me :P.

Value and Enjoyment
I didn't find too much value out of the ordinary in this series. I also don't think the show itself has a great deal of rewatch value so the overall value isn't high at all. I did enjoy the series because it was a little different. To see the microbes floating around on the screen and also learn a little bit about them was interesting. It also had some funny moments therefore it wasn't too bad of a watch. This is an easy series to watch so I recommend it to those that like light comedy+drama's. Its short too so thats always a bonus if you decide to watch it :).