Can a mermaid understand human problems?
What They Say:
One day, Mukoujima Takurou, a boy in high school who loves fishing, catches a pig tailed mermaid called Muromi-san who speaks in the Hakata dialect. She comes to visit Takurou often, along with her fellow mermaids Sumida-san, Fuji-san, Levia-san, Hii-chan, and even some other fantastical creatures such as Yeti and Harpy!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The differences between humans and mermaids are significant enough, especially if there is truth to the long life nature that Muromi continues to perpetuate. As Takkun struggles with dealing with aspects of his future that bog down most young men at some point, Muromi shows her kind of understanding of things when she drags him into the water and tries to get him to see things from her point of view, though he does point out her analogy has a lot of flaws, at least from a human point of view. But the idea is right there as sometimes, when things are at their most confusing, you just have to kind of float there out in the middle of it all and allow the waves to carry you were they will. Of course, as good as she is with advice at time, she can’t be taken seriously for too long when you get down to it.
While the show does struggle with some of this stuff from time to time, it also shows some simple and good fun as the year winds down and the holidays are worked through, which includes some hot spring time as well. And that leads to some good if simple times where it’s just fun to watch all the mermaids and others interact, which has its little quirks due to their personalities. All of it works towards getting together with Takkun for New Years though and that has some cute emotion to it, though Kawabata gets to play the straight man well. Mostly it’s just a huge series of silly moments for all of the characters to shine in their own ways and it works well to give the cast as a whole their last spotlight before the series ends. With basic but well defined personalities, it’s easy to enjoy and certainly not something that you get really worked up about in a good way.
In Summary:
Because of its runtime, Muromi-san managed to be a better than expected series this season simply because it didn’t run its gags into the ground. It could have survived well as a five minute show as well, but here we often got two or three story arcs within an episode and while there may have been some times for them here and there, they were stories that could be told, enjoyed and not run into the ground, which helped it to feel fresh and active. So many comedy series just get to be too much at times with what they do but Muromi-san, even with her big and intense personality, managed to find the right balance with plenty of quirks along the way. It’s a show that’ll be a hard pickup for various reasons, but it’s also one that I hope someone takes a chance on and just has fun with it.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.