More fun in the snow!
What They Say:
Lovely Muuuuuuuco! tells the story of the Akita dog Muco, and its glassblower owner Komatsu-san.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A little downtime over the holiday for Lovely Muco wasn’t a surprise, but I’ll admit part of me wondered if the show was coming back. It doesn’t get a lot of attention and there’s not a lot of promotion for it, so tracking information on what it’s doing and how long it’s going to run just isn’t out there. So I was quite delighted to see that a new episode cropped up this weekend, giving us more time with our favorite Akita out in the winter season. And we get a fun dream sequence right at the start with a house-sized Muco dreaming and panicking over it, which is just delightfully fun to watch play out in brief. You do wonder just how animals dream and process information and what kinds of weird things it would end up coming up with. They can’t all be chasing rabbits that they’ve never seen!
Carrying that into the opening act works well because we get to see how she continues to process the whole thing with her limited logic. Bringing Komatsu into the picture brings some additional fun since he plays the straight man and really does clue her in as part of her subconscious, but that’s no surprise as she really does view Komatsu as having all the answers. The best though is when the sun begins to rise and the surreal nature of the dream really hits hard – beautifully so. The way she takes it out on Ushicou in real life afterward is priceless and getting an extended comical piece for it afterwards with shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey is just utterly delightful.
The second half works through a few different things, giving us some familiar downtime for Muco as she relaxes or plays, always enjoying tearing apart towels, until things take a different turn when she goes outside to see Ushicou only to see that he’s been “turned into a snowman.” Playing tricks on animals always has its level of fun and Ushicou really runs with it hilariously here with the snowballs. It’s also fun to see the way things change so easily in Muco being all friendly with Ushicou afterwards – but not that snowman pile, for obvious reasons. A whole lot of the charm here is just Muco being so outgoing and enjoying everything, a regular part of most episodes, and the enjoyment of her in the snow raises it a few more notches. There’s no depth here but damn if it isn’t utterly adorable and charming.
In Summary:
Lovely Muco gets its first episode of 2016 underway and it’s solid if unexceptional overall if only because it doesn’t work any bigger themes. The idea here is simply to have fun and it does just that without problem. With a great dream sequence and some real fun with Ushicou that just delights, the show made me grin throughout the whole thing and enjoy the nature of watching a very happy animal enjoy life to its fullest. Here’s to a great winter season for this show.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
