It should be obvious to regular readers that I disappeared for a bit there. Mostly I have been taking stock of my life, working on my health and just taking some time for me.
This has resulted in the decision to take a longer break from the blog. It coincides with some major life changes including plans to move from the tiny rural town I have called home for over a decade.
I can’t say when I will be back or whether I will definitely return but I do know I am keeping the blog online as well as keeping the domain and I hope that one day I will be back.
Thank you to all the wonderful people who have made the past years so memorable and I wish you well.
I will also be ending my twitter account but you can still reach me via Facebook or the contact here on the blog.
How To Keep a Mummy continued to play to its strengths all the way through and while it also pulled a family/friends beat all kind of ending it did it with the kind of earnestness that allows you to smile and just accept that is the kind of show you were watching. To be honest, it is the kind of anime that just makes you want to indulge it as it pulls out the super cute card over and over again.
How To Keep a Mummy Gets Cute
It is also the kind of show that makes you casually dismiss that the villain this episode is probably going to be killed off screen which could be sort of horrific but we’ll distract both the protagonists and the audience with adorableness so they don’t let that throw away line sink in. It might disrupt the cute bubble this anime has built.
Still, it was a pretty good final episode. How To Keep a Mummy has been pretty even in its delivery from start to finish so if you wanted a show about a cute mummy, here it is and I’ll give a series review soon.
How to Keep a Mummy has been a super cute anime but with the promise of curses and problems with monsters raised in the first episode and then very seldom thought about since, it is nice to see the show bring that back in for the penultimate episode.
Sora and friends inadvertently trespass at a solstice festival without invitations leading to a moment of genuine tension in the usually sickly sweet show and later we meet a collector before setting up the cliff-hanger that will drive us into the final episode.
How To keep a Mummy tries to escalate tension before the final episode.
However, if you are watching How To Keep a Mummy for the cute mummy, you will definitely get your fill this episode as the anime pulls out all the stops in delivering Mii and his most adorable, including barks, helpful hugs, and genuinely being a life-saver. Also squishy.
But if you also want some tension between Sora and Kamiya, this episode gives us a watered down drama between the close friends fuelled by misunderstandings and lack of communication. Really it is the best we could expect from this show at this point and it is truly pleasant watching even if it isn’t exactly deep.
After last week’s average but not particularly bad episode of this anime, How To Keep A Mummy strikes back with an incredibly adorable return to the formula that made the first episodes of this season so irresistible.
How To Keep a Mummy, at its best when being cute.
And in saying that, what I mean is they introduce a new player into the group who at first seems kind of scary but turns out to be a big softie. This one is a statue of Anubis that speaks and can turn its head but is otherwise unable to really move and as it hasn’t shown an inclination for curses is so far pretty harmless and mostly helpless.
And this time the attempt to inject a tiny bit of drama into this episode of How to Keep a Mummy worked beautifully with the title character being the one in the spotlight (right where his cute-self should be). That said, if I thought a barking mummy was adorable, the whole crew of creatures suddenly imitating someone with the hiccups is off-the-charts in terms of how cute things can be.
A fairly solid episode from a show that really only has one draw and managed to get it just right this week.
Anime has a lot of heart breaking moments that really capture the spirit of what it is to be human, to be alone, and to suffer loss. How To Keep A Mummy doesn’t quite manage to land this lofty emotional goal but still delivers something that is cute in its very gentle and obvious dealing with emotional baggage.
With Conny in trouble again for stealing pudding (gasp), Kamiyagives him a talking to but of course with his rough and direct way of speaking goes too far. In the morning Conny is gone and after a night of being missing the rest of the gang decide to look for him but Kamiya stubbornly refuses claiming it isn’t his responsibility. A facade which lasts for all of about three seconds.
Part of me wishes How To Keep a Mummy had at least pretended at this whole conflict thing for a little bit longer, but the reunion was pretty adorable. Still, essentially we’re back to business as usual as we roll into another episode.
Last week I commented that the growing cast of How to Keep a Mummy were so cute together. This week adds what I believe to be the final little creature, throws the dog in and actually gives us a photo op moment. Kind of perfect.
How To Keep a Mummy embraces its cuteness.
I love it when a show knows exactly what its selling point is and doesn’t try to pretend it is something it isn’t. This show is cute and they deliver cute. They deliver it pretty well in most episodes, and they know when a particular moment of cute is worth revisiting (another round of barking Mii nearly did me in from cuteness overload).
This episode of How To Keep a Mummy brings Daichi into the mix. He’s in the same grade as Sora and we have seen him around the school before, but this episode looks at how he is isolated due to his violent sleepwalking and horrible nightmares.
Of course, Sora being Sora decides to get involved and eventually we have the four humans and the four monsters all playing nice at the end. It isn’t particularly deep, but it doesn’t really need to be. This episode was just great fun.
Conny, Isao and Mii-Kun together are making a truly cute team in How To Keep a Mummy. As much as I didn’t like Conny’s introductory episode, he adds an interesting dynamic to the trio and of course presents several moments of conflict for a show that might otherwise get a little bit sleepy and dull.
But as much as the pets are bonding, the kids are also forming quite the friendship. And with future play-dates between the cuties, it will be fun to see how these three continue to get along.
How To Keep a Mummy Hasn’t Asked Where These Monsters Are Coming From?
This episode of How to Keep a Mummy mostly focuses on the idea that Isao is a little bit more advanced in being able to take care of itself than either Mii-Kun or Conny. This leads to some cute jealousy as well as the other two trying to catch up by writing adorable notes and trying to do things by themselves.
As usual, there isn’t much in the way of plot and other than chasing down a screaming plant and retrieving it from the river, not a lot happens, but that isn’t really a problem when they manage to keep you entertained by staring at the cute characters on the screen.
Okay, so the child-oni turned out to be a bust last week in How to Keep a Mummy but the addition of a back-pack sized dragon gave this show a nice boost back into being the single most adorable thing ever. Not to mention, despite introducing new cast members, Mii-Kun managed a decent amount of screen time in this episode and we finally see Sora considering his loneliness and history a little bit more seriously.
How To Keep a Mummy recovered after a small downward turn.
Add in that Motegi is a fun supporting cast member in her own right and I’m glad she got a bit more of a role this time round rather than just being an obstacle for hiding Mii-Kun’s existence. Her reaction to lizards and then the dragon were also pretty amusing even if they were completely overblown even by this anime’s standards.
However, this show wouldn’t be itself if it didn’t bring the two together in the end. I would like to know more about Tazuki’s deal with the dragon (though we know he did get scarred previously the details were a bit limited).
All and all, this was a nice recovery for the show and we’re back to blissfully cuteness.
In Maoyu Maou Yuusha, fifteen years have passed since the war between humans and demons began. The hero seeks to end the conflict by killing the demon king but discovers its a hot girl who actually wants to make peace and help both demons and humans thrive economically. It is an interesting set up as the two form an alliance to stop the war and change the world, hindered by those who are quite content with the status quo.
Maoyu Maou Yuusha Review:
Maoyu is a strange little anime that kind of came out, got a little bit of attention and then disappeared from sight. I’d like to pull it back out from under the bed, dust it off, and remind people that this gem exists. Certainly it isn’t going to make any of the big anime titles tremble in fear because the audience for this is going to remain fairly small, but I have a deep respect for an anime that sets out to achieve a goal and succeeds admirably even if the story here is decidedly unfinished and there’s a number of obvious fan-service choices cluttering up some of the screen time.
It is actually easier to describe Maoyu by talking about what it isn’t. It isn’t a good vs evil fantasy fight between a demon king and a hero. It isn’t really focused on action at all despite the war setting. It also isn’t an actual introduction to Economics though I’ve seen it described as such. Certainly war and good and evil and Economics all come into play in this story, but while you might gain an appreciation for why war and Economics are intrinsically linked, you aren’t going to walk out the other side of this anime able to have a conversation on Economic theory.
Maoyu, for me, felt like a critique of war stories and how these stories all end with the heroes overthrowing the villains and then declaring peace and happiness when the end result of most wars is anything but even for the victor. It also felt like a critique of the real world and the way we continue to ignore real issues due to convenience and comfort. With these two ideas forming the base of the narrative, the story that unfolds is fairly average but the message it constructs is on point.
So what is a demon king (or queen) to do when the hero has come to kill them? Lay down their life? Fight to the death? Recruit the hero into a campaign of economic reform so that neither side needs the war to continue to ensure prosperity? Let’s take option three for a change and see what happens.
None of the characters in Maoyu are given a name. Each are referred to by their job or role. This makes it much easier to generalise the ideas of this story beyond the narrative itself and see these characters as placeholders for people/nations/ideas that we are familiar with in other narratives and in real life. It is a bit awkward at times and discussing the anime by talking about the ‘female knight’ or the ‘senior maid’ might seem a bit odd to someone who hasn’t watched it, but it actually works quite well within the context of the story.
However, it isn’t all smooth sailing. Of course they want to paint a romance into the story that sometimes just feels very contrived and convenient. There are also far too many complications introduced. While on the one hand this makes the setting more true to life with multiple factions both supporting and rejecting reforms, on the other it makes it impossible to bring to any kind of satisfactory resolution to the overall narrative within the anime.
Basically, it bites off more than it can chew in its run time and ends up leaving the audience hanging, which would normally be an automatic shelve the disc and never watch again point for me, but somehow this anime managed to make me not care so much about where it was going and more about the journey to get there. Still, a season two would probably help and it is also probably never going to happen.
The other point I will make is there is a lot of times where the characters will sit or stand and discuss farming or trade or politics. And I mean, a lot of times. So if characters sitting and discussing things isn’t what you are looking for, then this anime will end up being a firm pass. However, if you don’t mind that as long as you are interested in the topic being discussed, this won’t be an issue.
I really enjoyed this series for what it was and it just felt a little bit different. While I know it has a lot of similarities to Spice and Wolf, I found this one a little more engaging and liked the characters a bit more (sorry fans of Spice and Wolf). I’d have loved for this anime to get a second season but that seems very unlikely so I’ll just have to rewatch the DVD again and enjoy this odd little story.
I’d love to know your thoughts on Maoyu if you’ve seen it. If you haven’t, do you think you would watch an anime like this or does it sound like something you will firmly pass on?
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