How To Keep a Mummy gives you a mini-mummy, a back-pack sized dragon, a tiny oni and a whole bunch of other pint sized monsters all in one adorable anime package. What more could you want? Well maybe a slightly more developed plot and characters but sometimes being kawaii might just be enough.
When Sora received a coffin from his father who was travelling through Egypt, he suspects the worst and apparently with good reason. His recounts of previous gifts certainly lead one to presume that nothing good can come out of the coffin.
Don’t even ask why it is clearly an English style coffin rather than an Egyptian sarcophagus or how the mummy eventually breaks out given he never demonstrates that kind of feat of strength ever again; these are questions that should be asked of a show asking you to take it seriously rather than one that seems to excel at being cute for cute’s sake.
For this story, it is all about how adorable the cast are on screen and the main goal of most episodes is to put the cast into cuteness inducing moments for the audience to tilt their heads and go ‘aww’ to.
How To Keep a Mummy knows how to play its audience.
If that sounds like I’m being condescending, I’m not. I actually really had a great time with this anime given just the opening theme could start me smiling and any episode that Mii-Kun (the titular mummy in question) barked was enough to leave me grinning for the remainder of the day. There’s just something so soothing and cute about a barking miniature mummy and to be honest I don’t think I’m ever going to get over that. I think I need a gif on an endless loop of that just for days that go badly and then I can simply cheer myself by watching it over and over again.
What works even better are Sora and Mii as a team. Sora by himself would be a pretty bland protagonist, but when coupled with Mii the two are a duo that would be hard to beat. The success of any episode in this series for me depended on the screen time these two characters were given. When Mii and Sora aren’t front and centre, well it can still be fun but the appeal of the anime definitely wanes.
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The other characters work, but all have diminishing returns in terms of cuteness and particularly the oni-child really don’t replace Mii as an adequate focus – or at least they don’t give me quite the same bliss out on over-cuteness. How To Keep a Mummy may have been stronger without some of the other characters, but I think it is more that none of the supporting monsters ever got as much effort put into their cuteness.
Still, cute really can’t be enough to carry a series, or at least not after the initial sweetness wears off.
How To Keep a Mummy manages to find enough interesting situations to stick the cast in a back-drops for their cute antics that you don’t actually get overly bored (though I suspect that binge watching this could become a bit of a problem). Still, the characters visit each other’s houses, the school, a temple and finally a mountain with a range of activities and interactions to sell each of the characters.
Basically, there isn’t a lot of rewatch value in How To Keep a Mummy and there isn’t a lot of depth, but if you are seeking the cute and fuzzy feels, this anime will succeed admirably.
Images from: How To Keep a Mummy. Dir. Kaori. 8Bit. 2018
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Karandi James
