I just finished the first season of Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture, an anime series about a student at an agricultural college who can see microbes with the naked eye. It’s not the kind of work that stirs great emotions or speaks timeless truths. Instead, it’s just pleasantly watchable.
Despite the premise, the protagonist’s supernatural ability isn’t actually very important to the show, and not a lot would be different if the main character were just another first year student freshly arrived in the big city campus from the countryside. However, this anime is one of the few fictional depictions of higher education I can think of that actually shows how much of the experience is taken up with academics.
Almost the entire show is taken up with hijinks and tomfoolery, but the shenanigans tend to revolve around the academic experience – frosh week stupidity, weird seminar partners, overbearing TAs, eccentric professors, and other such components of the university experience. It all looks like fun.
Of course, that should tell you right there that this show isn’t actually about depicting the university experience realistically. Who had fun all the time when they were a student? Lots of stuff wasn’t enjoyable for me. It seems silly to remember some of the things I used to freak out about, but they didn’t feel so minor at the time. The characters in this anime have problems as well, but the way the show depicts those problems makes clear just how ultimately minor they are.
What this show depicts, then, is not the experience of being a university student, but the recollection of being one. But this show is not a documentary about university, and is instead an anime set in one. A truly realistic depiction of the university experience would make for a boring show.
So what is Moyashimon about? It’s about the nostalgia of being a student.