First Glance: Moyashimon

Microbes are typically measured in micrometers, but in Moyashimon—a show about students at an agricultural university—they seem to span about five centimeters. Curiously, nothing else in this series is four magnitudes larger than its real world size, and the main character Tadayasu is the only one who can see them. Maybe his Mystic Eyes of Mold Perception simply 'zoom in' on bacteria, though even then there's an unrealistically small number of them, neatly constrained to corpses and petri dishes.

Okay, okay! Setting aside realism in a show about a man who can see the microscopic, this episode was fine. The conversation between the grandpas was cute. The shenanigans around the seal corpse felt like something out of Honey & Clover's comedic moods. The extended scene with grad student Haruka testing Tadayasu's "power" dipped a bit, veering slightly toward shounen, but ultimately the adorable bacteria carried the day. They are friendly, playful, good-natured—walking, floating emoticons. I'm tentatively curious to keep watching.

Recommend: Sure!