A look at the new Moomin series.
Spoilers!
Episode 1 of 13.
"Little My moves in"
"The Moomin family's hospitality is put to the test when Mymble arrives unannounced to their house with her swarm of wild children."
I was watching Netflix when my dad came in and said I might want to switch the TV onto channel 2 and so I did and to my surprise I was watching the new CGI animated Moomin series. I missed the first few minutes of the episode, but I rewatched it later online.
My initial reaction after watching the episode was that I didn't really like it. But since then, I have watched the this episode two more times (twice with the Finnish dub and once with the Swedish dub). Slowly, it grew on me, mostly thanks to the Swedish dub. I started to find things I liked and overall now I'm unsure if I like it or not. Based on this first episode I'm leaning a bit more towards dislike, but I'm also curious to see where this is going. Does it get better? There are twelve more episodes coming and I'm going to watch the rest. After the episode ended, they also showed a "making of" documentary about the show. Based on the short clips they showed in the documentary, the English dub sounds a lot better. The Finnish dub is the weakest compared to the Swedish and English dub. Just saying.
why does she have to look so seductive?
The episode starts with music and a song, so you would automatically assume this is the series theme song.... There's a sweeping camera shot of the Moomin house and Moomin and Snorkmaiden are flying on a pink cloud, Snorkmaiden disappears and so does gradually the cloud and so Moomin falls down from the sky and wakes up. Because it was all just a dream! Turns out the "theme song" was just Moomintroll's dream....with an English soundtrack. The English songs don't fit in when everything else is spoken in Finnish/Swedish. I don't understand why they didn't translate the songs, or why they decided to put a song in there to begin with. I think it's very distracting when a random song starts to play in the background and it doesn't add anything to the scene. Instrumental version would have worked much better, or you know, if a character was singing, but Moomins don't really do that. Anyway, the transition from dream to reality is good visually, but because of the song, it's a very abrupt and confusing opening for a show.
Moomin was woken up by the sound of somebody knocking on their door. Before Moomin leaves his room, he talks to a picture frame on his nightstand that got knocked over when he fell from his bed and says
"You have to learn to stand on your own feet". Uuummm, okay? I feel this is intended to be some kind of lesson we are supposed to learn at the end of the episode. Maybe.
where is your tail?
The knocking on the door also wakes up Moominpappa and Moominmamma from their winter hibernation. (Noticing that Pappa and Mamma are sharing the same bed, which they didn't in the old series) Moomintroll walks in and tells them someone's at the door. Moominpappa the half angrily says
"I guess we have to open the DAMN door then" which to me feels very out of character. Moominmamma point out if he is going to open the door in his pajamas and Moominpappa says
"Oh right, I better get dressed" and UNDRESSES himself from the pajamas and scratches his arse while walking out of the room (Moomintroll awkwardly looks away while his dad undresses, that's supposed to be a joke I guess). Moominmmma then tells her son
"Happy new year, Hun" and Moomin reply's with
"That's what I hope too" And, NOW we get to the theme song. Which is about 26 seconds of the opening credits and a voice going
"ooooo ooooooo ooooooooh da da daaaaah" ending on the show's title logo. The silhouette of the armless Moomin between the words really bothers me. The logo doesn't look balanced, I like the typefaces and how the opening credits kinda mimics Tove Jansson's ink drawings. It looks very pretty, but I don't like the music or "song" whichever you're supposed to call it.
They established earlier that it is supposed to be winter because, the Moomins were still in hibernation, but the outside doesn't look really midwinter to me, more like early spring. There's barely any snow around the house. Pappa opens the doors and meets Mymble who greets him and kisses him on both cheeks. Pappa rubs his cheek with his hand and says "oh and you brought the kids?" (already we see here, he doesn't like where this is going). Mymble has a flock of five identical boys and five identical girls, all clones of each other (literally, you can't tell the difference between them).
Mymble announces she'll be staying with them for a while. Moominmamma invites them in while Moominpappa and his son look at each other with sympathy as the flock of children runs into their house. Mymble chit chats while Moominmamma serves her tea and makes quick side glances while the kid's run amok in the room, meanwhile Pappa and Moomintroll are hiding behind the couch. Suddenly Pappa is hoisted into the air by a rope tied around his belly. The kid's notice Moomintroll, who tries to crawl away out of the room. Moomin gets surrounded and backed into a corner by My's siblings (who don't speak a word through the whole episode, makes them a little creepy because they barely blink either). And they can "teleport" because the jokes demand it. Suddenly a door is kicked open and we see a big shadow with dramatic suspenseful music playing while something is stomping closer and closer. Little My steps in and Moomin sighs in relief that she isn't something big and scary after all.
Moomintroll introduces himself to Little My and then tries to get back to his room to continue his winter slumber. But Little My won't allow that (I admit I liked the music in this part).She leads her siblings into a chase and wherever Moomin tries to hide she's there first. This part is very fast paced and there's a lot of running around, children's laughing & yelling. There is also one weird part with a painting. Moomin is looking for a hiding spot . He walks in a hallway past a painting, backs up and looks at the painting and then looks backwards. But then we see him hiding in a bunch of other places before he then tries to hide behind the painting. I think it could have been funnier if it was edited differently or the joke was set up properly.
Finally, we see Moomin breaking down and crying because he can't get away from the kids. Moominpappa is still hanging from the ceiling until Moominmamma lowers him down and tries to reassure them that Mymble will be leaving soon. But then Mymble walks in (with a drink in hand) and states she won't be leaving before midsummer.
Instead of asking Mymble to leave their home, Moominpappa comes up with the bright idea to trick Myble into thinking it's already midsummer to make her leave. The Moomins go through with different schemes in hopes to convince Mymble (here an English song starts to play in the background again, very out of place), but then unfortunately for them, Little My finds out the truth and confronts Moomintroll about it. Moomin admits they are just pretending, but he still asks My not to tell her mother the truth. My agrees and then leaves.
Little My: Why don't you just ask her to leave?
Moomintroll: Because that wouldn't be nice.
Little My: No, you mean it wouldn't be easy.
The Moomins and the Mymbles gather around their "midsummer" bonfire and it looks like their plan finally worked. As Mymble is getting ready to leave and starts counting her children, suddenly a Hemulen with a water hose shows up and puts out the fire and reprimands them for starting a fire in the first place (why the heck not? It's winter and everything is wet, there's little risk of the fire spreading). Before Hemulen leaves, he praises Little My for alerting him about the fire and gives her a "bro fist". This is when Mymble realizes she's been tricked and declares she and her children won't be leaving anytime soon.
In the evening, once Moomin finds out Little My has taken over his room, he storms out of the house in the middle of the night carrying only a toolbox. Next morning, we get a montage of Moomin building a crooked frame of a house on the beach. Little My shows up and laughs at him when the house breaks down. Moomin snaps back at her, but then sees the opportunity to get his room back since Little My is out here on the beach with him. They both race back to the Moomin house and when they get there, Mymble has already given Moomintroll's room over to My's siblings, who are wrecking the room as we speak. Amongst the chaos around them Moomin and My sit on the bed looking very depressed. My confesses that all she ever wanted was a quiet place of her own. Moomin suggests building a new house and they agree to work together this time.
oh my
After a montage we see both of their families arriving to the beach to see the new house. Moomin and My reveal they actually built the house for Mymble and the kids and Mymble gladly accepts it. Mymble and her children are on the balcony of the house waving their goodbyes to the Moomins when the rock the house was built on starts to move! Turns out the rock is actually a giant turtle, which is now going back to the sea. Moominpappa congratulates his son, implying that he thinks it was a stroke of genius to build the house on top of a turtle who will take the Mymbles far away, while Moomin is genuinely surprised there even was a turtle. (This begs the question, did Little My know about it?)
In the evening, Moomin is getting ready for bed and he knocks down again the same picture frame we saw in the beginning. He picks it up and says (in the Finnish dub)
"I need to get a new picture". Which makes no sense in this context. In the Swedish dub he says
"What did I tell you about standing on your own feet?" and I'm assuming he says something similar in the original English dub. Which again works because it ties in with what was said earlier in the episode. Just a weird thing I noticed.
To Moomintroll's surprise, Little My appears behind him. Looks like she decided to stay after all. Just like that. She quickly changes the subject and ask Moomin about a "special guy" who arrives in spring. The episode ends with a very "epic" foreshadowing about the character we hopefully meet next time. Moomintroll utters the name
"Snufkin" as the camera zooms in on a picture of him and Snufkin in the background. End episode.
Why I didn't like this episode initially is because, as a kid, I grew up with the animated series made in 1990-92 which was compared to this, much more focused on story and atmosphere and slow paced (and the music was great!). Because the creators of the show felt Moomins needed to be rebooted to attract modern audiences, the new show feels more focused on how many jokes they can fit in the episode instead of the actual story like most of today's stuff. It's fast paced and loud, which makes it more annoying than enjoyable.
The characters sound a lot meaner in Finnish, particularly Moominpappa and Little My. I don't know should I blame the translation or the voice actors or both. Little My's VA does a great laughter tough, I'll give her that. I liked this episode a much more when I watched it the Swedish voices. For example, in my eyes, Mymble comes across in the Finnish dub as an inconsiderate, entitled lady while in Swedish she more like a silly old lady, who doesn't realize how bothersome she and her kids can be. The visuals are all the same, so that is how much the voice actor affects how the character comes across.
The character models are something to get used to. The Moomins are now fuzzy or furry, whichever you like. The Moomins are made taller with longer limbs and their tails are really long, dragging along the ground. I think they are fine for the most part. Sometimes the arms look really long and their hands too big. And they all have noodle arms (Little My in particular) which I find to be a little distracting. I've seen a few people comment that Mymble is nightmare fuel, and I can see why someone might think that. Mymble and My's siblings are the "cheapest" looking characters, probably because they appear only in this one episode (?). I appreciate that they kept the eye colors from the old series for the main characters.
I have a problem with the lesson this episode is trying to push and how it is resolved. It is established that the Moomins don't want Mymble and her kids in their house. Instead of asking Mymble to leave, they resort to tricking her into leaving, but which fails. Throughout the episode Little My tells Moomintroll to "learn to say no and stand up for yourself". But does he ever do that? Yes, he snaps back at Little My when his first house fails and right after that tries to reclaim his room. This also fails because as we know by now, Little My was never the real problem, her mother and her out of control siblings are. Nobody never tells Mymble, enough is enough and asks her to leave their house. Instead the whole conflict of this episode is resolved by putting it on a back of a turtle and watch the problem float away. The actual people who needed to learn their lesson here was in my opinion Mymble and Moominpappa. Moominmamma is also presented as weak because she just goes along with Moominpappas plans without protesting even though we see her many times, making faces that shows she is uncomfortable with what they are doing. She could have been the one who tells Moominpappa to stop fooling around and ASK MYMBLE TO LEAVE. Which in turn, would maybe teach Mymble some humility and that she can't impose her and her horrible kids into other peoples homes. I guess I shouldn't complain that much since the episode does stick somewhat closely to Tove Jansson's original comic strip (how careless Mymble is with her children, the midsummer scam and building a house). Except for the ending. That god damn turtle.
I won't be holding my breath in hopes that the series will get much better after this. I'm hoping they might have adapted some story lines the 90s version didn't, at least then it would be much more interesting to watch.
fixed that logo for ya
The chapters are a random mix of puppy shenanigans during the carefree days of their childhood. Only the first two chapters really poke fun at events that has happened in the previous series, the rest just kinda throw in a reference here and there. In other chapters the puppies get lost in the woods, fight off a snake and meet a bear cub for example. One of the chapters is even told more from their mother Koyuki's point of view, which was a nice change of pace. In two other later chapters the focus is on the pups interacting with Kurotora and Akame respectively (famous characters from the Ginga series). The chapter where the pups interact with Kurotora is particularly wholesome, and my personal favorite. I wish there had been more chapters like this, the puppies hanging out with other characters, rather than have them being out in the woods alone.
- I hate what Rigel has been reduced into. Rigel is my favorite (in the main series) and I'm having a hard time understanding why he is being depicted like a daydreaming idiot without a care in the world. His eyes always drooping and with a drop of snot hanging from his nose. Rigel in here, is so mellow to the point he doesn't have a personality at all, when he is supposed to be the middle ground between his brothers. He's just there. Dripping snot. My God, he's like Bella from the main series. Completely useless and forgotten about.
- I don't like how humanized the puppy's act sometimes. I can forgive the over the top human like poses, but I hate it when the pups suddenly have human made props on them. For instance, a comic book, hat, eyeglasses, fishing pole, etc.
+ Better characterization of female characters. Nothing groundbreaking, but seriously, Koyuki and Bella have ten times more personality in here compared to the main series.
