No cap.
Imagine this: You’re sitting at a traffic light, behind a dozen or so vehicles which are doing the same. Maybe your mind is wandering as you peer through the windshield. It’s a nice day out – you watch some of the local pedestrians pass by as you’re stopped in place for a moment. You take a deep breath: Life is good. It’s simple.
Except that light you’re waiting at? It’s actually a guinea pig with a traffic light strapped to its head. Those vehicles – including yours? Guinea pigs with wheels. The windshield you’re looking out of? Yeah, guess what – you’re sitting inside a guinea pig’s head, and that windshield is its eyes. Its fucking eyes. And the foot traffic? Yeah, you guessed it, they’re guinea pi—wait, what? They’re actually people? Huh. Wasn’t expecting that.
Pui Pui Molcar is a Japanese stop-motion animation series which focuses on the absurd exploits of its titular “molcars,” sentient beings which are half guinea pig, half car. These creatures are capable of independent decision-making and surprising emotional intelligence, yet in the world they inhabit, they’re mostly relegated to the role of transportation for their human overlords. As a series, Pui Pui Molcar is a set of loosely connected stories, each two minutes and 40 seconds long. Rather than focusing primarily on specific characters between episodes, the meat of the series comes from the situations themselves, which range from mundane (molcar throws a party while its owner is passed out) to surprisingly intense (zombie apocalypse begins, molcars in peril).
The beauty of Pui Pui lies somewhere between the absurdity of its premise and the unspoken implications of its world and storytelling. It’s a joy to watch for several reasons: The first, and most obvious upon tuning in, is its unique and adorable style. The molcars themselves are quite literally blobs of felt accessorized with plastic eyes and tiny fabric wheels, and watching such unnatural beings scoot about on screen is delightful. As a stop-motion series, each shot is intentional and highly stylized: Series director Tomoki Misato creates vibrant, distinctive backdrops to accompany his characters. Misato is a visionary, and Pui Pui is his passion project. One of the show’s producers, Noboru Sugiyama, commented on Misato’s process in an interview with Japan Forward. “There are no coincidences in the world of Pui Pui Molcar,” he said. “When Director Misato creates a set, everything is arranged in a particular way for a purpose.”
Then, of course, there’s the premise, which is enough to turn heads (of lettuce) on its own. The purpose Sugiyama speaks of is not restricted merely to Pui Pui’s visuals: Just as fleshed-out are the structures of its scarcely believable yet surprisingly reasonable society. Here, subtle hints provide bountiful yet clouded context. In one scene, a man pulls a leafy green from his coat: A morsel for his molcar surely, but whether it’s contextually more akin to Pupperoni or gasoline remains unclear. In another, the molcars text each other on a WhatsApp-esque social media platform (they have the intelligence and social structures necessary to leverage the cloud!), yet the molcar who initiates the conversation must do so using its human’s phone (the molcars have not yet achieved class consciousness). Perhaps most earth-shattering is the revelation of the first season’s second-to-last short, where it’s revealed that the molcars are, in fact, the descendants of ordinary guinea pigs (albeit with some time-travel shenanigans mixed in for good measure).
But beyond even its implications on evolutionary science (Darwin would be flipping his shit if he were alive to see it), Pui Pui is perhaps most important for what it reminds us about the value of creativity. The show’s first season is 32 minutes long, and in those 32 minutes, Misato and company cover the entire range of human emotion. That they do so without the use of dialogue, narration, or any sort of framing mechanism outside of a loose episodic structure speaks volumes about their passion, execution, and awareness of form. Here, in a children’s television program about guinea pigs with wheels, is a vision so well executed it feels profound.
In this case, profundity does not arise from attempts at cheap melodrama, nor is it a by-product of a story which takes itself seriously or discusses serious things. Instead, it comes from the existence of the thing itself. Misato and his team spent a year and a half turning some cloth and an idea into one of the most charmingly unique bits of television to ever grace the airways. At first glance, Pui Pui Molcar seems interesting because it’s absurd; upon further reflection, the show’s willingness to embrace its absurd premise reveals a wonderfully reassuring authenticity. It is great because it doesn’t try to be great: The only thing it tries to be, and the only thing it should be, is Pui Pui Molcar.
Images from Muse Communication.
