We've all heard of Hello Kitty, she's basically Sanrio's mascot. But she's not the only character they created. Sanrio made a ton of them, and the second most recognizable Sanrio mascot is a little hooded rabbit named My Melody. Originally created solely to be Sanrio's own take on Little Red Riding Hood and Hello Kitty's best friend, she became a popular character in her own right, to the point where she got several TV series focusing on her, mainly the Onegai My Melody anime. I did attempt to watch that, but I stopped after a rather off-putting scene in episode 5 and haven't gone back to it. In 2025, her 50th anniversary, it was announced that My Melody would be getting her own Netflix series...a stop motion series made by the guy who made stuff like My Little Goat and Pui Pui Molcar. Was anyone expecting that? Sanrio fans, myself included, were looking forward to it nonetheless, and now that I've seen it...yeah, I agree. My Melody & Kuromi is great, and bringing Tomoki Misato and his team to work on this was an absolute home run.
In the magical world of Mariland, My Melody spends her days running a cake shop with her friends without a care in the world. Across the river, Kuromi is intensely jealous of My Melody's success and wants her sweets store to be just as popular. Too bad she absolutely sucks at cooking and hates being reminded of such. One day, My Melody finds a mysterious, sentient heart in a forest, which transports her to the Cloud Kingdom. My Melody takes the Heart back with her and goes about her days like usual, even preparing to enter a cooking contest judged by the supposedly world famous Mr. Pistachio. Neither My Melody, Kuromi, nor the residents of Mariland are prepared for the world-shattering events that follow, and the Heart's secret might just lead to the end of Mariland as they all know it. It's up to My Melody, Kuromi, and their friends to fix everything before it's too late.
Yeah, yeah, I know, this is your typical kids show plot where the world is threatened and the characters manage to solve everything with the power of friendship and cake. It's super cheesy, syrupy, and tooth-rottingly saccharine as can be, though not as bad as it could have been. My Melody & Kuromi could have easily gone the My Little Pony Newborn Cuties route where everything is all hunky-dory and there'd be no real conflict. But Tomoki Misato and his team knew My Melody & Kuromi needed that extra punch to it, taking the time to actually craft a simple yet compelling story that offers a bit more substance and conflict than just non-stop sweetness, exploring how unchecked greed can cause chaos. There's even some horror overtones thrown in for good measure, what with the citizens of Mariland becoming so addicted to the sweets magicked by the Heart that they become mindless zombies that consume everything in sight. I'll bet nobody was expecting to see that, and would you believe me if I told you that there's one scene involving cannibalism? The character in question gets better, so nobody dies in this or anything, but you definitely don't go into Sanrio properties expecting that level of darkness and scary imagery...though Sanrio isn't exactly a stranger to dark themes. Remember when they made stuff like Ringing Bell, Nutcracker Fantasy, and Ideon Be Invoked? Hell, Misato-san himself got his start doing horror films like Look At Me Only and My Little Goat.
But a lot of how those themes are conveyed are carried through the stop motion medium, mainly the usage of lighting and sound effects. Misato-san has always had a knack for great lighting techniques, even going as far back as My Little Goat, and he brings this experience to the table here. My Melody & Kuromi has a bright, pastel color palette, but Misato-san and his team often use pink and green lighting for parts where the show's plot gets progressively darker and more fraught, such as the aforementioned zombification of the Mariland citizens, which aren't normally colors you use for horror scenarios. I think it works well here, especially as things get further explained. Speaking of the stop motion, let's talk about it! Stop-motion is a very laborious process, where you have to manually move dolls bit by bit, and even adjusting them takes a long time, and you even have to have different dolls that use different expressions. My Melody & Kuromi's stop motion isn't to the level of say, Laika or Tim Burton, but it has its own unique charm that fits the cutesy Sanrio aesthetic, such as attaching tufts of wool to different objects to stand in for smoke and explosions, or faux fur to serve as trees and shrubbery, not to mention little details that really make the show feel alive, like how My Melody's ears always bounce every time she moves. There's a ton of behind-the-scenes videos you can find on Twitter that I highly recommend watching, as they really go into detail as to how Misato-san and his team managed to bring this show to life, showing all the different techniques they use to make everything work. Not to mention all the setpieces are well crafted and just amazing to look at.
The soundtrack is also a pretty big highlight. I never heard of Yutaka Yamada before watching this show, but after this, I want him to do more stuff because I loved his soundtrack for My Melody & Kuromi. It uses everything from oboes and wind instruments to full on brass and goes the whole gamut, while also throwing in stuff you'd never expect, like references to Mozart. Who was expecting a creepy vocalized version of a Mozart song in a Sanrio property? I sure didn't, and it worked so well here! I also want to highlight the various insert songs used here, all sung in English, and they're all really good and put to great use in episode 5. The song for My Melody's segment in the baking contest is a cute, saccharine girl pop number, even if it leans too hard on the moral of teamwork, and Kuromi's insert song is an absolutely killer slice of mid-2000s Hannah Montana cheese, and I mean that as a compliment. I should also mention that all the episodes are 15 minutes long, so it never feels like the series drags or overstays its welcome, and it makes great use of its time, something most series these days really struggle with.
As for the characters...yeah, don't go into this expecting all the characters to be super layered and three-dimensional. Sanrio isn't known for deep character development, and while My Melody & Kuromi is a smarter, more engaging kids show than most, the characters are still fairly predictable in terms of their personalities and growth. But what little they do get is still pretty good, so none of the characters come off as too perfect or too unlikeable, though I do wish Piano got more to do besides being overpowered and good at everything. I do think the series struggled with making My Melody more flawed because midway through the show,
One other issue I have doesn't even have anything to do with the show itself. For some reason, all of Netflix's credits for all the dubs for this, English and Japanese included, only list the voice actors and not the characters they voice. The hell? It's especially weird because usually Netflix is really good about crediting their cast and staff for all their shows, barring a couple of exceptions. I don't know if this is some sort of mandate by Sanrio or what, because all the actors deserve to be credited for their work and to have the characters they play be known. As far as the English dub is concerned, the only reason we know for sure that Michelle Marie and Jenny Yokobori play My Melody and Kuromi is that anyone who's watched the YouTube webseries Hello Kitty & Friends: Supercute Adventures will recognize that they play them in that same series. The only other voice actor who announced they even had a role in the show was Bryce Papenbrook, who plays Baku, and only for one scene in the final episode. I know for a fact that Mr. Pistachio is played by Caleb Yen because the voice he uses for him is the exact same tone he uses for Will in Metaphor: ReFantazio and Ikaruga in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, yet he hasn't announced it, I'm guessing due to NDA, and my word isn't exactly a source I can cite when adding him to Anime News Network's cast listing for the show. But if Bryce was able to announce that he's Baku just fine, what's stopping all the other actors from doing the same? There's something going on, probably on either Netflix or Sanrio's end. That said, I'm so happy they brought Michelle and Jenny back from Hello Kitty and Friends: Supercute Adventures, because IMHO those two are just so perfect as My Melody and Kuromi that I honestly can't picture anyone else voicing them.
Of course, none of this killed my enjoyment of My Melody & Kuromi in any way. Sure, it has its issues, but it's still a really well made show that honestly has no business being as good as it is already. I'll even admit I cried at a few scenes, and if a show can make me feel for it emotionally, it has my seal of approval. Seriously, why can't we get something like this for Cinnamoroll or Wish Me Mell? I'd kill for a series like this for those characters! So yeah, if you want a genuinely good Sanrio show to introduce to your kids as a way to get them into anime or Sanrio as a whole, or just want to appreciate the art of stop motion and what it can accomplish without budgetary restraints, give My Melody & Kuromi a shot for sure.
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