Magical Meow Meow Taruto

You could pass on Magical Meow Meow Taruto, but I’m not sure why you would – it’s a great series. Taruto is a cat who has some innate skill with magic, but is unable to fully control it or her wild imagination.

As the series opens, Taruto moves with her family, especially her master, Iori. After using a bit of magic, there’s a lot of controversy over the possibility that she may be a legendary princess of the Kinka, rumored to have great power but exiled from her homeland when it was toppled by a rival nation, the Byoh.

The cats in this series are kind of interesting – they’re portrayed like humans, with their short height, pointy ears, and tails being the only immediately obvious physical differences that we see. However, for the most part, humans don’t understand what the cats are saying. Since Taruto doesn’t seem to realize this herself, it makes for some funny scenes.

I initially thought that Taruto was strictly a kid’s show based on the 7 and up icon on the box of the first DVD and the series’s own hypercute style. Nonetheless, Taruto isn’t so predictable that it’s unenjoyable for an adult – on the other hand, the series becomes progressively more detailed and complex. Characters that are initially portrayed as silly wannabe villians, Chips and Nachos, actually have sophisticated motives for at least some of their actions, and real villians appear, bent on Taruto’s personal destruction. In the end, almost everything is put back as it belongs.

One episode in particular of Taruto struck me as incredibly deep and sad. A wild cat wanders into Taruto’s city; we learn that when he was young, he lived in a tropical forest, but was taken in by a researcher and his pet cat. Later, he embarked on a quest to go to the place the researcher came from – the “Big Candy Apple” in the east (very obviously the U.S.) The quest has consumed nearly his entire life, and the other characters doubt that he will ever reach his destination. Believe it or not, there is a hint of a resolution to this story in the ending credit to the final episode, but no definite answers.