I have a problem. It’s not something that’s easy to talk about. You see, recently, I fell in love with Kuromi and this show is the reason for that.

My Melody and Kuromi is a stop motion series based on the characters from Sanrio released in 2025 on Netflix. For those of you who don’t know what Sanrio is, it’s the Japanese company behind many cute characters, most famously Hello Kitty.

As you can guess then by this being connected to Hello Kitty, the show is very very cute and the stop motion fluffy characters help sell that. I don’t mean they are sheep (though one is a sheep) I mean they do look like they are made of fluff, in a literal sense.

The show is set in Mariland, a land of cute talking animals. My Melody owns a cake shop and across the street Kuromi owns a Japanese sweets shop. Everyone loves My Melody and her shop and why wouldn’t you, her cakes are delicious and My Melody is just the nicest person around. Kuromi meanwhile is usually a bit more into the unconventional, while everyone is your cute animals and stereotypical cuteness, she’s the dark dressed somewhat Goth esc cute and sees herself as Melody’s rival wanting people to acknowledge her work and enjoy her sweets.

Strange things happen when out in the woods My Melody finds a magical heart covered in sweets, and things start to develop when two wolves named Tanba and Sasage show up working for Kuromi but are clearly looking for the heart. All the while the annual sweets contest draws closer that will announce the best sweets maker in Mariland.

Each of the 12 episodes runs for around 10 minutes so it won’t be a long watch, but the show moves at a good pace, not too fast, not too slow. Things happen at the right speed for you to feel the story progressing and characters moving without getting a feeling of “get on with it”.

It’s a nice cute story with some actual stakes beyond just who’s going to be the best sweet maker or hurting someone’s feelings, as you find out as the show progresses. You get some genuine emotional moments from both the leads that will make you want to hug them, and with that fluffy look of them, I imagine they are very soft.

Thanks to this show, I ended up looking more into the character of Kuromi since I already knew of My Melody thanks to that “Toys That Made Us” episode on Hello Kitty, but Kuromi turns out to be a far more recent character. I’ve been watching some different shorts starring her, and if that’s not a success for the show, what would be… I’m resisting getting merch… but damn I want to hug that cute rabbit, and yes, she is a rabbit.

Rating: 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰