Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School

Return of the Molcars

Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School (PUI PUI モルカー DRIVING SCHOOL) is the second season of the Pui Pui Molcar anime. And, like the first season, this season contains 12 2-minute episodes. But, unlike the first season, this season has a theme.

As you’ve probably surmised, the theme of this season is driving school. But, what does that mean? Are the molcars attending a school to learn how to be racing molcars? That’s what I initially hoped. However, that’s unfortunately not the case. In this season, some of the original molcars must attend a remedial driving school.

Specifically, Potato, Shiromo, Teddy, Choko, and Abbey return — as do some side characters. But, why are our molcar heroes in remedial driving school? Have their molcar antics finally caught up with them? The answer to that question is yes.

In the first season, the molcars got up to all kinds of hijinks. But, they never did too much damage. In fact, they often turned out to be heroes by the end of each episode. But, in the first episode of this season, they destroyed an entire city block. Thanks to their incompetence, multiple buildings were left in ruins.

Luckily for the molcars, they (and their drivers) escaped prison. Instead, their sentence was to graduate from a remedial driving school. And this school seems to be far stricter than anything the molcars have been through before. It’s safe to say most of these molcars wouldn’t be on the road if this was their original test.

Now, before I move on to discussing the driving school in more detail, I need to drop a bombshell. Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School isn’t as good as the original season. It’s still good. But, it failed to recreate the magic of season 1.

Remedial Driving School

So, what’s wrong with Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School? Why isn’t it as good as the first season? Well, one of my main issues with it is the setting. Almost the entire season takes place on driving school grounds. It’s just not a very interesting setting.

There’s one episode that stands out for taking place elsewhere. In it, the student molcars take a trip to the beach and traverse an underwater tunnel. That was a pretty good episode. But, other than that, they were all kind of similar.

Often, the episodes simply involve the molcars learning a specific driving lesson. For example, there’s an episode in which they learn to ignore distractions while on the road. Distractions include things like vegetable stands (shown below). A respectable molcar should be able to avoid the temptation of such obstacles while on the road.

To me, what made the first season of Pui Pui Molcar so good was how every episode was unique. There was a cat episode, a zombie episode, an Indiana Jones episode, a time-travel episode, etc. The season as a whole didn’t have a cohesive story. But, it didn’t need one to be entertaining.

Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School attempts to have a narrative. And that doesn’t work for a few reasons. It cuts out the wacky scenarios we got in the first season. Each episode only has 2 minutes to work with. And there’s no dialogue. Those last 2 points go hand-in-hand.

Since there isn’t much run time and there’s no dialogue, that limits the story that can be told. So, what we’re left with is a very basic story about the molcars relearning how to drive properly. If we get a third season, I hope it goes back to being an episodic series.

Peter the Molcar

There are 2 new characters introduced in this season of the anime. The first is the driving school instructor. He’s a human, so he’s inherently not as interesting as the molcars. But, he’s a major character of the season, so he’s worth mentioning.

The driving instructor is very strict and doesn’t approve of any of the molcars at first. He finds something wrong with them all, whether it’s how they act or how they look. And one of his first actions is to make them look the part of respectable molcars.

Peter is the other new character. He’s a molcar, so he’s automatically a better character than the driving instructor. Peter is a special molcar. The others each have their problems. But Peter’s entire existence is a problem. It doesn’t seem like he can do anything right. And, we even see that he’s afraid of other traffic.

Speaking of Peter being afraid of traffic, the scene in which we find this out is very good. It’s probably my favorite scene of the season. I don’t know what episode it was in. But, if you watch Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School, you’ll know it when you see it.

I’ll also say that Peter isn’t the worst of the main molcars. His definable characteristics are unique enough to make him stand out. Meanwhile, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about Choko. And despite Potato and Shiromo being the main 2 molcars, they’re pretty generic.

Teddy’s defining characteristic is that he eats trash — that hasn’t changed in this season. And Abbey is the itasha (痛車) molcar. In case you aren’t sure what itasha means, it’s a combination of the words for “pain” and “car.” It refers to cringey anime-wrapped cars like Abbey was in season 1.

Conclusion

In the end, I gave Pui Pui Molcar: Driving School a 7/10. It was still a good anime as far as shorts go. But, it was nowhere near as good as the first season. And the general consensus seems to agree with me. The majority of viewers preferred season 1.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me on your social media of choice — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.