Although initially released in Japan in April 2025, this five-episode sci-fi anthology oddity didn't show up to stream worldwide until late September. It allegedly appeared slightly earlier on Samsung's proprietary streaming platform in the US, but as probably only five people watched it that way, I can't verify. REMOW's strategy for distributing the shows they license continues to defy all explanation and sanity.

MIRU is a fascinating project, first announced in 2023 by Japanese farm equipment manufacturer Yanmar. To publicize their rather niche business, they engaged their engineers to step away from tractor fabrication to design a futuristic robot – that I must stress was physically built in massive life-size resin statue form – to base an anime on. This robot, “MIRU”, was equipped not with weapons, but with the kind of tools one might expect from a farming company, such as for excavation or construction. Their motivation? “We wanted to realize a more peaceful, sustainable, and nicer future. That's why we're making all sorts of tools and services. We wanted it to have all the tools, not weapons. We don't make weapons — we make all sorts of devices for that peaceful future.”

While it's commendable for a large company to avoid producing weapons (unlike many other similar firms worldwide), how does such a pacifist concept translate to anime? Reasonably well, it turns out. The central conceit is that MIRU has been sent from the future to set right what once went wrong, to ensure humanity's future survival. It's a bit like a cross between Quantum Leap and Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song. Each episode stands alone and is produced by entirely different directors and studios, giving each a very individual appearance and feel. These are clearly intended to be taken as mere snippets of what could be a much larger story, as we don't start with episode one, but with “episode 79,” and culminate in “episode 926.” Presumably, the intent is for us to imagine MIRU having hundreds of other adventures we're not currently privy to.

“Episode 079: Stardust Memory”, directed by Norio Kashima (Kakyuusei and Refrain Blue) at studio LinQ, is a CG production set in low Earth orbit, with mechanical designs by Kenji Teraoka (Code Geass). It's a tense but simple space disaster story about an old astronaut whose job is to collect space debris before it destroys satellites and space stations. While the background and mechanical CG is slickly smooth, with some truly vertigo-inducing camera spinning sequences that caused my stomach to lurch (there's a reason I've avoided watching the movie Gravity), sadly, the characters are overly simplistic and stiff, with distractingly choppy low frame-rate animation. It looks like something made decades ago, before animators got to grips with their primitive CGI software. Frankly, it doesn't get the show off to a great start, and I wouldn't criticize anyone for dropping the show partway through.

Thankfully, more traditionally 2D animated “Episode 101:The King of the Forest" fares far better, perhaps because it's directed by Studio TriF's Okamoto, responsible for last year's excellent anime series Mecha-Ude: Mechanical Arms. Okamoto also provides the cute character designs. This is more of an environmentalist tale, following young jungle tour guide Mario as he joins forces with a conservationist organization against thoughtless illegal loggers and a massive wildfire that threatens to destroy the rainforest. MIRU, who can shape-shift, takes the form of a huge eagle. It's a little reminiscent of the old 1980s US TV cartoon Captain Planet, and almost as cloyingly moralistic, but I still enjoyed this one a lot.

SCOOTER FILMS' “Episode 217: Londonderry Air" returns to CG, but is an altogether smoother, more stylized affair that, on the whole, looks pretty good. It's directed by Tomohiro Kawamura (Eiga Shimajiro: Shimajiro to Yuki no Uta), with character designs by SINoALICE's JINO. Thematically, this is by far the most interesting episode, as it focuses on Ame, a music student selected by her university to aid in the development of a generative AI that learns from her playing style. She's initially worried that the AI will then make musicians like her redundant, but when a tragic accident damages her arm, she's offered the use of the AI, trained on her skills, to run a wearable prosthetic that helps her to play music again. The episode explores artists' valid concerns about AI, while also offering a nuanced perspective on how such technology could be used for good. It's implied that Ame's experiences in guiding AI towards a non-exploitative future result in MIRU's eventual creation. This episode alone probably justifies the show's existence.

Appeasing those viewers hankering for a taste of the apocalyptic, “Episode 630: Re: MIRU," directed by Fate/Grand Order: Camelot's Naofumi Mishina and produced by studio REIRS, opens with MIRU desperately attempting to divert a nuclear warhead as it hurtles through the atmosphere towards a heavily-populated city. It's a sober story told largely non-chronologically, following Miho, a conflict resolution specialist desperately trying to diffuse a tense dispute in a fictional African country. It demonstrates most plainly MIRU's central “butterfly effect” premise when a seemingly minor event causes a runaway series of coincidences to result in nuclear armageddon. A decidedly more adult installment, a grim resolution is only averted by a slightly annoying, yet fully understandable storytelling conceit. While mostly animated in traditional 2D, the CG action elements are spectacular.

Finally, “Episode 926: Wait, I'll Be There" from LARX and Studio Hibari, and directed by Saori Nakashiki (Tales of Wedding Rings) is a bright, breezy post-apocalyptic tale that rapidly becomes melancholic yet hopeful. It reminds me a lot of Girls' Last Tour, though less nihilistic. Set the furthest into the future we've yet seen, we finally learn something about MIRU's creation. The character designs by Terumi Nishii (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable) are adorably sweet, and it's a pleasing way to spend 24 minutes, even if the story itself doesn't really make a lot of sense when examined too closely.

Overall, MIRU is a bit of a mixed bag. Apart from the distractingly awful CG in its first episode, the rest look decent. The stories, by their nature, are rather simplistic. MIRU himself doesn't have much of a character as he's essentially a deus ex machina used to rescue each episode's featured protagonists from danger. Every episode starts with a brief appearance from a futuristic girl, whose identity is never explained. The closing sequence features an awkwardly cute chibi version of MIRU dancing along to the ending techno music. It began to grow on me towards the end, possibly through Stockholm Syndrome.

Mostly, MIRU is a fairly disposable anthology, yet it is far better than I expected a corporate advertisement to be. It's aimed toward the younger teen end of the viewer spectrum, which seems a little odd, as I don't imagine them to be the target market for a farming tool manufacturer. Almost every episode has positive aspects that outweigh the negative, and I'd recommend it as a little light watching for anyone with an interest in optimistic speculative fiction.