Girl Power and Guinea Pigs: Pui Pui Molcar through the lens of feminist media tests

Pui Pui Molcar combines all of my pre-teen obsessions: guinea pigs, stop motion, and anime. So it’s no wonder that I’ve used my background in Critical Historical Studies to spend an inordinate amount of time over analyzing every single aspect of it. It’s all led to me pondering some of the most popular questions in online media analysis: “Can traditional tests to identify feminist talking points be applied to a show for toddlers about guinea-pig-car hybrids, and are any of these characters queer?”

For the uninitiated, Pui Pui Molcar is a stop motion animated series that first broadcast on TV Tokyo’s children’s variety program “Kinder TV.” The series name is a play on words based on the Japanese word for guinea pig: morumotto, and Pui Pui: the noise a guinea pig makes (I nominate “Wheek Week Car-vy” as an English Translation). Armed with this pun, the adorable felted critters delighted the targeted infant demographic and adults alike with fun storylines and incredible animation, garnering it 2000 followers before the show debuted and over 437,000 today on X (formerly Twitter).

One of the things that make it most accessible to international audiences is that there is no identifiable dialogue. Much like its stop motion contemporary, Shaun the Sheep, the molcars only wheek, and the humans only mumble. Molcar goes one better than Shaun though, in that all the Molcars are voiced by real guinea pigs! 

So what makes media feminist, and does that apply to Molcar? Are there specific themes, or a certain type of character that only appears in feminist media, and can that even apply to a guinea pig-car hybrid?

There are a few “tests” to examine if something has feminist merit or not. These range from the DuVernay Test for representation of people of colour—which requires two named non-white characters to have full, rounded characterization and plot lines that don’t revolve around White people—to the Sexy Lamp Test that simply says “If you can take a female character out, and replace her with a sexy lamp, and your plot still functions,[…] you’re a hack”. The most famous and most commonly used test though, is the Bechdel-Wallace test, that requires two named female characters to talk about something other than a man. 

But can we apply these tests to Molcar? And what can applying them to Molcar tell us about these tests? 

Well, to begin with, Molcar definitely does pass the Sexy Lamp Test. None of the Molcars could be replaced by sexy lamps, since sexy lamps cannot win races, or go on time travel adventures, or poop out bombs. But does it pass the DeVernay test? Well, that depends. None of the Molcars are people, nor are they voiced by people, so ethnicity cannot really come into it. The humans in the cast are all Japanese, so by Western standards would count as People of Colour, however, the show is being broadcast in a nation where they are the ethnic majority. So, we begin to see that these yes/no tests cannot be applied universally. Already, it’s becoming more complex based on the socio-political context within which the show was made. 

So what about the Bechdel-Wallace Test? This is where it gets even more complicated. 

The Bechdel-Wallace Test assumes that all conversation is made up of a clear and established language that viewers can understand. Molcar, however, does not feature any spoken or written language we can analyse. The Molcars only wheek, the humans only mumble. Objectively, we have no idea what they are talking about exactly, and we must rely on other indicators such as context, musical queues, and body language. So, if two Molcars wheek, and there’s no subtitles for us to understand them, are they talking? 

I would argue they are. The audience can tell what topic is being discussed and it does enough to move the story along or establish characters. However, given that there is no definitive way of knowing if these conversations are about men or not, it is down to the individual to decide whether it  passes the test or not. 

Complicating things further, guinea pigs are famously difficult to sex. The same is true of Molcars. They are pretty gender ambiguous. There’s no difference in size, shape, or colour. The names of the main cast are generally gender neutral names common among guinea pigs, like Choco (named for her color) and Teddy (who is named for her breed, Teddy Rex), or even Potato. And whilst there are Molcars named Rose and Peter, which are gendered names, they are in the minority.

Thus, if you didn’t know anything about Molcar, it would be impossible to immediately identify the gender of the main cast. While some Molcars, such as Rose and Choco, have decorations that could indicate modern expressions of femininity, you can only make sure by looking at the official Molcar Website to confirm they are girls. However, traditional expressions of femininity do not guarantee what gender the Molcars are, nor are they ever definitively identified. For example, Netflix refers to the long-haired Cher, first introduced as “Time Travel Molcar” in Season 1, with he/him pronouns despite being an obvious reference to the eponymous pop diva, while the German translation uses gender neutral language.

With other Molcars, including Treasure Hunter, a car modeled after Indiana Jones, there is no way to confirm what their gender is at all. Equally, it would be fair to say their gender identity doesn’t matter at all as it’s not relevant to the plot. The ambiguity of gender here helps point out one of the flaws in the Bechdel-Wallace Test: it calls for “two named female characters” but that relies on a very narrow idea of gender. If two Molcars of ambiguous gender were to wheek, it would not pass the test as written. Given that the test originated as a joke in a comic strip in the ‘80s I don’t think this is a failing on Bechdel or Wallace’s part, but it does indicate that these tests should be used with a grain of salt.

But more importantly, is it gay? 

If a key factor for Bechdel-Wallace Test is that lesbians are able to recognise themselves in media, does Molcar have the potential for queer representation? Whilst Teddy and Choco do exhibit Butch/Femme vibes, their relationship isn’t that much different to the other Molcars. But, what about the relationships between humans? So far, the only confirmed romantic relationships in the series are heterosexual. We see a marriage proposal in Season 1 Episode 9, and an exchange of love letters in Season 2 Episode 5. This suggests a heteronormative outlook on marriage and love. Yet, there is one pairing that sticks out from the rest. 

While all the other Molcars are shown to only have one owner at a time, Choco is shown to have two—both women. The pair are also shown in the series, and in the manga, to be caring for Choco together. Often in media, co-owning a pet and/or vehicle is seen as something that is only done with a long term partner, and not just a friend. Their personal styles and occupations also suggest potential queer coding: for example, one works at a garage and is always wearing overalls, and the other is a smartly dressed woman with bright blue dyed hair. 

Whilst we don’t know for sure that these two live together, it is heavily implied that they do. And if Choco has two moms, you could argue there is some gay representation in Pui Pui Molcar. Although, given that these two moms don’t actually have names, their existence probably wouldn’t qualify them as a pass for the Bechdel-Wallace Test either.

If these tests fail to conclusively show anything, would it then be better to directly examine Pui Pui Molcar for specific feminist themes?

While it would be nearly impossible for any single piece of media to cover all elements of equality, especially in a show aimed at toddlers, there are some topics that could be covered in such programming. For example, does it challenge gender roles or social expectations? 

One easy metric would be to ask how many named female characters there are in the show. Children’s media has a history of either having few female characters if at all. Molcar’s contemporaries Capybara-san and CoroCoro Animal Fairy Tales are all examples of this phenomenon. Molcar does toe the line a bit here. Out of the core group, two out of five are girls, although the human who appears the most (Potato’s driver) is a woman. In Season 2, Rose and Peter were introduced, but Peter received far more character development than Rose did. Still, having three different Molcar girls regularly appear is a vast improvement compared to past series with mostly cute-animal casts, like Doraemon, Anpanman, and Bananya. 

Meanwhile, some Molcars such as Abbey explicitly subvert gender roles and expectations.  In Episode 10, Abbey trains hard and dreams of becoming a western superhero like Batman or Superman, but his otaku owner gives him a full decal make-over in tribute to the guinea pig themed magical girl, Morumi. Initially, Abbey is incredibly embarrassed by this, but when a cat gets stuck in a tree, Morumi grants him magical powers and he is able to fly to the rescue, showing that there is just as much power and heroism in femininity as there is in masculinity. 

Molcar also subverts gender expectations through one of its main Molcars: Teddy. She is definitely the most traditionally masculine Molcar of the group, being the first to take on any action roles. She has broken through glass to rescue a shark, chased away zombies in improvised tank gear, and taken part in an all-girl tribute to the traditionally boy-dominated Fast and Furious franchise. She even had the ultimate honour of doing the famous Akira Slide in the show! 

Teddy is also very food oriented, another  traditionally more common in male characters. Usually, when a female character eats a lot, there is an undercurrent of fat shaming that suggests eating is a huge personality flaw. But when Teddy eats everything and anything her owner offers her in Episode 4, the joke does not shame her for being a girl who enjoys eating food, the joke is that guinea pigs are food orientated animals who will eat everything in sight if given the choice.

Finally, there’s poop. Despite what some British MPs in 2005 might have believed, kids love poop jokes. Japanese children are no exception to this (just look at Dr Slump!) so it’s only natural that Molcar would provide plenty. Among the Molcars, Teddy has been given the most jokes based on toilet humor. Whether it’s the running gag she can poop out bombs or even her owner after eating too much, she clearly beats the stereotype that “girls don’t poop.” 

It might not seem like something important, but the shame felt by women dropping a deuce is real and Molcars normalizing that biological act for girls is something worth celebrating. 

However, was any of this deliberate? Did director and writer Misato Tomoki set out to make a piece of feminist media, or was it just coincidence? Is it actually that deep? 

Probably not. They were likely setting out to just create something cute and fun for children and parents to enjoy. However, in this context, it’s not so much the intent but the outcome that’s important. 

I suspect that most of this was not done deliberately, and instead just the product of the creator’s own beliefs. There are more male molcars than there are female molcars because of subconscious bias. Meanwhile Potato’s owner might be female because they are inspired by, and played by, Misato Tomoki’s own sister, who owned Potato’s voice actor. Tomoki even credits the show to her and her pet in the late guinea pig’s eulogy. Yet things such as the magical girls being as powerful as American superheroes, and the all-girl tribute to action movies, suggest that there are still subconscious desires to create feminist media, or at the very least, media that speaks to their young, female audience and allows girls to see themselves in a variety of roles on TV—even if that is through the proxy of magical guinea pigs. Therefore I think in the case of Molcar, it is not intent that matters but rather the social and moral values of the creators. 

So. Does Molcar have feminist potential? I would argue that yes, it does. I believe the themes of the series, the type of comedy involved, and the well rounded female characters set it apart from its contemporaries in both Japanese TV and children’s media more broadly. It perhaps takes a little digging to come to these conclusions, and I don’t think that Molcar is going to be recognized in years to come as part of some feminist revolution. However, that doesn’t negate the potential it has. From Girl Power to Girl Poop to Girl Love, the series has plenty of feminist aspects for us to celebrate! It’s definitely not the series Bechdel and Wallace had in mind when devising their test, but I do believe that Molcar is definitely going to pass the test of time.