I have seen quite a few cartoons for this blog, but never something quite like Murun Buchstansangur. Most cartoons are about kids, anthropomorphised animals, or a combination of the two. Murun Buchstansangur is about an amorphous lump. Most cartoons are about wacky adventures. Murun Buchstansangur is about anxiety and the fear of social interactions.1 Consider today’s episode, for example, in which Murun has two conflicting plans for the evening.
.He is very unenthusiastic about both, so when a friend shows up at his door to hang out, he gladly accepts. One pleasant activity leads to another and come evening they are at home playing chess, both previous plans being silently dropped. Skipping out on plans without notifying the other people involved is a major asshole move, but chess is an extenuating circumstance.
However, the director seems to think quite differently and he barely pays any attention to the board. We only get to see a little corner, probably white’s king’s side, where we see the following configuration:2
Yeah, it’s not much. We see white push that rook to h2. At first that sounds slightly suspicious, but white might very well be doubling rooks for an attack along the h-file. Sure, you would usually like the rook a bit further up, but maybe there are bishops taking some squares there.
Or perhaps she’s just lazy.
Realism: 5/5 The tv makers made the right decision. If you don’t know much about chess, only show a small part of the board.
Probable winner: White might be winning, black might be winning, no one might be winning. There’s not enough information.
1. [Most cartoons have convenient episode lists with short descriptions on imdb. Murun Buchstansangur just gets numbers without helpful plot summaries.] ↩
2. [With this diagram editor, nor more problems, problems!] ↩