Mawaru Penguindrum – 05

The Mawaru of Strategy and Penguin Destiny

I swear I didn’t threaten to kill Jrow, that’s not why I’m here! He let me pitch in for this week’s Mawaru Penguindrum, in case you’re wondering what the hell a woman is doing in this post. Let’s do this, penguin-style~

Heya Overcooled, always a good time tag teamin’ with ya! She didn’t threaten me at all you guys. hehehe…heh..heh… Anyways, we have quite another episode of Penguindrum to review.

Flashback to 9 years ago when the Takakura siblings’ parents were around, Himari is very sick and the hospital isn’t very willing to go pick her up. Chiemi keeps calling, and Kenzan tells her it’s no use and takes Himari on his back to take her himself. Kanba races out after his dad and just as he catches up, what looks to be mirror is seen flying towards him and breaks into many shards of glass.

At the hospital, Shouma visits with the doctor for an update on Himari’s status. After the doctor calls her situation a miracle, Sho brings out the possessed hat and asks if the doctor thinks it is a kind of extraterrestrial object. Laughing it off, doc prescribes laughter which, as we all know, is the best medicine. HAHAHA!!! (See, I feel better already…) Also, Asami Kuho is in the hospital after her fall from the escalator. Natsume visits her and initially expresses regret for what happened. Once Kuho explains that she saw some guy before the accident, Natsume’s attitude changes and she points a heavy-duty slingshot (with a laser sight, no less) at her.

As Doc laughs off Shouma’s hat idea, Asami is about to take a pengi shot point blank.

Uncle Ikebe visits Kanba to discuss the living situation he and his siblings are in. Ikebe doesn’t think they can keep up with affording the house and they might have to stay with other relatives. When the subject of his parents coming back home is brought up, Kanba becomes frustrated and claims that he’ll be able to get the money to pay so that he, Shouma and Himari can stay at the house.

Ringo and her father meet up for lunch and order seafood curry. Thumbing thru pictures, she talks about going to the aquarium again to see the penguins. When her dad takes a phone call, she notices that the strap on his phone isn’t the same as hers. The strap looks very familiar to the animal on the cover of Ringo’s diary.

One of the symbolic images seen during Ringo’s lunch with Papa

Ringo’s father has a very unique, yet familiar phone strap. Why does a grown man have a phone strap?

After lunch with dad, part of Ringo’s fate is to visit Tabuki on her way home with a Mont Blanc meal. She spots Tabuki with Yuri in a restaurant eating mont blanc, being all giddy with glee about how much he loves it. Upset, Ringo stomps on her box and runs off. As rain starts to fall in the city, Ringo & Shouma spot her.

We flashback to the second part of the scene with Kanba and his father, Kenzan. He protected his kids from the broken mirror, taking some glass in his right arm. Cut back to present time, a man in all black walks up to Kan and hands him something in a brown envelope.

Itadakimasu! Kan’s late, but the others decide to eat without him. Shouma thinks this is the right opportunity to ask about her “notebook” and asks without any hesitation if he can borrow it for a moment, mentioning that he noticed some kind of agenda written in it. As you might expect, Ringo’s a bit defensive about giving it to him, but does admit that it is a Fate Diary. Shouma persists further and shows Ringo the hat that has been possessing Himari. Thinking that he’s gone crazy, Ringo super-duper slaps him down.

Himari’s hat has a mysterious way of ending up on her head, doesn’t it? Seizon Senryaku is put into motion, inviting Ringo for the first time along with Shouma. Ringo assumes the spot Shouma is normally placed, and Himari asks her to give the diary to Shouma. The penguin pushes the button to have Ringo fall into the trap, but shockingly to everyone, Ringo not only climbs out of it, but she breaks out of her cuffs, runs up the stairs and snatches the hat right from Himari’s head. The scene closes with Ringo running outside and tossing the hat far away, which eventually gets stuck to the roof of a “Good Bye” truck.

Shouma starts running for the truck, and once Kanba notices what’s happening, he grabs a bike and dashes like crazy as the truck turns onto a main street. As he and #1 try to reach for the hat, Kan loses control and falls off the bike. Amazingly, #1 is able to grab the hat, hold the handle of it with his feet, and grab Kan’s shirt to hang on for dear life. #1 loses grip of the grabber, but Kanba is able to grab hold of it while dragging on down the street. Eventually, he is able to snatch it away from the truck.

Perhaps others will be excited to know Kan’s boxer color

The 3rd and final part of the flashback sequence shows Himari resting in the hospital as Kanba and his father (now with an injured arm) talk about protecting the ones you love. Kanba is able to drag himself back home with hat in hand and they set it on Himari, who wakes up not knowing what happened.

The next day, Kanba is talking on the phone with his uncle saying that he deposited the money (clean money, mind you) for the house payment.

Weekly Marching of the Penguins:

How #2 wiggled his way in there is quite a mystery

Today’s Slogan: Borrow Responsibly

Cockroaches finally get a win vs. #2

It was a rough day for #1. Luckily, #2 and #3 have PhD’s.

Looks like I tuned in for a good episode. I love Ringo and her craziness, so it’s good to see her get to shine every now and then. Fate never turns out how she expects it to, but she still manages to bounce back. You have to admire someone with enough dedication to avoid falling into a hole and then muster up enough strength to punch a flouncy penguin lady. Now THAT, was an awesome scene: unexpected and dynamic. I don’t blame her for pulling a Madoka and thinking that throwing away the hat/soul gem would be the best decision, but it obviously backfired. It gave Kanba yet another opportunity to be the manly savior while Shouma just fails at everything. The chase scene was yet another epic moment, although it did go on a bit too long for my liking.

Shouma seems really unaware of what his brother is up to. He always assumes he’s just out with girls, but Kanba seems to have much more important things to do than break young maiden’s hearts all the time. How did he get back the money so fast? He didn’t seem to be lying when he said it wasn’t dirty money, but I can’t help but feel like he’s working for some shady organization. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was working for Masako and was the one to push that poor girl down the stairs. Whatever he’s doing to get that money, there MUST be a way it’s going to come back and bite him in the ass further along the line. You don’t just raise enough money for a house in a day without a few sacrifices.

As for Masako, she looks like a really interesting new character. I’m still really skeptical that Ringo has anything deeply related to the Penguin Drum, so I’m immediately suspicious of any new characters. Who is this woman, running around and having some mystery man attack women? She also seems to have the ability to erase people’s memories with her slingshot. That, or the impact just gives them a concussion and therefore mild amnesia. Derp. Regardless, it’s nice to see another fabulous woman strut her stuff. I can’t wait for more sparks to fly. Perhaps she’ll have a standoff with our main trio of siblings soon? Kekeke~

Wow, that second half was quite thrilling, wasn’t it? Seizon Senryaku was awesome after an absence last week. As soon as Shouma pulled out the hat, I was excited for the potential of Ringo being sucked into the fantasy world. And when she climbed out and broke her cuffs, I was just watching on in awe of what Ringo was doing. And man, Boushi-sama is pretty foul-mouthed, calling Ringo a slut among other nasty things. I really enjoyed the scene with Kanba dashing on the bike (though I do agree with OC that some specific scenes were perhaps 3 seconds too long), and the music in Penguindrum continues to impress as the track that played then plus the little insert song afterwards were really enjoyable. (Quick music note: the ED single will come out August 31st)

Parents. They exist in the world of Penguindrum, and might have to be added to a list of potential players in the search for the Penguin Drum. It was great to see the Takakura elders in a flashback and get just even the slightest bit of story about what’s happened with the,. I almost wonder if they somehow got involved in the past with what their children are dealing with now. Another parent to consider is Ringo’s dad, just based off of his phone strap which is the animal seen on the cover of the diary. The show didn’t really mention his whereabouts previously, so I was surprised that he even showed up at all. Ringo very quickly seemed to drop concern about why his strap was different from hers, which was a little odd to me.

I love how Penguindrum implements the flashback scenes into the episodes. They are well-placed and provide a nice bit of backdrop not only for how things happened in the past, but applying them to what is happening in the current situation. This time, it showed even in early childhood how strongly Kanba cared for Himari (and also further displaying the difference between he and Shouma in terms of maturity), which adds more weight to seeing Kanba chase after that truck and almost get his pants pulled off in order to save that hat. Speaking of him, he seems to be involved in some shady dealings with a guy that looks like he walked off the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movie set. The lesson this week was to not end up in a debt spiral, and like OC, I feel a little uncomfortable about that package and fear for the house the kids live in.

Episode 6 Preview:

Ringo is aware of what fate it. Color us surprised.