Mawaru Penguindrum – 07

Hey Ringo, does that diary mention anything about frog excrements? Cause if so…

Mukatsuku~! There should be 48hours in a day, damn it! I’ve been so tied up lately and without much sleep too. Anyways, with a working Saturday, I actually saw this in office and it was still hilarious and awkward as hell. I’m so glad of my private space because nobody heard my snorts and muffled laughter caused by this episode. Glad to join Jrow for tagging this one because the seventh installment of Mawaru Penguindrum sure raised more questions than it answered.

Hello there Kyokai! Thanks so much for tagging along with me at “Station 7” of Penguindrum, especially given that you watched this during working hours, on a Saturday no less. Let us see what Destiny has in store for us this week…

To start, Ringo’s necklace isn’t drawn properly, right?

Continuing to sleep under Tabuki’s apartment, Ringo is actually joined by Shouma as she receives a message from Tabuki about having tickets to go see a play. Delusional enough to think it was a love letter, she’s quite surprised when they actually go to a play that Yuri is starring in, the Tragedy of M. Yuri performs the title track of the play to much applause from the cutout people.

Yuri is quite popular as the white cutout people are wanting to see her and get autographs, so she messages Tabuki to have he and Ringo go to a fancy restaurant and wait. When Yuri arrives, she reveals to Ringo that she wanted Tabuki to invite her so that Ringo could see her perform. As thoughts of hate fill Ringo’s head, she gets invited to a party and the two force her to bring Shouma along with her.

The cutouts rampage over Ringo. White people, amirite?

As that transpires, Ringo’s view of what Yuri is really like plays a scene of “Yuri’s early days”. She’s at at a bar with a Kingpin whose face is covered. She dropped a cherry on his pants, then later on… pop. As any woman that lacks self-respect does, Yuri aims to get ahead by giving BJs. And to that, I say FABULOUS MAX!

At the party, Yuri makes two surprise announcements. First, she is retiring from the Sunshiny Troupe after her next play. Secondly, she and Keiju Tabuki are now engaged to be married. Floored by the announcement, Ringo falls down, dragging Sho with her by the ear. I really love the shot of Ringo falling away.

We know Ringo too well by this point; she won’t give up as she starts to think of a plan with Shouma on the train. Kanba is also on the train, where he receives more money from the Man in Black. Kan pulls out the penguin bullet and questions if one of the guy’s people was responsible for it. Masako is following him again, continuing on about crushing him soon and that Project M must be completed.

Inside Shouma’s head: “For Himari For Himari For Himari For Himari For Himari For Himari”

Ringo sneaks into her school with Shouma where she’s trying to extract a “love elixir” from a frog. The directions seem to call for a 16-year old boy, and alchemy circle and a temperature of around 42 Celsius. As Shouma lays shirtless on the circle, the frog starts to sweat and eventually takes a huge frog dump right on his back, letting out some of the eggs. As Himari covers her face in fear and disgust, Penguin #2 sucks up the eggs and ruins Ringo’s plan.

Should they be so excited to see a frog poop?

Seizon Senryaku! Though Yuri and Tabuki are now engaged, Boushi-sama suggests getting Tabuki to hook up sexually with Ringo, and Kanba thinks they can convince him to do so. Ringo however has no time to afford, as the now revealed Maternity Mission must be completed. She sneaks into his home through an opening in the floor and crawls into his bedroom.

Mom (Kappie) shows disgust while Dad (Ottie) seems inappropriately happy about the situation 

Weekly Marching of the Penguins:

Today’s Slogan: Know when to give up. Ringo, pay attention to the board.

#2 has OCD

I love Ringo’s faces when she’s annoyed

Wow… Fabulous Max is how I’m going to sum this one up. It’s so fabulous that my eyes bled… Penguindrum can sure raise the ‘awkward’ quotient. Was it not enough to have an over obsessed stalker romping about scheming to get Tabuki by hook or crook? I guess not because they went and added a casting couch filatio (with Nakato Jouji’s voice for god’s sake), make a weird toad come all over Shouma’s back and planted a rape seed in Ringo’s mind to have Tabuki’s babies…. I remember squeeing over the wincest part but this is just too much. I love this series but it sure likes to push my buttons and at times like these, I wonder what’s so great about this.

I guess, it’s the surprise factor because even if the seizon senriyaku is getting old by the episode but the developing events are never as you expect or speculate except for a few guesses. There’s always that WHAT-THE-HELL-JUST-HAPPENED and OMG, THAT-JUST-DID-NOT-HAPPEN! I mean who would’ve thought that Nakata Jouji (THE NAKATA JOUJI) would do a kingpin cameo and groan ‘Fabulous MAX’ to your shocked face, while Yuri did some stuff in the background? Not to mention Romi Paku voicing a glittering hamster and Noto Mamiko playing a blonde go-getter bitch. I mean, for a seiyuu fangirl, things couldn’t get any better with surprises like these. But the question is, does it matter to the storyline?

So, it’s all about finding the Pengiundrum but currently both Shouma and Kanba are preoccupied in their own crapload of handling Ringo’s stalkerishness and finding out more about the black penguin owner respectively. Seeing Ringo, I’m reminded of the Harima Mika episodes of Durarara!! which were fun in the beginning but when it was stretched I went meh. At least I had other characters to entertain me there but here there are times that Tabuki’s aloofness just gets to me, not to mention I want to swat Ringo upside the head and tell her to wake up from her stupid dream of becoming her sister. I hope the pacing gets more ‘relevant’ because this is a series having the potential to reach a certain height of greatness.

Coming to the stuff I loved: No.2 hitting a motherload of cockroaches and I agree with Jrow of him having a bad case of OCD; Noto Mamiko ‘owning’ Yuri so much that I love and hate her for her viciousness; Shouma is too adorable for words and I’m getting a feeling that he’s developing something for Ringo, I can only hope she ‘earns’ up to that feeling. There was very less Kanba in this episode and no pervert antics of no.1 so I missed ‘em. I want to know what’s Natsume’s deal because I’m pretty sure her Project M differs from Ringo. And I dread some more awkwardness to ensue in the next episode as Ringo runs after Tabuki’s sperm… Oh man, I’m getting No.6 flashbacks… Anyways, hope you enjoyed our dissection of the current episode of Penguindrum. So, what did you think about it and the looming destiny?

I feel very at odds with this episode of Penguindrum. Something just didn’t strike me the way the previous episodes have. I thought the frog scene was just beyond strange (though can be accredited to Ringo’s urgency toward the situation) and I was a little surprised when the cutout people started interacting with the others in the scene and were wearing nice suits and dresses. And I know #2 is a eating machine, even of Frog eggs, but what is this OCD its developing?

Oh my god, Ringo, you just keep on creepin’, don’t ya? You’re gonna sneak up into Tabuki’s room and have his babies? Even your dolls frowned upon it! If anything, Penguindrum knows how to keep making Ringo look more and more like a creep and get that shock value in at the end of an episode, though I wonder how much more dilly-dallying were going to be doing with Ringo and her definition of Project M (Maternity Mission). Ringo is no doubt one of the most abnormal anime characters we’ve seen in some time, but it just seems like recent episodes with Ringo will start losing there edge. And one more thing on Ringo, if any slogan has spoke volumes, it certainly is this week’s slogan; this poor, sad and mislead soul is going to get her heart broken. Oh, and one more thing! (sorry, I lied) I was thinking about how the other two girls in the ED theme with Himari have been compared to Kanba and Shouma in the past. Kanba has a past as a player/heartbreaker, and perhaps there’s something to be seen of Shouma having to work the sweeper.

We knew Kanba had some shady dealings going on back in episode 5, but one mention of the penguin bullet really adds an extra gear to the mystery of his character. The fact that he says only a few can use the bullet would imply he knows more about it besides being shocked that he saw it used on two of his exes, and that the Man in Black is associated with a group of people. With the show focusing so much on Ringo the past 6 episodes, almost to a fault, I really feel like a shift in focus needs to change. Kanba would be one place to start and Masako also tailing him wherever he goes. Oh, and Kanba… marriage blues is when the couple is already married. And also, Yuri’s a babe; good luck getting Tabuki off her butt.

I was excited to hear Paku Romi being cast in Mawaru Penguindrum! I really love the roles she plays (most notably Edward Elric), but her playing the role of Count from the play does completely wreck my theory from last week that the person in the play was actually Masako. Even Nakata Jouji got to say FABULOUS MAX, which is certainly a new way to express complete elation. Imagine if Saeko from Highschool of the Dead shouted “FABULOUS MAX!” during her scene in episode 9.

Episode 8 Preview: