Mawaru Penguindrum – 17

“Tell us where the Penguin Drum is or else we’ll cut you up!”

What’s happen’n boys and girls? I just beat Uncharted 3. That game is pretty cool, but anyways… for this week’s episode of Penguindrum, I’m joined by Karakuri. It took her a little while to hop aboard the Penguindrum train, but now that she has, I welcome her to episode 17 as my tag partner.

So my strategy for not procrastinating failed miserably, but Jrow’s been kind enough to let me tag Penguindrum with him this week. That’s way better than living without stress. This show is amazing and I seriously need to get Rock Over Japan as my ringtone.

Kanba and Shouma meet up on the train heading back to the hospital and talk about the recent going-ons in the continuing search for the Penguindrum. Sho’s thinking that completing the diary can help Himari get better, but Kan is leaning on the medicine he’s been buying from Dr. Sanetoshi. Remember Kanba, don’t end up in a debt spiral.

The brothers visit Himari and have prepared some Takoyaki. After enjoying the meal, Himari shows off her latest knitting work, a sweater. She says it’s for a man, but won’t tell who exactly for. As Shouma starts to fantasize about not having to go through all of this mess anymore, Survival Strategy is booted up.

You can’t initiate Survival Strategy on an empty stomach

She tells the boys what they and some viewers might have forgotten: to search for the Penguin Drum. Kanba considers the idea that the diary is the Penguin Drum, and Boushi-sama starts to say no, but spins away by saying, “Not telling.” Boushi-sama warns that neglecting the Penguin Drum will cause somebody to be punished. Shouma is taken out via floor trap, and Survival Strategy is initiated. Kanba feels like he can’t save Himari, but Boushi-sama gives him a word of encouragement that he can.

Yuri and Tabuki are talking about the Takakura siblings and them needing the diary. The two feel only they themselves can appreciate the true value of the diary. We know that Tabuki doesn’t hold resentment towards the Takakura parents, but Yuri strongly does. A flashback shows the two playing with Momoka back in the day, and both believe that Momoka isn’t dead. Sanetoshi questions what humans define as truth and reality and believes that a war is about to break out.

These two shots are terrific

Himari is gone, and she left a note saying that she went out shopping. The Black Bunny Boys are concerned that if she doesn’t get her medication in time, things might go bad again. It’s all right supposedly, because Sanetoshi gave her permission to leave! At Yozawaya Fabrics, Himari (along with Ringo) are looking at different colors of yarn. She is making sweaters for her brothers, and Ringo recommends some poor color choices. No fashion sense I suppose for Ringo, who gets a phone call from Yuri who wants to meet up with her. After finding out Ringo was with Himari, Yuri plans a dinner date, grips her purse in anger at the Takakuras, and then buys some Fabulous curtains.

This was me at a Michaels last year. Yarn color is serious business.

The boys aren’t having luck finding Himari in any of the fabrics stores they’ve searched so far, and Kanba is heading to the one she was just in. Meanwhile, Yuri’s sitting in her nice car when she gets a call from Tabuki. She lets it ring and eventually hangs up so she can fantasize about murdering Himari. Footsteps are heard in the parking garage as Masako and Esmeralda make their entrance into the parking garage. Masako insults Yuri’s singing by suggesting she was off-key, but of course Yuri think’s she’s pitch-perfect. Yuri pulls out a crossbow with the initials “HSK” on it and Masako pulls out a huge machine gun with penguin bullets in the ammo box.

HSK. Perhaps Yuri has arrows with Himari, Shouma and Kanba’s names written on them.

Now that’s Fabulous!

Himari and Ringo stop by Penguin’s Coffee for a drink to talk about meeting with Yuri, who Himari is a huge fan of. Tabuki’s voice is heard as Ringo starts to describe what Yuri’s like.

As the Black Bunny Boys are upset that Himari hasn’t return and should be punished, Tabuki takes Ringo & Himari on an elevator ride at an unknown building. Tabuki reminds Ringo about everything having meaning and that nothing is pointless, and reveals that he is going to hand down punishment to the Takakura family, seemingly going against something he said both earlier this episode and in the past.

 Himari, your shell is about to be broken

Weekly Marching of the Penguins:

Today’s slogan. Cue the 007 music!

Octopuses everywhere this week. Even the Pengi’s slice/dice strategy couldn’t keep em away.

Must’ve stolen it from Sanetoshi while he wasn’t looking

#3 is quite good at knitting and must display her dominance over the octopus

Looks like #1 has a pervy partner joining him for some panty-peeking

Adorable. Balances out the pervishness of that previous pic.

…Is it just me, or is that ending song changing every episode? Also, whoa. Wincest. Though that scene seems extremely important since it’s not so clear that the diary is the Penguindrum anymore. Hell, every episode of Penguindrum is filled with importance. I’ll leave the dissecting of the episode to Jrow, but yeah. Some somewhat heavy stuff here when compared to the last episode. I do have a few theories that I want to throw out there though so I can be proven horribly wrong later. One, Momoka is probably still alive somewhere and that whole incident 15 years ago could have gone a lot worse but Momoka diverted the future. Either that or the organization Kanba (and pretty much everyone else in this show) is part of is against Momoka and they’re trying to set whatever fates that Momoka changes back to how they were…. Somehow.

Also, holy crap! Does this mean that Tabuki knew about the diary all along?! I thought that the whole Ringo being a stalker thing was awkward before, but this just takes it to a whole new level. And here I thought that Tabuki was just your average really really really dense character. …Or maybe he still is and he just happens to know about the diary. I don’t even know. Though if he didn’t know before, I assume that Yuri told him. I think their relationship kind of works with both of them using each other to fill the void Momoka left. It’s kind of cute though awkward since Yuri totally plays for the other team. Speaking of, it’s amazing how quickly Penguindrum can change the viewer’s (or at least my own) opinion on characters. Episode 15, I was hoping Yuri would triumph over Masako and awesomely enough, she did. This episode, Masako was the one I wanted to win since Yuri was targeting Himari. Though the conclusion to that is still up in the air.

One last thing: …it can’t really be Himari that’s going to disappear, right? There’s got to be something more important to their family than just her. That just seems like a way too obvious solution for this show. I just hope it’s not the penguins that go. On a side note, the octopus were funny, but I kind of miss Penguin #2 killing bugs everywhere.

This episode felt a lot like buildup towards what might be the final act of Penguindrum for the next several weeks. Symbolism was there as per usual, but the episode didn’t really reach into the bag of tricks we’re used to seeing with Penguindrum; it felt quite down-to-earth. Most people subscribed to the same idea as Karakuri did about Tabuki just being dense, but he knows about all of this and perhaps he’s conflicted on whether he hates the Takakura family or not for what happened; him drinking from both wine glasses in that scene might suggest his inner turmoil about the subject, but surely there’s much more to be revealed next week about his character. Also, nice Utena student council reference with the elevator ride. Watching/completing Utena during this show’s airing has really helped me appreciate both of these Ikuhara-directed series.

Last week’s Survival Strategy was weird and funny. This week brought us back to more familiar territory with Boushi-sama reminding us that the boys must search for the Penguin Drum. I was trying to decipher from Boushi-sama stopping herself and also the use of the words “neglecting” and “treasure” during her striptease. Those two words stood out to me, especially since I believe treasure is a word Kanba has been using when talking about protecting Himari. It kind of made me think about the idea that someone, not something is the Penguin Drum and that Himari is a candidate at the moment. And with Sanetoshi’s special treatment, I wonder if those viles of medicine are comparable to Fullmetal Alchemist’s Philosopher’s Stone in that it takes human lives to create it. Just a thought I’m tossing out there.

The octopuses mixing it up with the Penguins goes along with how the show has identified some of the cast as animals recently, like Yuri being a fox. While it was really funny watching #1 and #2 hold down the octopus and #3 pinning it to a wall with some sharp throwing, the scene at the beginning with Kanba’s penguin getting inked was quite symbolic of Kanba getting his hands dirty while he’d prefer Shouma to stay back some. #1 and #2 can hold it down for a little while, but it seems Threetie has a dominance over it as I joked in one of the captions. I also really loved the buildup to the Masako/Yuri fight and my mentioning last week that ep. 18 would apparently have some action in it, this fight might be it and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing it in action.

I peeked at a snippet of the translation for volume 2 of the Penguindrum novels. The next episode looks like it will dive into Tabuki’s past. I only have seen an excerpt and not the whole chapter, so I’ll just stop here.

Episode 18 Preview:

#1 seems to mess up, but #2 saves the day

Extra! – Mawaru Penguindrum Audio Drama 1

The first Blu-ray volume of Mawaru Penguindrum released earlier this week (after a delay from 9/28), and in addition to including a much desired OST, an audio drama was included about the Murder of Penguin 0 with Great Detective Himari. A group known as [Fukou] released an mkv file of it, and it’s a fun listen.

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.