So, what was going on last episode in Mawaru Penguindrum? They told Ringo they wanted her Future Diary, and there was a secret cabal of women aligned against the dude’s older brother that was pushing people down stairs, or being pushed down them, or something. One of them had a neuralizer, or just a laser pistol, it wasn’t really clear. Nothing’s clear in this show. All we can hope for is that episode 6 of Mawaru Penguindrum will be a down-to-earth episode about something tangential, like that episode about Ringo’s date with her stalkee.
…thirty minutes pass…
Who is this woman, and what does she have to do with, for example, anything?
Whenever I think I’ve got a handle on this show it moves under my feet. I thought the diary was an actual honest to goodness Artifact of Power, now it turns out it’s just Ringo’s dead sister’s keepsake? It’s an interesting idea, using someone else’s diary as a walkthrough for life, but I feel like events to this point have made the diary out to be more than that? I mean, the things in the diary sort of came true, in a weird twisted open-to-interpretation way, because Ringo was trying to force them to come true by whatever means necessary and so causally created situations in which they would come true. Mystery solved, I guess. It doesn’t explain why the penguin queen wants the diary. Or who the penguin queen is. Or who the lady with the crossbow is. There is only so long that cute penguins can distract me from how poorly the plot is being explained. Or so I would like to think, but I’m six episodes in and there’s no end in sight, I just love those damn penguins too much. There was one in this episode who was flipping through a porno mag!
Is it wrong of me to find Ringo less appealing as a character now that her stalking has been justified by her family trauma? Originally, she was just a chick who stalked a guy because they were destined to be together, and she was going to use every tool at her disposal to make sure that destiny happened. I can appreciate that kind of “bonboru” attitude! She has a goal, and she’s pursuing it, and damned be any who stand in her way. But now we find out that she’s just reacting badly to her parents’ divorce and has come up with some nonsense magic ritual to make it not have happened. She’s not pursuing her goals, she’s fleeing reality. I like that character trait a lot less.
suntzuanime 