Mawaru Penguindrum – Episode 14

Last time on Mawaru Penguindrum, the pink-haired guy, who is possibly the god of death and possibly the main antagonist of the series, saved Himari’s life for reasons, possibly nefarious ones, that he kept to himself.  I mean, if his motives are good and pure, why doesn’t he just come out and tell us?  Even if his motives are ordinarily venal, like for example wanting to get his hands on the money that Kanba is receiving from what is possibly the possibly evil cult that his parents used to be bigwigs in, that is nothing to be ashamed of in a modern capitalistic society.  But since he chose to hide his motives, we can probably conclude that were his motives known Kanba would refuse to go along with him, even at the cost of his little sister’s life.  The pink-haired guy must be up to something really awful, or at least really awful by Kanba’s standards.  We probably won’t find out explicitly what it is in episode 14 of Mawaru Penguindrum, but we might at least get some clues.

…thirty minutes pass…

I strut like a man and look very masculine with my neatly trimmed moustache and a tight white vest over my puffed out chest. I am a paragon of masculinity and am not a homosexual.

Yikes!  I guess I probably shouldn’t feel sorry for Ringo, given that she isn’t having anything done to her that she didn’t come painfully close to doing to Tabuki (and she was only stopped by Shou-chan’s effort, not just her own conscience).  I do feel sorry for her, though.  I guess that’s the magic of protagonization – once you’ve seen someone eat curry with their family and visit their friend in the hospital, it’s hard to think they deserve to be raped.  It’s this sort of thing that makes me wary of the idea of “villains” – a villain is just a person where you only see the crazy inexcusable things they do, and not the reasons why they feel they have to do them, or the parts where they feel bad about what they’ve done, or the parts where they indulge the better angels of their nature.  Sometimes people get so twisted up by their own fears and hates and desperate desires that they unavoidably stand in the way of good outcomes.  Yuri seems likely to meet this definition.  In that case, you can label them a villain, and destroy them to save the good things they would otherwise destroy.  But don’t forget that it’s a tragedy, a lesser tragedy endured for the sake of preventing a greater tragedy, but still as much a tragedy as pushing a fat man in front of a speeding trolley.

So Momoka is the key character, it’s looking like.  At least, she’s one core of the system.  Ringo, Tabuki, and Yuri are all one step removed from her, and possibly the pink-haired doctor is too.  Is it possible that Himari is the other core?  Himari and Momoka were both too beautiful to live, but Himari had an older brother willing to step up and make sacrifices to save her, while Momoka’s baby sister couldn’t.  That doesn’t explain how the crossbow chick or Mario come into the picture.

How did Yuri know about the diary?  Did she know about it from her days in elementary school with Ringo?  If so, why hasn’t she seized it before now?  I mean, surely there must have been better opportunities that riding a motorcycle in the rain and snatching it literally out of her grasp.  She would have had sixteen years to scheme and plot.  So she must have discovered it recently.  How?  She’s not in league with either of the instances of the Penguin Queen, she seems to be playing her own game.  But the problem with playing your own game is it’s hard to learn the rules.  So maybe she’s in league with the pink-haired guy?  She’s playing against the Penguin Queen?  That would make her a villain.