Ok, this episode helped to satisfy my Shouma and Ringo shipping. 🙂  We got some lover’s quarrels, helping the girlfriend carry luggage, a heart to heart talk with Ringo’s mother and even a make out session on the couch. I’m wondering if as a Ringo and Shouma fanboy it’s time to update my blog banner.

Now that that’s out of the way, it turns out that there’s much more to Ringo than it seemed. The reason she’s stalking Tabuki isn’t because she’s in love with him. It’s because she wants to become her sister who was in love with him, to fulfill her “destiny” and bring her family together in an effort she christens “Project M”.

This makes Ringo seem even crazier than before, but I love it. Not just because it frees her up for Shouma (although that is an excellent side effect), but because it transforms her from your garden variety stalker into a more interesting shade of crazy. I also appreciated how the creators explained so many things through this one twist— Ringo’s parents’ divorce, her relationship with Tabuki, and what turn out to be the tragic origins of Curry Day. It now makes a lot of sense why Tabuki also celebrates Curry Day. Originally, I simply assumed he stole the idea from Ringo. It also casts Ringo’s relationship with her parents in a new light. Based on the fact that Ringo now lives with her mother and isn’t all that close to her father, I would never have guessed that her mother was the one who used to neglect Ringo in favor of her dead sister.

One last thing about Ringo. At first I thought her sister died when she was young, but her sister must have been quite old when she died to have done the… erm… *activities* in the diary. You can tell that the mother didn’t pay enough attention to Ringo from the fact that Ringo’s reading material was definitely not age appropriate.

For risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d like to once again point out that the creators are putting a vast amount of detail and creativity into the animation. For example, just look at all the stuff in the fridge, the crazy antics of the penguins, and Ringo’s delusions. Did everyone notice the Death Note on Ringo’s desk? Penguindrum has so much going on at once that it never gets boring.

This week had some non-Ringo developments as well, centering around Kanba. I know, I know, they’re much less exciting, but deserve mention nevertheless.

The two remaining members of the league of Kanba’s evil ex-girlfriends get hit with the memory erasing slingshot, but this time Kanba is there to witness it. I have to say that Kanba appears to know much more about what’s going on than the audience does. He appears to recognize the husk of the sling ammunition in the hospital room, and warns the girls that they are getting in deeper than they should. What does he know?

The biggest question now is how everything is related. Kanba is paid money with a penguin seal, the slingshot girl shoots penguin bullets and has her own penguin, and both Ringo and the slingshot girl are executing a “Project M”. What ties each of these things together? And did Kanba become involved with the penguins before or after Himari’s possession?