Good lord. This episode was crazy, to say the least. After this, Ringo’s previous actions seem relatively benign.

So right up front, things are not looking up for our friend Shouma:

But even I wasn’t expecting Ringo to infiltrate the school, force Shouma to strip in the middle of a magical circle beneath the light of the full moon, and attempt to spawn frog eggs on his back.

Repressed sexual desire much? Shouma’s dedication to his sister may even surpass Kanba’s.

Ringo as a Witch

I was surprised by this turn of events, but it brought me to an interesting idea: Ringo is a witch. This episode makes her identity as a witch explicit, with the use of magic circles, love potions and frogs. Another item of note is Ringo’s dress: it’s all black. The only parts missing from her costume are the hat and broomstick.

Ringo displays two other components commonly associated with witchcraft, both sexual in nature. First, she is filled with lust, as demonstrated by the fits she goes into when imagining her first night with Tabuki. Second, she is a seductress, albeit not the most skilled one. Both of these attributes are often associated with witches.

And finally, there’s Ringo’s project M, which is itself an elaborate magical spell. Ringo is carefully following the instructions incanting the spell written in the diary spellbook, satisfying all the conditions to achieve her destiny cast the spell to restore her broken family. The spell also serves as a convoluted fertility ritual (more on this later).

This association with witchcraft brought to mind a few further thoughts:

• Tabuki’s girlfriend is also a witch, but a much more powerful one. And I’m guessing that the woman with the slingshot will turn out the same way.
• Thinking along the lines of witchcraft, have Kanba and Shouma made a pact with the devil to save their sister?
• We’ve already tried the throw her in the pond test to determine that Ringo is not made of wood. We should try weighing her against a duck now (a penguin should also work).

Project M

This episode’s big reveal is that the “M” in Project M does not stand for masochist or marriage, but for maternity. A “magnificent and creative plan” indeed, Ringo. Modern girls don’t beat around the bush. Penguin Himari’s reaction to this discovery was priceless:

If we assume that the the slingshot girl has the same goal in mind, Kanba seems to have a stalker as well. Of course, this is by no means a correct assumption, given Mawaru Penguindrum’s propensity for red herrings.

Once again, this fits with the theme of witchcraft, as witches were accused of making pacts with the devil to cause stillbirths, and their carnal lust led them to have sex with the devil and bear his children.

Ringo’s Love Rival

Ringo has pretty much lost at this point to her rival with the announcement of their engagement (not that she had a chance in the first place). I think that Yuri just enjoys playing with Ringo— as I said, she’s an even more powerful witch.

The play was interesting, but unlike other works which skillfully fit a play within a story into the larger context of the whole (see Hourou Musuko, Star Driver, Gunparade March, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, etc.) the play here seemed to be largely intended for comic relief, along the lines of Ringo’s delusions. This and a chance for the animators to go wild. The disco ball, the silhouettes in the audience, the roses and glitter falling from the sky and the sparkles combine for quite the visual feast. The play is called “The Tragedy of M: Paris Falls”, but with the M referring to Marie this seems like just a tease. Although I’m sure we could come up with an esoteric interpretation if we tried.

Further Thoughts

• This show does a great job at putting in amusing details. Tabuki’s bird chirp ringtone, the half eaten sandwiches and the rows of dead cocktails were hilarious.
• The episode used the phrase “sharing a roof” in two complementary scenes. Ringo’s goal is to share one with Tabuki, and Kanba’s goal is to share one with Shouma and Himari.
• I am shipping Shouma and Ringo heavily and am quite satisfied with the direction this episode took in that regard. They are quickly becoming more and more comfortable with each other, as evidenced by how they sleep together under the house, and Ringo’s weakening protests about Shouma tagging along with her (to the party for example).

Site Updates

As you have probably noticed, I redesigned the site to feature Shouma and Ringo. Let me know what you think of the design, especially if you find anything difficult to read with the new color scheme. I’m quite pleased with how the banner turned out, my GIMP skills are improving by leaps and bounds.

I now have a public MyAnimeList account. If you also have an account, feel free to add me as a friend. If you don’t, MyAnimeList is a nice site for keeping track of what you’ve watched and look up details about shows (you don’t think I remember all these characters’ names, do you?).

Finally, I’m experimenting with a new post format, of using headings to delineate sections. I feel like my thoughts are much more organized this way. I’m leaning towards continuing to use this format, so let me know if you disagree. I also started taking notes while I watch an episode, which probably helps.

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?

This just keeps getting better. I really love the interactions between Shouma and Ringo. I’m not sure if I can quite put my finger on what makes it so much fun to watch though. Part of it is the fact that they both have their own social idiosyncracies: Shouma goes ahead and ask a girl if he can “borrow” a girl’s diary without realizing the implications, and Ringo is, well, a crazy stalker. Another part is that their personalities are so distinctive and different from one another. Shouma is soft spoken and mellow, while Ringo certainly isn’t. The other thing I like about them is how they just don’t get along, even though in many ways they’re so similar. The way they don’t get along is obvious, but their similarities come through in a bunch of smaller ways: their love of curry, their identical reactions on Himari’s revival, and Ringo’s near perfect usurpation of Shouma’s usual spot during this week’s Survival Strategy. They’re also both kind of idiots.

I’m becoming even more impressed with Ringo on her own as well. If anything, her luck turned out even worse in this episode. Her dad doesn’t use their family cellphone strap anymore, and her plan to win the heart through the stomach is soundly defeated by a preemptive strike. Then her newfound best friend’s brother tries to peek at her diary, and her friend then dies. Not exactly the best day. But she still manages to keep spirited throughout. She gives Shouma a great talking to as well. If everyone in Mawaru Penguindrum ends up as well developed as Ringo and Shouma, this is going to be a memorable show.

The survival strategy this episode was even better than usual. This is why rituals like the survival strategy scene are so powerful: it becomes all the more memorable when you break a well-established precedent. All seemed normal at first, except for Ringo taking Shouma’s usual place. The survival scene arrival and confrontation continued along the usual path, up through Ringo falling through the trap door and Shouma complaining to the penguin hat. He even mentions that he can’t get the purse from Ringo because she fell through the door. And then it turns out she grabbed onto the edge. She jumps out of the door, runs up the stairs and throws the penguin hat onto a passing truck. Ringo is a badass. And the reason this scene had so much of an impact is because the entire scene had been repeated so many times and become a ritual, with the viewer developing strong expectations.

The other half of the episode was flashbacks and Kanba’s side of the story. So did Kanba get that money by pushing the girl down the stairs? The girl said that she saw “him”, and since she’s in the league of Kanba’s ex-girlfriends, Kanba is the most likely culprit. Also, Kanba’s money packet had the same penguin seal as the red-haired girl’s bullets. Kanba always seemed willing to go quite far for Himari’s sake, so I can’t say I’d be entirely surprised. I wonder who the red-haired girl who seems to

• The penguins continue to be fun times.
• That doctor was hilarious.

This was my favorite episode so far, even without a survival strategy. We still have sufficient randomness (the entire episode was driven by a skunk spraying Ringo), a fast pace, interesting characters and the quirky humor. Shouma and Ringo somehow work really well together. She goes wild and he’s there to make sarcastic comments and pick up the pieces.

After this episode I’ve become completely sold on Ringo. And it speaks volumes that this show has made me like a crazy stalker who sneaks under the floorboards and almost drowns herself for the sake of her happy destiny of falling in love with a man at least ten years older than her. But the thing is she’s just so earnest: what she’s doing isn’t really a secret to anyone, except that teacher who is dense as a doorknob. And I can’t help but root for her when the fate she puts so much trust in is throwing so many obstacles in her path. In this episode alone, she got sprayed by a skunk (twice), was out-acted in fakery by her love rival, who turned out to be onto her and planning her defeat, nearly drowned, and had her first kiss stolen by someone else without even realizing it. (Oh, and I totally called Ringo and Shouma becoming an item.) It also helps that her delusions are hilarious, especially how she loses to her rival even in her imagination.

Then, at the end of the episode, after I have become convinced that Ringo is awesome… she goes and murders someone to fulfill her destiny. At least it appears so. I don’t believe it: the pants didn’t look like Ringo’s, and it doesn’t seem like something she would do, insane as she is, since it doesn’t have anything to do with getting closer to Tabuki. But whoever it was did put the destiny stamp in a diary with a picture of Prince Tabuki and the snake, mentioning the woman in red heels, so the evidence seems to be hinting in Ringo’s direction. I don’t believe it yet. We do appear to have a new villain hiding in the shadows and leading Kanba’s ex-girlfriends in opposition, so she seems the most likely culprit to me. But this is what I love about this show: just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, they throw you a curveball like this.

The other thing I like is that Penguindrum has an excellent balance of humour, plot and character development. They put the jokes in right along with the more serious moments, which makes the jokes even funnier and prevents you from getting bored. They have an excellent sense of timing. When Ringo was drowning, that penguin was swimming to save her… and then took the fish and ran off, I pretty much lost it. All the times Ringo accused Shouma of stinking were also great. And on top of everything else, they put the penguins doing random things in the background. There’s so much going on that it’s nearly impossible to lose interest. In terms of characters, Ringo is now awesome, we learned that Tabuki’s girlfriend is not as pure as she appears, and Kanba really is a womanizer. Plotwise, Shouma discovered the diary and the villain has made her debut.

I can’t wait for the next episode. Although there’s still plenty of time to screw things up (see: Star Driver), at this rate, Mawaru Penguindrum seems set for a place on my favorites list.

This cow segment was hilarious. How do they come up with this stuff? I can’t believe that the emperor penguin hat thought that Himari drinking milk would convince the brothers, even if all the crazy space ships and whatnot haven’t. What’s even funnier though is that the two brothers still don’t believe in the penguin hat and thought everything was an illusion created by Himari. They’re rather dense.

This whole penguin hat transformation sequence gives off Utena and Star Driver vibes for me- the ritualistic feel to Himari’s shout of “Survival Strategy!”, the music and the rocket ship, and Himari descending the steps. Then we have one part that isn’t always the same, followed by the opening of the trap door and the return to the normal world. I find rituals like these to be quite powerful.

The penguins continue to be amusing, as does the brothers’ stalking. It looks like they may continue to take things further and further to save Himari. I’m still not sold on Ringo though, but it’s getting there. I’m not entirely sure where everything is headed yet (which is probably a good thing). Ringo becoming friends with Himari will definitely spice things up though. I’m curious to see what the penguin hat will have to say about this development in the next episode.

This is stretching things a lot based on no evidence whatsoever, but I’m kind of wondering if we might see some romantic development between Ringo and Shouma. Largely because he wanted to eat her curry and refused to enter her room. Again, this is a huge stretch though. Another thing: why did Kanba hide the family pictures from Ringo? I wonder if there is some secret about their parents.

Giving the teacher a girlfriend was a nice twist as well. Poor Ringo. I suppose her fate did come true, but it’s remarkable that she can still be pleased with how things turned out and happily put a stamp in her diary. The face full of curry (although well deserved) shouldn’t have helped to brighten her day either.