Penguin Drum - Episode 13 Discussion / Poll
 

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Damn it, I slept in and missed the broadcast this week. :heh:

Oh well, from what I've heard I'd probably have hated the shit out of the episode anyway.

Also what I understood though...



Will need to wait for subs to check part of Sanetoshi's speech. Did he really said "交わらない" ∑(ﾟωﾟﾉ)ﾉ ?

Now I wonder

Which also explains why...

Well, according to PoC, the penguindrum can derail fate, right?

Now, if fate was initially derailed because of the incident 16 years ago, that incident itself is what should be changed/removed to "derail" fate into its original course. If the attacks never happened, Momoka wouldn't have died and the brothers wouldn't have any reason to feel they're cursed. And if Himari's death is truly a punishment for the attacks, that would be fixed too. Maybe the PoC wants the penguindrum for something like this.

Since even a minor change, like making Momoka late for school that day would change her personal destiny, I guess that's in the realm of possible. And it would be a life for a life, Himari for Momoka. Which (as terrible as it may sound) is a fair trade.
In the other hand, to completely erase the accident seems too much. There was probably lots of victims due to the attack 16 years ago, to change the destiny of all of them by bringing them to life, no less... Not sure if anyone, even Ikuhara, could come with a convincing explanation for that ^^'.

As for the brothers, I don't really see where there guiltiness comes from anyway :/. I would understand feeling ashamed or disgusted by what their parents did and want to atone for it, but why the "we need to be punish" talk ? It's not like they put the bombs (or whatever that was) themselves or agreed to their parents actions or anything. :confused:

I guess they feel since it happened on the day they were born they are somehow to blame for their parents actions. However, that doesn't mean what they feel has to be rational.

Oh, I didn't notice the girl's dress before,


See? The same dress as her funeral photograph.

Wait a minute... if PoC is Momoka, then who is Mario's hat then? And is Sanetoshi talking to us as the audience or another entity when he said for 'you two to witness it'?

And ARGH, such a tease this episode is with Sanetoshi saying he knows who has the other half of the diary, but without actually telling us. So frustrating lol.

Overall I didn't like this episode, as it had too much flashbacks on the Takakura parents and the police trying to find them. I mean, it was already pretty much clear cut last episode why Sho/Kan feel the need for retribution, no need to explicitly animate the time when the police investigates their house.

That said, finally, a song that I can listen to. I hate OP and first ED with a passion, but I love this new ED that was used as an insert from before.

That's a good question. Can it be Sanetoshi himself somehow?

That would be my guess. Though, if true, I wonder if that means Momoko can show up in the real world as well, outside of the hat. Could keep alive the crazy ideas out there that Yui is Momoko. :p

If Momoko is the hat, it sure makes me want to re-watch all the survival strategy scenes.

Also, adult Tabuki has the scars on his fingers this episode, so all the previous episodes he didn't was probably an oversight/laziness. :D Still waiting to see how they play into everything. Tabuki himself sounded every bit the mature adult here, but I still don't buy it. I'm just paranoid over tall, glasses-wearing men in anime. :p

Was it Sanetoshi on the phone with Kanba's Stalker (I keep forgetting her name). Male VAs all tend to sound the same to me, so I wasn't sure who it was, just that we were probably supposed to recognize him since they finally let us hear who's on the other side of her phone.

Ringo seems to have gotten through her psycho phase, and has even come to accept her father's marriage. Does this mean she's "done" in terms of plot, or is this a temporary lull? :p

I'd still love to know what Kanba is paying in exchange for all the penguin money he gets. And how what Kanba said about not wanting anything for himself serves as being payment Sanetoshi accepted for reviving Himari. Or was Sanetoshi just messing with Kanba, since I get the impression he would have saved Himari regardless, as I suspect if Himari dies, so does "Momoka"/the Hat.

Momoka is already dead though, so I don't think that's the reason he's keeping Himari alive. I think he's using the brothers to achieve whatever he wants to achieve. Now that Kanba made a contract with him, Sanetoshi pretty much has all the cards.

We just need to know what's his winning game though.

Yea, I didn't mean Momoka the actual girl (or woman), but whatever essence of Momoka there is in that hat. Would Himari dying cause whatever is in the hat to fade from existence? My point being, it's possible Sanetoshi would have revived Himari regardless, but making Kanba feel he owes him something is probably a nice bonus.

Momoka/PoC wouldn't fade from existence; she would just go back to the "destination of her fate". She said so herself in episode 12.

Ah the red string sof fate... can they ever be more cruel?

How is the music for this show so godlike. New ED made me freakin' cry. I love the first OP too, but I'll be honestly curious to hear the next one.

On the other hand, the episode itself this time was a bit blunt. Neither subtle nor clever there, Ikuhara: "because to have the punishment end here would be no fun"? The reuse of Shouma and Ringo's "fate" monologues were quite effective, though: their words again at this point in the story really hits home.

You can see a bit of Shouma's darkness coming out here. He's fully accepted it: the punishment, the sin, that their own lives really are worthless and that they will never amount to anything. With no will to challenge that or remotely fight against it, Shouma's perspective is one of someone who has long given up any hope to resist.

The contrast with Kanba's personality is thus direct. The latter had better reason to idolize both his parents and, accordingly, also Himari. He refuses to give up hope out of moral outrage on behalf of them. He does not accept that they should have to give up on there ever having been a point to their lives.

As I thought, Tabuki is indeed "broken". He really seems to me as if he is just apathetically flitting through his life, unable to come to grips with reality. This makes his relationship with Yuri so shallow and fake that it's really quite amusing and interesting. Tabuki's relationship with Momoka will obviously a plot key somewhere somehow however.

On Sanetoshi's messiah complex, and "Survival Strategy". Extending from what I talked a bit about last time, I might be stretching this, but seeing himself as being the single person who can see the "proper" path for the universe gradually leads me to think of the leader of Aum Shinrikyou. I wonder if the 1995 subway attacks (in Penguindrum-verse) were not orchestrated by Sanetoshi and if Takekura Keibu/Takekura Chiemi were not in fact actually working for him?

Who is "the Goddess"? I know that in the previous episode I started feeling like the PotC was the goddess, in some weak/incomplete form.

We can guess that the PotC i.e. Momoka is working against Sanetoshi, as his "aibito" who rejected him. However, she herself is also chasing the Penguindrum in order to pursue a "Survival Strategy". The holder of the other diary half must be a third party who is unrelated to both of them. The obvious suspicions currently lie with Yuri.

(Natsume was revealed to be speaking with Sanetoshi by cell phone this episode. Presumably this closes the loop of who she was talking to in all the previous incidents.)

Kinda clumsy in delivery, but damn this episode did deliver I guess. A solid watch this time.

So is Kanba and Natsume sacrificing the same thing to save their siblings?

Gotta said I loved Ringo so much in this episode. I didn't really have any emotional attachment with any of these characters until now, mostly because Ikuhara hasn't put too much effort to make them sympathetic, let alone likable: they're all one-trick ponies, all of them stack on their issues and/or desires, and they just don't change or grow....

But Ringo did grow. When the series began she was just nut (literally) but now she's coming to terms with the past and is even starting to show genuine concern for the people around her. Heck, she was even able to congratulate his father on his new marriage.

I just would like to see some progress from the other characters as well, specially Shouma and Kanba, although that probably isn't going to happen any time soon.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the main force behind Ringo's character growth was Shouma. He really helped her to see things from a new perspective. I wonder if she can help Shouma get over his issues. Now that Kanba has made a contract with Sanetoshi, I assume the only one who is in a position to act is Shouma, who's still pretty much the only character outside the game, so to speak. But unless he can come to terms with the past, he isn't going to be of any use, so... let's just hope Ringo can do something for him.