And I drink milk!    But I think Gio's point was that in the media, people who don't kick back with booze after work -- especially men -- are likely to have a secret vice that goes way beyond alcoholism.  Right now this guy's being presented as very innocent and unaware of Ringo's obsession with him, maybe because they go back at least a few years.  But maybe his Coke drinking is evidence that he's secretly Akio? 

  Sick burn, sick burn.


Also, let us all do what we have all been resisting thus far!


Ringo  =  Saionji and Nanami.
Sho=  Utena and Miki
Kanba=  Kozue and Touga
Himari= AnthyAnthyAnthyAnthyAnthy
Subway girls with pink and blue hair = Shadow Play Girls
Mr. TeacherwhosnameIhavealreadyforgotten =  Ruka or Mikage.  I feel something about him screams either (I have a mission/status I am holding secret until the near end of the series!) or (I like young boys!)

Juri lookalike FTW!!!

Episode 4 was definitely the most "Ikuharan" episode yet. I'm really enjoying it.

After watching episode 4, I have to say, Yuri may look like Juri (imo), gentle like Kanae, but deep down, she has a tint of Anthy o_o|||

And, while it LOOKED like a Nanami filler episode this week, definitely had a couple of scenes that makes you say, "WHAT A TWEEEST"

Also nice to see Aiko, Keiko, and Yuko making a guest return

^ imo, the entirity of those imagine spots were homage to Utena, what with the whole prince/princess "save me" theme going on

I fucking love this show.  I watched the latest episode with a friend who hadn't heard of it.  It was great.  We laughed at Ringo's inner theatre, the weirdness of the penguins, and Sho's misfortune.  And then the ending happened. 

Hiraku wrote:

Also nice to see Aiko, Keiko, and Yuko making a guest return

I was happy to see them as well.

Maya-chan wrote:

I also noticed that episode 4 of Penguindrum with Ringo's fantasies of 'Yuri and Tabuki' is also the same episode number in Utena where Nanami has the 'Get rid of Anthy' fantasies. I think episode 4 of Penguindrum definitely pays homage to episode 4 of Utena

When she lets the caterpillar out and acts scared of it, she strikes the exact same pose Nanami did each time she pulled out an animal in that episode.

satyreyes wrote:

I can't wait for someone to explain how the Metro Play Girls' skits elucidate larger themes of each episode.

The Metro girls seem to have very scenario specific skits that don't have much to do with symbols/archetypes/series theme. Like in this episode it was basically [Don't take your eyes off your stuff or else someone's going to steal it! And that ended up getting applied to the birds who ate Ringo's lunch, Sho "stealing" Ringo's first kiss, maybe Yuri keeping her eyes on Ringo so Ringo doesn't take Tabuki, and maybe Ringo not keeping her eyes on reality] However, they have the same outfits as possessed!Himari so I'm hoping they become more significant in the coming episodes.


As for Ringo, I think she needs to stop looking in that diary or, at the very least, stop forcing the events she wants to happen. With the exception of [the rather ominous little note about the girl in red heels], all the events that are described in the diary occur because Ringo makes them occur. I think I said this before, but Ringo always has the option of not taking action. In fact, I think Ringo would have a better chance at scoring Tabuki if she could be more flexible--she'd be certainly less nervous about events at least. So either, Ringo has the power to create her own fate if she ever realizes that taking a different course of action is a viable option (the mystical penguin drum perhaps?) or she is slave to her fate because the option of not taking action or taking a different course of action never occurs to her.


ETA: I was rewatching the Rock Over Japan sequence and just noticed that most of the stars are actually snowflakes and that the mecha bears appear with a burst of flowers. I guess that sequence does have some symbolic significance relating to cycles and transitions.


ETA2: On a slightly unrelated note, I found a chiptune remix of Dear Future!

Last edited by Malacoda (07-31-2011 06:08:15 PM)

The Subway Girls make such perfect sense. Utena deconstructed everything from fairy tales to shoujo anime, and was heavily influenced by theatre -thus the Shadow Play Girls commentary and bizarre critique on the characters and their plots, especially via allegorical plays that mocked just as much as they explored, were a great match.  Mawaru Penguindrum is about fate (so far, apparently), and so two girls giving out warnings and advice to people riding on a form of transportation which they do not steer (they choose which one to take, and when, but after that... who knows what could happen)?   

Aiko, Yuuko and Keiko?  Where?  ?_?  I'd be curious to get a screen capture.  One of my homeys and I are starting to think there might legitimately be some kind of tie-in between Penguindrum and Utena.

Specifically -- the subway girls definitely reflect/remind me of the shadowplay girls.
(Presumably) dead parents for the leads in both shows.
Something -- (an orb ?) get pulled from the boy's chest in Ep One.  The sequence looks extremely similar to the swords-in-chests from Utena and never gets explained.
The abilities of the "Locus of fates" strikes me as similar to the "power of miracles" were supposed to allow.
The penguins remind me a *lot* of Chu-Chu.  I would be surprised if they didn't have the same sort of witch-familiar relationship with their masters that Anthy had with her pet.
The hand-touching in the OP evokes the Utena OP and the ending sequence definitely evokes the art styles used in the Utena art books.

I doubt this story is taking place within the Utena "universe" per se, but I do feel that there's some sort of interconnectivity between both narratives.  The metaphysics of both worlds might be similar, albeit with different window-dressing.  This could be Ikuhara just playing with ideas and images he enjoys, but I can't help but to expect this show might be building off of SKU in some way.  Or maybe I'm just overly cised.

By the by, did anyone notice the "real" penguins in Ep One look like actual penguins would?