Erin watches Penguindrum, episodes 14-18

Well, the music’s good.

(Screencap: the in-universe idol duo who sing a lot of it.)

Just finished episode 18, I am officially past the point the IMAU podcast covered, and I don’t see any specific in-series reason why they would bail here. The show is really struggling to hold my care, but it seemed to be working for them?

Episode 18 does have a murder attempt, but, listen — we’ve already had 3 attempted drugging/assaults, a serious child-abuse sequence, and a fictionalized version of an IRL terrorist mass-murder. If the show hasn’t hit your “too many characters doing terrible things for me to enjoy this anymore” threshold already, I can’t imagine this is what would put it over the edge.

To be clear, what’s losing me isn’t the Characters Doing Bad Things part! It’s the part where a lot of characters’ backstories and motivations just…aren’t connecting. The show keeps having moments that are, taken in isolation, very dramatic — or horrifying — or emotionally moving — but I’m too distracted by “wait, where did that come from? how does it make sense? why wasn’t it mentioned in all these previous scenes when it was extremely relevant? if the character had that plan this whole time, they’ve had perfect opportunities to do it in half a dozen earlier episodes, why are they only going for it now??”

And I can’t tell if all those disconnects are building to something bigger, or if it’s just bad writing.

Six episodes left, guess I’ll find out.

(The show has put a lot of narrative/emotional emphasis on “Ringo is remorseful and apologetic to one of the brothers for being kinda insensitive to him”, and none at all on “Ringo is remorseful and apologetic to this other character for trying to assault him twice,” so I’m not getting my hopes up to be satisfied about that ends. Crossing my fingers we get at least one more Himari-centric episode before we go.)

…also, since the soundtrack really is wonderful, one of the high points of the series, have some recs.

“Rock Over Japan” is the anthem for the recurring Penguin Hat Gives Magical Orders sequence, it’s so catchy and fun:

Watch on YouTube

 

 

And “Grey Wednesday” (Haiiro no Suiyoubi) has played a few times, always when a character is reliving some really intense childhood despair, it’s really lovely and perfect for the mood:

Watch on YouTube