I hardly know where to start with that one. I guess “at least it’s not her brother” is as good a place as any. I mean, I didn’t think Ponko would be dating Fuguri but as whack as Apocalypse Hotel has gotten lately, a little part of me wasn’t sure. But that bullet was dodged – turns out it’s another tanuki named Ponstin (played by Hanae Natsuki no less). Ponstin is a doctor taking care of Mujina, whose illness got a passing mention last week. So now we know there are other tanuki survivors out there. As for Fuguri he still looks about six, which I guess means either Ponko’s age-up was a conscious choice, or Tanukians hit a growth spurt very late.
Apart from that, well – woof. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. I can honestly say I’m not sure how I would have felt about this week’s developments if the past two episodes hadn’t happened. But they did, and I’m certainly less favorably disposed towards the show than I was before. Starting with the Yachiyo punching gag, which was just unfunny and stupid in a way that built on the disaster of last week. But it was mercifully brief, and then things took a turn for the better. Or so I thought.
The stuff with Mujina (alive) was the best part of the episode, certainly. Her talk with Yachiyo has a nice feel to it, especially when she put it in the context of a refugee situation (which almost made me feel as if the series was back in the mindset of the first six episodes). But it was very obvious why she asked Yachiyo to help her record those messages, so her passing was a given at that stage. As for the wedding itself (oh yeah, Ponko and Ponstin are getting married), that does nothing for me at this point. I find this Ponko pretty insufferable and Ponstin is nobody to me at all.
But the elephant in the room is the wedding. And the funeral. And I suspect this is just one of those things where it’s either going to work for you or it isn’t. I will say I respect Apocalypse Hotel for not pulling punches in the weird department – this is pretty out there. And I feel like I know what they were going for with all this. But no, that did not work for me. I’m almost past the point where anything can offend me in fiction, much less as a function of “taste”. But the idea of getting married with your grandmother’s body on the dais right behind you? No, I’m sorry, that’s just wrong. And it’s not like those are Tanukian customs are anything, as they were just as surprised at Yachiyo’s suggestion as I was.
So no, that was a total miss for me. It grossed me out and I just wanted it to be over. Again, who knows if I would have felt differently if this had been Episode 7, but I honestly think my reaction would have been exactly the same or close. There’s a path they could have taken to make this work, and as incongruous as it sounds for me to suggest it this is one of those situations where I think some restraint would have gone a long way. Just dial it back a little and maybe they would have gotten there. As is, I’m drifting further and further away from buying what this show is selling, and that will never not make me sad.
Collectr
June 5, 2025 at 4:43 amIt work for me. It was absolutely weird, , starting with Ponstin in his wedding suit of leaves, but in the way I expect of AH. When Yachiyo performed her “magic trick” on Mujina’s remains, I really lost it. The whole affair was tasteless beyond belief. They were a couple of sly references to “Pom Poko” (the Japanese version, not the bowdlerized US version) too. As you’ve said many times, comedy is in the eye of the beholder.
It’s almost as thought the scriptwriter realized that he’d written himself into a corner over the last two episodes and decided to get out of it by (a) ignoring what had happened (no sign of Ponko the reactionary politician) and (b) putting on a combination of the “feels” (Mujina in the A part, the appearance by the deceased owner) and total gross-out comedy (Mujina in the B part). Slip in a quick (and unseen) repair of Yachiyo while everyone is looking elsewhere, and voila, the story can now go back to status quo ante. At least, I hope so.
Guardian Enzo
June 5, 2025 at 7:33 amNot much offends me these days. But that was just wrong, sorry. It was gross and, well, offensive. Just a bad idea. Like I said I got what they were going for, and a little restraing might have allowed them to pull it off. But as is- no.
Pretending you didn’t massively screw up doesn’t make the screw-up go away.
Simone
June 5, 2025 at 7:03 pmPersonally it worked for me. First, from an objective standpoint, no harm no foul – odd as this new budding cultural practice might seem to us (as the Gingarou is essentially seeding an entirely new and alien culture from a strange warped version of a fragment of ours), there’s many ways to process grief, and no one was hurt or non consenting (heck, this was in fact an attempt to interpret the last wishes of the deceased). Second, this show has been dealing in absurdism and existentialism from day one. There is no meaning to the universe other than what we impose on it ourselves. We’re all robots left by a parent that may not exist to fend off in a world where we seemingly grind away until we break for no good reason. Very few things could be more deeply gut level screaming about the utter absurdity of the human condition than a wedding-funeral juxtaposing extremes in such an in-your-face fashion. However much we might want to give structure and sense to the world, all our lives are wedding-funerals; these people simply tore off the pretence entirely and compressed it all in a single day of simultaneous revelry and remembrance. I really lost it at Yachiyo doing the sawed off woman magic trick with grandma’s coffin personally, the sheer audacity and nonsensicality of the moment was breath-taking.
So yeah, I think this was 100% in line with the spirit of the show. It absolutely used the crassness and tastelessness to drive its point home. Because if you look at it closer, none of this makes any more or less sense than what we do normally. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad or hurtful about it. Our discomfort spans from the same desire for life to “make sense” in a coherent way that life stubbornly refuses to conform to.
I kinda wish they’d kept the tank treads and pincers for Yachiyo though. That was the rare example of a bit this series did NOT commit entirely to up to its most extreme absurd consequences.
Nadavu
June 7, 2025 at 2:45 amI don’t know if it _worked_ for me, but I’m glad to have seen it. It’s like two neuron in my brain that have always fired independently have now formed a link. This one is gonna stay with me.
Apocalypse Hotel is fully committed to not being whatever anyone thinks it is or should be, and I respect that a lot.