When I see this show spinning farther and father off into the bizarro world, I wonder – does Ikuhara read his own press clippings and try to live up to them, or is he really this twisted? OP2: “Shounen yo Ware ni Kaere” (少年よ我に帰れ; Boy, Return to Me) by Etsuko […] Read more
Lest anyone forget for a nanosecond that this as Ikuhara we were dealing with, this was the week he seriously turns up the dark – and the weird. While Mawaru Penguin Drum is undeniably suffused with brilliance, I still can’t shake my initial impression that the show is something of […] Read more
One, two, three black kittens sitting in the park, eavesdropping… Ikuhara is a real bastard. It’s not enough that he has to weave enough mysteries and obscure references into MPD to make my head explode, but now he’s actually using a character to taunt the audience directly with non-spoilers. Seriously, […] Read more
The opposite bank of the invisible river turned a sudden red and its waves glittered like needles, throwing what looked like willows into stark silhouette. A large crimson fire was burning in a distant field, its towering smoke threatening to scorch the deep violet of the sky. The flame […] Read more
Cry, Monkey Bitch… This was certainly an episode that’s everything glorious and maddening about Mawaru Penguin Drum. It was a fascinating muddle – hilarious and infuriating and confusing and mysterious. And it seems pretty clear Ikuhara isn’t keen to give away many of his secrets just yet. There’s a certain […] Read more
When Mawaru Penguin Drum premièred in July, it sent hordes of anime fans scurrying towards their search engines to find out more about “Night on the Galactic Railroad”. But this was hardly the first time this influential work has made a splash in Japanese popular culture, and in point of […] Read more
Or, “The budget crunch episode”. But full points for a re-cut ED sung by the incomparable Horie Yui. I don’t know if this is a renaissance episode for MPD, though it was certainly pretty good despite the nosedive in animation quality. But my goodness, this is complicated – this is […] Read more
For those interested, here is the very short story referenced in episode 9 of MPD. If you guys don’t know Murakami Haruki, you should – many of his novels are translated into English and he’s amazing. Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing […] Read more
As seemed likely after the cliffhanger last week, MPD takes a radical detour from the narrative and leaves us no closer to the truth of what, if anything, is at the heart of this strange and maddening series. There’s good news here. We had an episode that featured absolutely no […] Read more
Going into this show, one of the nagging questions was whether Ikuhara Kunihiko could restrain himself long enough to deliver a focused, coherent and entertaining two-cour series. Well, we’re a third of the way through now and at this point if the jury was required to render a judgment, I […] Read more