I'm going to be thinking about this show for a long time.
I watched Utena for the first time a couple years back and completely fell in love with it. So it only makes sense that I was excited for this show, and was completely okay with the fuzzy divide between the "reality" the story was taking place in and the symbolism that was everywhere throughout it, confident that all of the major questions would be answered in the end. But as the show started to develop a fondness for ending on cliffhangers that would be resolved in the next episode with a wave of the hand, and more and more symbolism and plot elements began piling up on top of each other, I started to wonder if there would even be enough time to address everything that was brought forward. In the end, the answer was no. I share a lot of the questions that Yumeka listed on her blog, especially the ones concerning Momoka and the penguins. I feel that maybe Penguindrum was a little too dense, that what Ikuhara was trying convey might have gotten partially lost in the chaos of the is-it-real-or-is-it-not (is it important or is it a throwaway) symbolism that's present in every episode. There's also the problem of having already watched Utena; as fellow fans can tell you, it's impossible to view Penguindrum objectively since the themes and the presentation are so similar to Ikuhara's previous work.
But that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the ride. Penguindrum is easily one of the best shows this year. What started out as a wacky adventure with two brothers and their band of invisible penguins as they try to steal a diary from a stalker high school girl, an item that may or may not save their sister's life, turned into a beautiful story of family, love and fate. The focus on these themes brought up a lot of interesting questions, different than the ones that Utena focused on. I mentioned some of them in my Twelve Moments of Anime post on the theme of family in the show, and the more distance I get from the show, the more interesting I find the portrayal of family, especially the concept that your family are the ones that you share your fate with, good or bad. While my questions about the plot may go unanswered, I'm sure that re-watching will be a treasure trove for further analyzing the questions that it poses, since at least the cliff-hangers will not be nearly as distracting. Of course, the themes wouldn't have worked nearly as well if it weren't for the characters working through them in the story; in particular, Ringo's transformation from obsessive stalker who only cared about herself to a person who was willing to sacrifice herself to save her friends was amazing to watch. I could go on and on about this show and what it did right rather than what it did wrong. Will it hold up as well as Utena? Only time will tell. But at the very least, it was electrifying.
Images from Google and Random Curiosity.
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