Mawaru Penguin Drum -- "They were born of symbolic steel. Life and death to them seems so unreal."
There are times when the initial impression you get from something, the very first things it does for however short, can colour your perception of it for ever and give you a clear impression of what to expect for the rest of its existence. This becomes all the more true the older, more experienced and more set in your ways you get: The "open mind" thing is a great thought, sure, but our minds aren't wired to work that way.
So when an anime begins its existence with a black screen and the sentence "I hate destiny", certain warning claxons go off in my head. One begins to suspect this anime is going to spend an inordinate amount of time on that whole "fate" and "doom" and "prophecy" jalopy, which is always a hoot for the kids who believe in astrology and tea leaves. But, hey, the show could still surprise me, right?...
Mawaru Penguin Drum is a fall 2011 anime of 24 episodes that fits somewhat loosely into the 'drama' mold. The show's primary call to fame is being the brainchild of Kunihiko Ikuhara, creator of the famous magical girl deconstruction/mess of symbolism Revolutionary Girl Utena. And if I may shoo the elephant out of the room rightaway, this show is very much like Utena in its use of symbolism, flashback and general directional tricks. Thus, if you found it tiresome in Utena it's pretty much guaranteed you won't be that much more kindly disposed towards it here either.
For those who aren't instantly repulsed by the concept of a Utena-esque drama series about destiny, soap opera diseases, reincarnation, child abuse, penguins and the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin incident (all of which may or may not be metaphorical), read on.
Art & Animation: 9/10 -- Symbolism, ho!
Mawaru Penguin Drum takes its animation from the Brains Base animation studio (also responsible for, amongst other things, Baccano! and Durarara!!) and uses an art style and character design somewhat resembling Utena. The production values on this show's animation and art are really top-notch: The locales, although half of them are probably metaphorical, are very nicely done and the characters are, if a little derivative, very good in design. The animation is very good, the colours are vibrant and employed with a great thought for contrast and emphasis, and the editing is particularly good. The visual art does a great job at underlining the events of the show and supports its general 'style' very well (although this may just be ingrained patterns from Utena talking). Like Durarara!! it also makes use of turning all non-main characters into white cutouts, as if to underline the meta importance being held by the named characters and those alone.
The main flaw, if I have to say it has one, is the art's over-focus on symbolism (much of which, we eventually learn, is not symbolic *of* anything beyond simply being symbolic) and spending too much time hanging around focusing on those damn penguins (more on those later) and the the general 'tone' of overemphasizing and romanticizing things that have no really relevance in the grand scheme of things. If we treat this as being general faults in the writing rather than as graphical flaws -- which I intend to treat them as -- the overall image is overwhelmingly positive. A few minor hiccups and some minor off-key character moments aside, this show has one of the best art I have seen for a show not depending on explosions and flashy fight scenes and well deserving of a high score in this department.
Audio: 7/10 -- Good music, but nothing as flamboyant as the graphics.
The audio of Mawaru Penguin Drum is what I would refer to as competent, but in no way as scintillating as the graphics. The voice casting was well done, giving the characters suitable voices to go with their basic personalities and story roles, and the use of sound effects and music is perfectly well-done. On the flip side, none of the voice roles went out of their way to openly impress me and the soundtrack won't be on my shopping list any time soon. The OP and ED are both decent without being annoying or too much of an earworm, but also no great works of composure. Overall I'm more than willing to give this show an above-average to good score on this category.
Story: 5/10 -- Some self-restraint would be nice, please.
The story of Mawaru Penguin Drum is... Interesting, to say the least. In the beginning, the story regards a trio of siblings, where the younger sister suffers from tragic Soap Opera Disease (an undefined disease that has none of those pesky 'symptoms' beyond light coughing and weakness that ensures the sufferer will die young and beautiful while still maximising that tragic heartstring-tugging). Sadly, this disease catches up to her in the very first episode: She dies, only to be resurrected by a magic penguin hat that causes her to be possessed by a... Something that demands her brothers find something called the "penguin drum" without explaining in any meaningful way what it is or how they can obtain it. Things go slightly out of control as the show goes on, making this primer only useful for the first handful of episodes.
Condensed down for the purposes of this review, the story can be said to contain three main parts: There's the opening episodes, which are for the most part comedic in nature and fairly free of symbolism, the bridge, which sets into motion most of the actual story with a genre shift towards more drama, flashbacks and symbolism, and the ending, which is all drama, flashbacks and symbolism with what little is left of the original plot drowning in the latter. The final episode could have been snorted right out of Evangelion itself.
The gradual shift into symbolism really ends up being the story's greatest enemy, as it brings with it so many problems. For one thing, it becomes an extreme element of padding. While in the beginning the pacing is fairly good and compact, keeping each scene distinct, the later 2/3rds of the show seem to contain less actual story progression combined than the first 1/3, simply because it spends so much time flashbacking or narrating faux philosophy to the audience.
You get the feeling that this anime just *almost* had too much actual story in it for 12 episodes and that the writers thus had to extremely pad it to fit it into 24. Another problem is the near-constant bringing up and dropping of plot points that leave quite a lot of the plot threads mired in the ending and drowned in the show's expanding focus on metaphor and symbolism. I'm not even sure if I could call them 'plot holes' in the first place, since in some place I'm uncertain if the show intended for them to be plot points or simply a metaphor.
And no, the show does *not* get plus points for being clever if that's the case. It instead gets a negative for being unable to make its audience see it clearly. There's something to say for 'show, don't tell', but on the other hand there's also something to be said for not making incomprehensible gibberish out of the 'show' part, which Mawaru Penguin Drum seems to have some problems with. I'm sorry, the story is simply so rich I can't take the time to dissect all of it. I'll just have to summarize it as a problem with priorities, and in many ways wanting to be more than it is capable of making the audience follow.
Characters: 5/10 -- "Fate's a slippery sort of concept, though, isn't it. I mean, most of the time it's just an excuse for doing what you want to do anyway."
The core cast of Mawaru Penguin Drum are an eclectic bunch; people who are all somehow related with each other thrown in together by their mutual belief . Well, whatever. As *characters* most of them work: They're generally well-rounded, if slightly (ok, horribly) irrational and are explored gradually, uncovering pieces of themselves. Their stories mostly get revealed by jumps: While everyday organic character development is nonexistent, sudden epiphanies and flashbacks provide the lion's share of development. The flashbacks get rather tiresome at length, and this show has a lot of them. The show also bungles a fair bit of their character arcs, generally in tune with how the plot manages to get muddled over time as well. The dialogue is interesting, especially if you start looking into what is really being said contra the words the characters use -- it's sort of like Hemningway. Well, Hemningway if he couldn't write a life-like dialogue to save his life. Nobody in real life, I think, talks like anything in this anime (though I'm not Japanese so what do I know) and it sort of destroys the whole "underlying meaning in the dialogue" aspect.
While the characters are generally well-rounded, including their character flaws, the show tends to romanticise said flaws. The show doesn't seem to think their flaws isn't that big a deal, given how it seems to think that people are still sympathetic after treating their friends like dirt/attempted rape/mass cop-killing (provided all of those weren't symbolic, too...), and that they'll just "get over it" given the right epiphany after which they're essentially a moral "tabula rasa" again. No people really get much comeuppance for their actions, good or bad, and what comes seems more arbitrary and unrelated to their actual actions.
This is even odder since the word "destiny" is one both the plot and the characters seem so obsessed with, yet it fails to actually provide any of it beyond the apparent rationalizations of deluded minds, what comes more across as arbitrary contrivances, and in the end can't even give people their due. Really, I should take some more time out for the whole way the characters misrepresent "destiny" (here's a fun fact for you -- the word "doom" comes from a Norse word for "destiny". Destiny, in most mythologies, is something to be feared and not taken as the inevitability of your own desires), but this isn't a column for "The Grudgeal savages new-age hippie beliefs", so I'll instead use the rest of this segment to savage something else more relevant -- the penguins.
Showing up in the first episode, the penguins serve as comedy sidekicks-cum-metaphors for the main characters, performing slapstick actions that partway serve as metaphors for the characters' actions or emotions, and provide the mainstay of the show's physical humour. While this makes them suitable for use in the more comedy-aspected parts of the show -- the first third -- by the end the penguins seem more like an ill-fitted attempt to slap comedy into scenes where it really has no business going and simply provides and unsuccessful contrasting to the general goings-on. They become entirely superfluous as a result and more of an irritant than the comedic relief they were intended as, sort of like Jar-Jar Binks. Well, not as *bad* as Jar-Jar Binks. But the same problem.
Also, what was up with that villain, anyway? I assume he was probably a metaphor for *something* down the way, but I'll be damned if I picked up exactly what.
Value: 7/10 -- "They would write a new page, if they could only write."
I will give Mawaru Penguin Drum this -- the show is very striking and I, for one, consider it to be quite memorable. Sure, the 'drown it all in symbolism' is hardly a new twist on things -- it's been done before, especially by Evangelion (which also did it better, but I digress), but the distinct visual style, story pacing and combine to make this show rather memorable, in its own fashion. It's also fairly unique -- at least if we still keep Utena (or outright mind screw shows like Serial Experiments Lain) out of this. On the flip side, though, I don't know what else, other than Utena or Lain, I'd recommend if you liked this. Unless you watched this for the outright honest drama/comedy instead of the 'deepness', in which case almost anything comedy/drama-related would do.
While I have a ton of complaints to make over the story pacing, the use of "destiny" or any number of other things about the plot and characters, I won't complain at having watched this show in the first place, or to have finished it.
Enjoyment: 6/10 -- "So mistletoe, in fact, symbolises mistletoe. That statement is either utterly superficial or so profound it could take a lifetime to unravel." "...It could be both." "And that statement is either highly perceptive or very trite."
My enjoyment of Penguin Drum was limited, in the most part, by my ability to suspend disbelief at its over time rather outrageous plot and characters, and damn if the show didn't keep me working on that. I think it's because I have a tendency to over-analyze anime if the show can't keep me immediately entertained, which Penguin Drum had a real problem with. The initial humour attempts fall somewhat flat, later not to appear at all. The drama had a real problem with me questioning its validity or the people and emotions involved. All in all it made for a decent viewing experience, if nothing more than for expecting what the show would try next, but overall nothing that I really want to shout "huzzah" for.
Though undoubtedly this is the wrong way to watch it. I get the feeling I would get a lot more entertainment out of this show with some mind-altering chemicals, or a semester at an art college.
Total: 6.5/10 -- "Hey, Japan, I've got an alternative tagline for you, make a show of this one if you can: "Things just happen, what the hell."
I'm somewhat uncertain on what, exactly, to say about Mawaru Penguin Drum. The show bites over too much and tries to introduce too many story threads while constantly expanding on them with flashbacks and metaphor, and yet balks when it comes to actually developing or finishing its own story threads in any meaningful way. It tries to build characters who are tragic and in need of help and genuinely psychologically broken, yet balks at trying to present their character flaws as outright negative and tries to constantly romanticize their flaws as outlets for sympathy rather than something that makes them flawed. It tries to constantly invoke 'fate' and 'destiny' and a whole lot of new-age religious symbolism without using said symbolism for anything else than symbolic for its own symbolism.
The word 'deep' does not so readily come to mind when describing this show, more the word 'pretentious'. The show obviously *wants* to present something different than the usual hullabaloo of soap opera drama by inputting all this surrealism, but it's unclear exactly what it intended to get out of it all. The show seems to desperately want for us to take it seriously as art, yet also laugh at it when prompted, yet it deprives us of everything that would make it seems sensible or calculated in the drama and the humour just mostly falls flat or is oddly contrasted. The only definite I can say to have gotten out of it all was a very nice art direction.
Mawaru Penguin Drum wasn't exactly a bad show by any standard, but it most certainly was a rather confused one. It seemed to be uncertain about exactly what it wanted to do, and said confusion ended up confusing me a fair bit as well.