Rambly musings on mawaru penguindrum
1 Jan 2012 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaIn the end if I want to compare Mawaru Penguindrum to anything, it would be to Fruits Basket. Both stories focus on the question of how you escape the inevitable doom of cycles of abuse and sins of the fathers, and both ultimately answer with "by helping one another, by choosing one another, by becoming one another's chosen family". Fruits Basket has a focus that is much more on the personal, individual tragedies though, whereas Mawaru Penguindrum has a much more institutional scope (the chilling gruesome metaphor of the Child Broiler, as a allegory for how society will utterly crush people, whole generations even, to its demand for conformity and uniformity). As a core to some of the series symbols, as a main narrative, I find it however brilliant and deeply touching as well as sometimes very disturbing. Mawaru Penguindrum, much like SKU did, also emphasizes costs, sacrifices, that any rescue eventually endear itself. I'm not really sure what I want to make of it, it kind of felt like the ending of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, sacrifices piled on sacrifices in a ridiculous shounen escalation aq of somehow there would not be the same zero-sum equation it always was? Irritating despite being emotionally resonant. And I'm not entirely sure where it fits in the net of metaphors.
However if there was one place where Penguidrum really failed, I think, it is in the personal, in the characterizations. Despite taking care to deepen and reveal much of the secrets of the various characters in flashbacks (none of which are quite what they seem); I truly felt that the only character who was fully realised was Ringo - and that was at the cost of making her deeply antipathetic in a large part of the story (though I guess you could compare her to Nanami in how with an indomitable spirit and strength of will she reverses this by being a key, awesome figure in the finale) - all the other characters felt a bit too archetypal for me to truly love. (Perhaps I may revise this opinion in the future, I know on my first watching, I didn't really love any of the SKU characters all that much, and now look at me and how much I utterly love the majority of them). Yuri at least was wonderfully fabulous in a way that I had to adore, at least; though I'm also deeply ill at ease with the way the narrative used her sexuality (I could hilariously compare her eventual fate to Fruits Basket aggravatingly heteronormative ending), but despite some attempts to nuance her character from the Sick Little Sister to rescue stereotype that she was, Himari never felt like she had enough agency or enough depth. Masako was just a mess of a character, enigmatic and random in term of agency and role in the story. Remains Shouma and Kanba at the core, who aren't bad characters, but seem never to escape the roles they are given, blue-haired boy with his passivity, his higher conception of ethics and his domesticity; red-haired boy with his machismo conception of bravery, action, and lecherousness. I did like Shouma, at times, but I never felt like he was more than this archetype. I don't think I ever actually liked Kanba, he was too thinly focused on Himari at all times. Also the overall pacing of the series was very uneven, I think.
Despite those flaws, I can't say Penguindrum ever lacked in entertainment value. The direction was superb,and visually it was awesome, as well as always exciting and fresh.
However if there was one place where Penguidrum really failed, I think, it is in the personal, in the characterizations. Despite taking care to deepen and reveal much of the secrets of the various characters in flashbacks (none of which are quite what they seem); I truly felt that the only character who was fully realised was Ringo - and that was at the cost of making her deeply antipathetic in a large part of the story (though I guess you could compare her to Nanami in how with an indomitable spirit and strength of will she reverses this by being a key, awesome figure in the finale) - all the other characters felt a bit too archetypal for me to truly love. (Perhaps I may revise this opinion in the future, I know on my first watching, I didn't really love any of the SKU characters all that much, and now look at me and how much I utterly love the majority of them). Yuri at least was wonderfully fabulous in a way that I had to adore, at least; though I'm also deeply ill at ease with the way the narrative used her sexuality (I could hilariously compare her eventual fate to Fruits Basket aggravatingly heteronormative ending), but despite some attempts to nuance her character from the Sick Little Sister to rescue stereotype that she was, Himari never felt like she had enough agency or enough depth. Masako was just a mess of a character, enigmatic and random in term of agency and role in the story. Remains Shouma and Kanba at the core, who aren't bad characters, but seem never to escape the roles they are given, blue-haired boy with his passivity, his higher conception of ethics and his domesticity; red-haired boy with his machismo conception of bravery, action, and lecherousness. I did like Shouma, at times, but I never felt like he was more than this archetype. I don't think I ever actually liked Kanba, he was too thinly focused on Himari at all times. Also the overall pacing of the series was very uneven, I think.
Despite those flaws, I can't say Penguindrum ever lacked in entertainment value. The direction was superb,and visually it was awesome, as well as always exciting and fresh.
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Date: 2 January 2012 08:33 pm (UTC)I may or may not formulate my own thoughts on the show, but I still find it difficult. I really liked it as a whole package and I found it utterly entertaining. Some of its themes are also relevant to my narrative interests. I have a few problems with some of the used tropes, like the predatory lesbian, but these are minor flaws for me.
Unlike you, I liked all the characters, except for Mario who was pretty much a non-entity. However, I do agree that they do not always appear deep and somewhat archetypical, but I did feel that they were given more than one dimension by small scale characterisation. In addition, I think that their more archetypical elements were not so bad, because they allowed a certain distance that I consider almost neccessary to prevent the show from being too heavy.
However, you are certainly not alone with your impression of the characters.
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Date: 2 January 2012 08:49 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's a hard show to formulate feelings about :)
I certainly didn't dislike it; I had fun all and was intrigued all through out. What I'm trying to determine in those musings is whether it was a great show or only a good one, if that makes sense.
They had more than one dimension, but I don't think most of them had three dimensions? :) And yes, you're right about the archetyping allowing distancing.