天下制覇

More like a hyperbolic truck given its unstoppable nature.

Just FYI, Penguindrum is off next week on all stations. Episode 6 will air on MBS on the 18th. 

Impressions:

Well, let’s start with the bad. The art/animation was suuuuper janky this week. Maybe that’s why they need a break already. Also, by now, you are probably aware that I consider using flashbacks as a vehicle to ‘reveal’ heretofore completely unknown parts of a character’s past and retroactively apply them to their character is a shoddy writing device that does nothing more than cut away from the present where the story is actually taking place. Let’s just leave it at that for today because I want to rant about the chase scene at the end too. God, that was excrutiating, particularly because of how long it was dragged out. The only way that could have irritated me more is if a cat had run off with the hat. The magical truck that never stops, never turns, never encounters traffic, never notices people screaming at it or hanging off of it it travels at least a few miles at a perfectly constant speed through narrow residental/commercial areas just made my brain ache. Oh wait, I guess it was raining and the truck had "Good-bye" written on it. Now it’s deep.

Thankfully, a few parts of the episode actually got back to some of the things that I found interesting in the first episode, the darker undercurrent to the series. Not that those parts actually added to the plot in any understandable way yet, but they were at least something of import going on in the background instead of a song and dance routine clearly made to fill time while adding nothing. The ginormous slingshot from the promo art made its appearance finally, although shooting pellets at someone in a hospital bed from point blank range out of something the size of a labradoodle with a laser sight seems a little overkill. I approve of the return to the darker side of Ringo’s stalking instead of playing it off like it’s one big silly joke too, as well as her fighting her way out of the Penguin Queen’s trapdoor was also amusing, I just wish it hadn’t let to that godawful unneeded, time filling nonsense.

So overall, better than the last few and at least a little bit of what attracted me to the show in the first place. Hopefully they can build off that instead of returning to shenanigans as the main focus.