Mawaru Penguindrum...

[monalisaofpasta]

Was a thing I marathoned today, and a few hours later I think I finally have some cobbled together thoughts on it.


So overall I liked it, I don't know that I feel particularly strongly about it in any one way for a few reasons that I may try and get into here.

While it has been years (over a decade in fact) since I watched Utena (or rather tried to watch Utena), the comparison stylistically is pretty easy to make. Also every time Masako was on the screen I had to remind myself that no, she is not Juri just based on how she looked. I feel though had I rewatched Utena first I probably wouldn't have liked this as much, as my intuitive sense is to say that this probably is not as strong a series as a whole as Utena was.

While the show did put some pretense into developing Himari into a full character in her own right, I wish the writing had allowed for her to be a bit more flawed, and a little less pure and selfless. I liked her, but I felt the narrative fell short of actually doing anything remotely interesting with her character, and that they started to deconstruct what her character was doing but in the end abandoned it to keep her as the Pure Woman who everyone must try to save and even though she tries, can only seem to be active through sacrificing herself. (Which by the way this notion of sacrifice was probably also my biggest beef with Puella Magica Madoka, although at least here, Himari gets to live and still be with people). We needed more elaboration on her past and what she was doing.

I am not okay with Yuri. Or to put it more succinctly, I am tired of the lone queer character being a freaking predator/rapist. (I wasn't okay with Ringo's plan with regards to Tabuki either but at least with Ringo it wasn't really falling into an offensive trope that I am quite frankly tired of seeing). I just don't want to touch the sexual assault in this show because it bothered me on such a level that I can't even deal.

I don't care about Kanba. I just don't.

I felt like Shouma/Ringo could have been a ship that I really loved and went feelingsa;sdjkfg;asfj about, even with the ending and all. But I felt I needed more time with them, particularly after Ringo abandoned following the diary. I wanted to see more of their interaction after that time, but after Ringo forgoes that it is like it kind of drops off a bit, and we just get a few scenes here and there, and what happened in the ending, I felt like it should have been preceded by just a bit more then what was there.

I don't know how I feel about the politics of the series, but I don't have the energy or the words right now to work through it.

The show is very aesthetically pleasing though, I think stylistically it grabs me in a way that an anime series hasn't in a long time. Which is a good thing.

So I guess my overall feelings are: decent series, needed to be just a bit longer but overall it was okay, like I didn't actually walk away from it angry (well except with regards to Yuri) or disappointed. But I am not exactly a giant ball of feelings either.

This entry was originally posted at http://kristenell.dreamwidth.org/271000.html. There are currently
comments posted.