I only came around watching Mawaru about two weeks ago, (which proved to be a good thing, no waiting for the other episodes) and the series skyrocketed directly into my Top 5 favorite Anime shows.
I read your posts only afterwards, but as I am rewatching things right now (being at episode 7) I noticed they show hands in about every possible frame that there is. Not as stylishly choreographed as in these special scenes you mentioned yet, of course, but still very beautifully drawn and placed into scene. (Like that “OMG, he read my agenda” szene of Ringo, with her fingers moving around violently.) This got every so more evident to me after watching a bunch of mediocre shows after I started paying attention to it….

Thinking back at it I do wonder, why it never really crossed my mind before. It’s been years since I watched Sailor Moon and it occurs the only thing I ever so much remember are the hand-scenes of Uranus and Neptun. (Like that one szene at the pool before the first showdown in season S). I even rewatched that hand-scene of the Utena Movie before Utena’s (in)famous transformation more than once.

But good thing to finally realize myself what I actually like. =3

That train pass is adorable ^-^ (and so appropriate!)

I look forward to your episode reviews once again. Pleaes take care, and I hope your health is well~

Have fun though.

No post for ep 14? :P

On the other hand, you can also say that it was written in fate that Sanetoshi should come along to do whatever he does to seemingly subvert fate.

Ah! I never thought of it like that. That’s an interesting idea: that even Sanetoshi is ruled by fate, but he simply has the advantage of reading fate before it happens. ^0^ There’s so many possibilities, and questions, and answers to those questions. ♥ ♥ ♥ Are there any good books you would recommend with similar intricacies as Penguindrum and Utena? (Unfortunately they would have to be in English or have an English translated versions as I’m not proficient enough in any other language.)

Re: bankers
I actually haven’t been reading the newspaper lately… (which I do consider a bit of a “fail” on my part) But most people I know call themselves “analyst at bank C” or “manager at bank K”, and never “banker”; (that might be a regional thing though.) I had a cute image of old-fashioned accountants, or felt hat and cigars associated with the word banker. ^-^; Unfortunately my studies are one of the few connections I have with the modern world.

Your 师傅 sounds like an amazing and extremely interesting person. I always find it amazing whenever anyone mentions reading ancient Chinese since it’s all I can manage to not choose the wrong word when typing in Chinese.

I think you are right about “breaking the eggshell” and seeing the world after school. It’s true that when I’m at school I feel very “concentrated” and limited. Perhaps my prejudices were just a result of my youthful arrogance and naivety, (or is that cynicism?).

However “god” as mentioned by physicists and others as being some cosmic or grand unknown force really isn’t God. It is something, but it’s not god, especially not the “God” known from religious texts. This is a bit of a pet peeve, because the belief in something-else-god often becomes justification for the existance of God.

Well… I will leave it to you to define God (with or without “G”). ^-^

The fact that Sanetoshi’s able to subvert fate through his apples points more at the belief that fate is predestined and written down, but not set absolutely in stone, rather than the view that fate rules all unquestionably.

On the other hand, you can also say that it was written in fate that Sanetoshi should come along to do whatever he does to seemingly subvert fate. It is a logical loop. Like chicken and eggs. Or – as a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty put it more poetically – “Who was the first to see the moon above the river? When did the moon above the river first shine upon one?” [江上何人初見月？江月何年初照人？]

I have to say you’re the most interesting “banker” I’ve ever known.

That’s just because you have never seen my ex-boss who has gone into happy retirement now. I can talk three nights and days about him. He has been a banker all his life and for some reason he practically embodies 5000 years of Eastern Asian civilization in his person. I think I have read more books working for one year under him than all my university years put together, and more texts written in archaic Chinese than I have ever read in my entire life at that. And I am not talking about Sun Tzu for Dummies, but stuff like 六韜 and 傳習錄 and 世說新語 (I don’t know what they are called in English – or if they are called anything in English at all). That man never wore kid gloves when he scribbled my reading list on a scrap of paper over lunch (and still doesn’t). I call him “Master”.

(I don’t believe I’ve heard that term being used other than in old books.)

I guess you have not been reading newspapers for the last little while? *g*

You give me hope I can still be interesting once I become enbroiled in the rat race working world.

I have always thought the opposite – school is the awful shell and the real world is the place where one becomes truly interesting. At school, your social circle is limited to your classmates. In the real world, there is nothing to stop you from mixing with millionaires on the one end and starving artists on the other, with barristers and judges on the one end and criminals on the other. You know how the saying goes in Utena – “If the egg’s shell does not break, the chick will die without being born….”

I actually expect fandom to be stoning Sanetoshi by now and running commentaries that have nothing to do with the story itself, but are in effect just personal manifestos of how the idea of God is a kind feeble-mindedness and “of course everyone is control of his or her own fate” and that “Sanetoshi should get lost and not mess with people’s lives”…

I am not Christian myself but I am content that there is a force in this universe that surpasses me and is (for I know) totally indifferent to me. Whatever God that inspired the sacred music of Mozart and Bach, the cathedrals in the old world, the ending of “Brideshead Revisited” – is not the two-bit peanut god that fandom is probably in an uproar about by now.

I always find it interesting when anime/manga reference Christianity or deal with “God” (in the Christian sense) because rarely are the works by people who were indoctrined in it from a young age, so it’s usually a mashup of eastern philosophies regarding deities and some good old medieval Catholicism.

In Penguindrum, we see the obvious and oft referenced Apple and the fall from grace (or fall into disgrace). There’s also a bit of Adam and Eve with the “Mary and the Lamb” story. I had a cute little theory about Cain, Abel, and Seth as corresponding to the Takakura siblings, but it required way too much… uh, “creativity” on my part to make it work.

I haven’t followed the fandom, but to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if such juvenile sentiments like you suggested were abound. Penguindrum is cute and crazy enough to draw in a much more casual, younger, and less analytical audience. I suppose it’s off-topic but God is always such an interesting thing to discuss. Not only from an outside perspective (does God exist? What is “God”? etc) but also within the belief from a theological or metaphysical position (what is the true nature of God?). I find your “two-bit peanut god” comment really funny, as that is one of the fundamental questions regarding god. The personal God in Christianity is, for all intents and purposes, your “two-bit peanut god”. However “god” as mentioned by physicists and others as being some cosmic or grand unknown force really isn’t God. It is something, but it’s not god, especially not the “God” known from religious texts. This is a bit of a pet peeve, because the belief in something-else-god often becomes justification for the existance of God.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like Sanetoshi isn’t “God”. The library is more akin to the fate’s tapestry than a cruel god’s humor. The fact that Sanetoshi’s able to subvert fate through his apples points more at the belief that fate is predestined and written down, but not set absolutely in stone, rather than the view that fate rules all unquestionably. I leaning more towards the idea that Sanetoshi can see all of time and space fate, but he himself isn’t in charge of fate. (So more supernatural rather than outright god-like.)

There is a theory on 2ch that “penguindrum” is just a word coined the young Momoka. You know how young children are prone to coin their own words.

This would make perfect sense actually. Personally I myself made up some little mantras or words when I was little, and for me they became like a magic spell. The fixation on Momoko reminds me a bit of the saying/idea (?) that “the world ends when someone dies”. As one can only prove one’s own existance in the world (I can’t prove anything in my room actually exists other than the fact that I exist and I am observing them), when I die, the world as I know it ends. And who’s to say that the world that existed wasn’t only my observation of the world, that would naturally end once I am no longer there to observe it.

I have to say you’re the most interesting “banker” I’ve ever known. (I don’t believe I’ve heard that term being used other than in old books.) You give me hope I can still be interesting once I become enbroiled in the rat race working world.