CarlTheLlama's Blog

Anime Relations: Ping Pong the Animation

I watched Penguindrum last week, and my enthusiasm for the show caused me to end up writing 4 lengthy posts on it that went over moderately well (1, 2, 3, 4). It was fun, so I’m doing the same thing with Ping Pong the Animation, only probably just 1 post. These posts are not a review of the show designed to recommend it to someone who hasn’t seen it. They are a meant to help people who’ve seen the show notice themes, symbolism, real world application, and things of that nature in order to appreciate it further, and to provide meaty topics for discussion. That means this will be ridden with spoilers, consider yourself warned.

It’s important for you to know that I was not a raving fan of Ping Pong: I could see that it had objective value both in terms of casual entertainment and artistic value, but it didn’t resonate with me personally in a fantastic way. Depending on your outlook that may be a good or bad thing. Either way, I think it helps to know.

I also haven’t read the manga, and will treat the show as completion of all canon material to be able to draw conclusions in the main text. However, feel free to cite the manga in discussion.

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The main theme that spoke to me was the seinen-flavored approach to “chasing the dream,” in this case professional Ping Pong. While it may at first seem immature, or a distant topic that applies to only a few, I’m convinced that it’s a major factor in the lives of most first world citizens.

Football is the name given to most people’s favorite sport (the actual sport differs whether you’re in the US or not, but conveniently the name stays the same). If my experiences are anything to go by, there are few things middle-aged and old men discuss with as much enthusiasm and (perhaps pretentious) expertise as their football. They know the history and theory of the game, they keep up with current events, and feel genuinely qualified to criticize professional players, coaches, referees, owners, and the like. Younger people feel the same way, but I guess the fact that a man will hold on to those sentiments into his 50s and 60s, when he hasn’t even played the game for 2/3rd of his life, speaks louder to me than chest paint and absurdly priced merchandise. I don’t mean the Koizumi types who didn’t have their career lift off how they like, and have to settle for something related but less glorious; I mean the driving force of the population that needs it to be on TV during the most esteemed holidays, both days of the weekend, and every other prime “time off” slot.

What could inspire such universal obsession except (conscious or not) a sense of self-insertion? As I mentioned in the opening disclaimers, I could objectively tell that Ping Pong was a great show, but I lacked the ability to quite insert myself into it, and when you read that you probably went “Oh… too bad. He must’ve missed it.” I’m willing to bet some people stopped reading at that point. That’s because a major reason why we like stories, whether anime or otherwise, is because we feel powerfully validated when we connect in a unique way with them. If someone sees the same material and shares our enthusiasm for it, we feel a bond with them as well because we can tell thoughts and feelings we can't express are shared by them too. But, if they didn't have the same enthusiasm, we feel spurned because those sentiments weren't shared- it's like a boy telling a girl he loves her, and she says they're just friends, only to a smaller degree.

"I want to marry Ping Pong the Animation! You should too, it'll be fun! We can do rewatches together and cosplays and..."

"Sorry, we're strictly platonic."

"..."

But I think the harder it is to make a connection, the more you value it. The more scarce it is, the more precious it is. It could be that my honest self-awareness has gone too far, but I think that’s much of why Penguindrum is so special to me- it feels more exclusive, I almost feel like I was chosen amidst everyone else to have a special relationship with it. Those “almost”s and “yes but no”s, and all those things we don’t know how to describe are the subtle details that decorate the main thoughts that, if we never saw a description of, or never realized someone else had the same thoughts, we’d never be able to recognize the value they hold- like a perfect condition collector’s edition set of your favorite anime, set out for $5 at a garage sale by a mom who thought it was some obscure cartoon. When we relate to something so deeply that we can insert ourselves into it, we understand better what makes that obscurity precious. The more obscure, the more that potentially precious.

That’s what those geezers feel when they watch football- they feel the pressure of the situation like they were responsible for it, the embarrassment of “obvious” failures is immediately translated into internal rage as if they had blundered (which because they actually didn’t they don’t have any social pressure to stop them from expressing that rage), and the fanatical exhilaration of the big play is as real as if they had done it themselves because inside they’re able to say “that could’ve been me. I could’ve been a part of that as much as it’s still a part of me” (and because of they project themselves like that, they're able to think "this is what's going through the player's head right now" and presume to have that unique connection).

But then, the obvious question is: why didn’t you? That question, asked to everyone and not just geezers, is what Ping Pong the Animation is all about.

The first reason people don’t get “dream professions” is talent: the first thing you’ll see missing in someone else, but the last thing you’ll see missing in yourself. Sakuma of course lacks this, but what’s special about his lack of talent is that he has everything else. That’s a prevailing theme: five out of six might not be bad, but it’s not nearly enough- which is why so many armchair experts exist.

The second reason is luck. There is only so much you can do to prevent injury. We don’t get much backstory on Obaba, but this seems to be the ingredient missing in her career. In a “dream profession” less athletic there are other forms of luck- which is why most great artists aren’t great until after they’re dead: there’s no telling when (or if) your work will catch on to the fancy of the public consciousness, which varies in response to unpredictable events. Maybe Germans win the war and we learn their values, or maybe the Russians do and we learn theirs. Actually get our land back and appoint our own government? Hahahahaha, thanks for the laugh but I’ve got to get back to farming my potatoes.

Being right isn’t the same as being believable. Being believable isn’t usually very unique or interesting.

The third reason (the last obvious one) is work ethic, which is what Peco lacks. To be honest, the fact that he came out on top in the end really bothers me, because playing the kind of catch up that he did is like cramming for a test, and sending a message of “talent can get away with it” rubs me the wrong way. Consistency is the real key behind real hard work- it doesn’t matter what dramatic ordeal you did, or what kind of training montage you could put together. Real, consistent, effective hard work is the kind that we see from Kazama- it’s just always there. Because it’s gradual, not a sudden shock to his body, he doesn’t get injured and set back from the intensity, like Peco should’ve.

Hobby horse aside, Ping Pong still supports the fact that hard work is an essential ingredient (Peco sucks until he starts taking it seriously), it just treats it like water in a faucet that matters how high you turn it up, but not how long it’s been on, when it’s really more like water in a plugged sink, and builds over time in response to both factors.

The fourth ingredient is love of the game- intrinsic motivation. This is necessary to adapt faster than your opponent, and to innovate. It’s also helps to cause you to go the extra mile: train for hours after practice, read more theory, watch more film, spend more of your budget on performance enhancing shoes, food, etc. While all of these traits are most clearly exhibited by Kazama, I question his love of the game. Certainly in his last game it seems as if a flame has been rekindled, but if so you still have to ask where it was before or after. It seems more likely that it was his competitive instinct that was triggered, not a passion for Ping Pong of itself. Indeed the pressures placed on him from his family are a blessing and a curse, as they push him down the Ping Pong path, but squeeze the pleasure out of that life, leading to a dependence on extrinsic motivation that extinguishes any natural affinity. The way he cares about success (whether it’s rock skipping, girlfriend getting, or whatever) more than Ping Pong talk in the final scene supports this as well.

The fifth is a competitive instinct- a need to win and keep on winning. Smile of course struggles with this early, and it’s also a pervasive trend that keeps him from forging a career. He finds happiness with Ping Pong, but the pursuit of it’s excellence is never something that he is concerned about. He just wants to have a good time, and the most important part of that is playing with Peco. Not at all because Peco is skilled, but because Peco is his hero. Getting good is just a means to his end, whereas someone like Peco needs to win every match (just look what happens when he doesn’t). Smile on the other hand feels bad for people, and loses games because he can’t stand the cost to them- he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, particularly people who’ve staked their lives on it. Even once he stops throwing games intentionally, he doesn’t have anything pushing him to continue.

The sixth is outside support/direction. Most clearly seen lacking in Egami (the guy who wanders around). Let it not be forgotten that Smile was noticed by a skilled coach/ex-player (Koizumi) who pushed him down that Ping Pong path along with Kong and Kazama, and in a broader sense first off by Peco. Peco had Obaba and her son, Wong had his coach/translator. Even Sakuma hacked out some unwilling support from coaches and team in his own distinctly vigorous yet empty fashion. But take away Obaba and Peco is Egami. Take away Koizumi and Smile doesn’t ever play seriously. It’s when Sakuma leaves his team and disobeys his coaches that he finds himself as far away from that bulwark as an invading army in the Russian winter, leading to his dramatic breakdown and exile. Take away Kazama’s encouragement and he would’ve never spent so much time on Ping Pong in the first place. With no lack of talent, hard work, predatory instinct, love of the game, and no injury or other non-human attributed misfortune, it is Kong’s ostracization that causes “a small mistake” to snowball into a dead end career.

I belabor this point both because Kong was my favorite character, and because this is just as necessary as everything else, yet much harder to recognize as such. That’s because those who have that support take it for granted, and those who don’t have it aren’t generally considered credible because they’re not taking responsibility, and it’s just chalked up to “talent,” which is itself, ironically, an even bigger shifting of responsibility to something largely unquantifiable. If you’re honest, that’s probably why you determined Kong didn’t succeed, but don’t forget he was a success in a far more competitive environment that just wasn’t a significant focus of the story.

To recap: Smile lacks competitive instinct, Peco lacks work ethic (although the show doesn’t punish this as much as it should), Kong lacks support, Sakuma lacks talent, Kazana lacks intrinsic motivation. Since Obaba had a statue made of her, it’s safe to say she was good enough that luck is where she fell short, although she runs her own ping pong dojo so it's unclear how far she fell (why isn't she an important coach? But she made enough to run her own business?). Personally, I think it would have been better to have Peco’s knee get destroyed after the tournament and had an overall sad ending. This would’ve drilled home this tragic reality (and I think would’ve suited the art style really well), but happy endings probably sell better. Between avoiding a “you didn’t work hard enough” message and “you weren’t lucky enough” message Ping Pong got a happy ending that it’s mathematically probable you were happy with, I just would’ve liked to see something different from a seinen story.

Kong succeeding I’m okay with not just because he was my favorite, but because while he lacked a support structure, you saw him investing in his team even before his defeat- having that problem solved 5 years down the road isn’t unrealistic at all, and (if Peco did get rekt by life like I wanted) would’ve avoided a “life just sucks” message.

Why should you care about my opinion on how things should’ve been? Because when you strive so much to be realistic in your depiction of an life struggle (and a central theme of the show) and then sellout for mainstream appeal, you (1) cheapen the preciousness of the connection, as outlined in the 4th paragraph. Not because numerically you will appeal to more people, but rather because you will appeal less fully and specifically, in less detail, and while that vagueness is more easily digested by the masses, it leaves the faithful wanting. It’s a deliberate trade of casual entertainment value (which makes more money) in exchange for artistic accuracy and sophistication. (2) Anyone who sees an otherwise realistic portrayal, and isn’t already familiar with the not-so-inspiring details of reality isn’t going to be able to discern the error, and will likely mistake illusion for reality. To a certain extent that’s expected with shows that don’t delve as deeply into mature subjects like Smile’s withdrawn psyche, Koizomi’s interest in Smile for vicarious purposes, Egami’s utter lack of purpose, and Kong’s abandonment. Not that those things aren’t present in a shonen manga, but there’s less melodrama and more natural struggle and pause for absorption of that in a seinen work like this. To treat the consequences of deliberately pushing past your natural limits and injuring yourself so differently is both disingenuous and potentially harmful.

It also makes it harder to provide satisfactory examples for my points. Arrg. Now that’s the real travesty of justice.

Of course, by realistic objective mathematics, most of us wouldn’t even be main characters in the show. That is, most people don’t even have five out of the six ingredients, they’re the people on the teams that show up to practice and their standout moment is buying balls like they were supposed to 3 weeks ago, or being mistaken for a main character because they both have glasses; the people complaining about the captain always being late because he hides in a stall, the people in the stands watching. Five ingredients are tough to get and most people can’t even get there, but even that isn’t nearly enough. But then, that distance inherently creates a realization that they aren’t on the same level, and an acceptance of that fact. The state that Sakuma ultimately finds peace in is the one where most people already rest.

So what changes? How does that acceptance change into the insane self-insertion of the frothy football fans we know and despise? Time blurs our memories, and as we look at our lives with the knowledge and experience that we’ve accrued since, we credit our past selves with too much of our current selves ability, while combining that with the superior vigor of our youth (and maybe memory is a bit generous in that estimation as well). It’s a fantasy that can easily be mistaken for reality, and it’s pleasurable to do so. Sound familiar? It’s the same mistake that the show itself made. So, in a way, it’s almost the perfect flaw to have, because it mirrors the whole reality of the salesman that can’t settle whether he could’ve kept pitching baseballs instead of used cars, the insurance adjuster who doesn’t have the energy when she comes home to write her best-selling novel, the homeless man who would travel the world if he’d kept with his guitar practice.

Which brings us full circle all the way back to the beginning. Football fans are no different in their fantasies than the rest of us: the way I criticized the show you’d think I could make something better (kek), and you’ve done the same thing for shows, regardless of whether you typed it out or not, or how detailed you let those thoughts become. If you think of sports as performing arts, you can bunch any sort of “dream profession” as an art and there really doesn’t seem to be much difference at all.

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Thanks for reading, and please leave any impressions: good, bad, or ugly, that you had. I never really know where things are going to go after I start, and I was kind of hoping I would get into the Smile’s closet/butterfly symbolism, but this is already far too long. I’m not sure if I have enough to write a substantial piece on it though, so if you have any related ideas let me know. I always end up enjoying the writing more than I think I will... I guess I just need to get all those more stressful writing experiences flushed out of my system?

Anime Relations: Mawaru Penguindrum

I was going to be done with writing about Penguindrum with the last piece, but I’m a sucker for requests, and when someone left a comment asking about my thoughts on love in the show, it started getting long, so I just made a part 4. As with parts 1, 2, and 3, there are spoilers- this piece in particular will ruin things for you if you haven’t finished the show. A disclaimer unique to this piece is that while love as a theme may be huge within Penguindrum, it didn’t reach out and grab me like other themes did. So, this may be too dominated by my own perspective, we’ll see.

My senior year of High School I had this leadership conference thing that a bunch of people from my school (and the other ones in the region) were invited to, where they assessed leadership qualities from us candidates who were supposed to be something like "the most likely to be good, smart people when you grow up" and the winners got scholarships. One of the activities had you pick a bunch of "values" for your top 10 from a big pool, and then rank them. So maybe you would pick honesty as the #1 value, altruism as the #2, and empathy wouldn't even make it onto the list.

There were also included some words that I didn't really see as fitting. I didn't understand why they were there. But then, I didn't really care either, I made my list and was focused on looking my best 'cause I wanted that money.

Some people (maybe everyone, I don't remember, it was a long time ago) stood up and read their lists to everyone (about 100 contestants and maybe 20 staff), and some people had put "family" as one of their most important values. I was like, "wut?" (on the inside- gotta stay cool)

This old guy who worked in a bank or something and was on the committee that ran this made some comments after all the lists were read. He said something to the effect that "there are some values that we value because of what we get from them, like family. That's something that people value because of how nice it makes their lives, not because it's in any way something good that they do for others. Especially at your age, where you have your life paid for by your family, and every Christmas and birthday and probably lots of points in between you get special benefits on top of your free ride. And then there's value like altruism and honesty. Those are things you put out, never assuming you'll get something back from others. If you think now that you'll get as much honesty as you'll give, and that's why you choose it as a value, then it won't be too much longer before you don't value it. For something like honesty or altruism to be worth it, there has to be something inside you that feeds off that virtue being exuded from yourself, and seeing other benefit." They were perhaps the only honestly altruistic words I heard that day.

Penguindrum shares this sort of “brutally kind” perspective. It’s brutal in that will expose everyone’s love as being flawed in some way. From the most obvious example of Ringo’s love for Tabuki, which stems from a desire for a stable home life. But all of the characters are the same way- Himari’s love for her brothers is essentially the same- note how when she sees Ringo and Shoma doing dishes together after a meal -indicating to her and us that romance is budding- she says, “I feel like I’ve lost my place,” not “I’m so happy for them,” even though she doesn’t have reason to assume she has much time left on this earth.

This insecurity stems from that lack of trust in people caused by lack of support from immediate family that is the defining penguindrum symptom (“penguindrum” referring to my made up term from part 1, generally I’ll leave the show’s name capitalized and my inference of it’s meaning uncapped), and occurs so early in a child’s development that it’s often mistaken for their nature, not their nurture. But it is just that, an insecurity. Himari is not evil for feeling jealous (as the dictionary defines it- afraid of losing something), that impulse should in no way be condemned, it’s a survival instinct that she has learned from her environment. If the boy who saved you from oblivion and gave you a reason to live was romancing some other woman, you’d mourn your impending loss too- even if you did like to pretend that he’s your brother. After all, what is love?

You can debate me (I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech), but I’m going to define love, as I historically have, as “the degree to which you will sacrifice something.” For example, I say I love chocolate, but in reality about all I’ll sacrifice for it is the strawberry flavoring I could have instead, and even then sometimes I won’t. I use that same term to say “I love anime/manga” for which I will sacrifice significantly more of my time and meager income. Then, we use that same term to describe the relationships most important to us, which if necessary, we would sacrifice chocolate, anime, time, money, and who knows what else for. The degree of love is measured by what you’ll give up in exchange for it: “no greater love hath any man than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.” Assuming, of course that he values his life, and doesn’t see it as a punishment.

But then you have to ask “why would he make that sacrifice?” There must be something gotten in exchange. There is therefore no perfect love (in humans, at any rate). Love is, like the “value” of family, an inherently selfish instinct at the root of its core, by force of necessity. And that’s why “brutally kind,” if you think about it, is dominated by the concept of kindness, which the brutality plays second fiddle to as the adjective. Love, altruism, honesty, all the greatest traits we praise in human character are necessarily selfish, but that doesn’t mean they are bad. After all, why should it bother you if I benefit from doing well by you? It takes me much more time to put a piece together than it takes you to read it, time that I sacrifice from doing other things; I definitively love it. I do it because I get various pleasures in return. Does it hinder your enjoyment of my writing to know that I enjoy doing it? Am I somehow cheating you by enjoying my work? Of course those ideas are ridiculous, but the exact same is true of ridiculing self-interested love, albeit some emotional itch in your mind may not feel that way.

Let’s review the scene from part 2. Just like children can’t force their parents to care enough to support ambitions that the parents don’t approve of, Ringo can’t comfort Shoma in his grieving- but she still has a powerful compulsion to do so. His penguindrum symptoms are creating a penguindrum for her. Troubles are having troubles, the opposite of the way that Dr. Seuss meant that phrase- they are reproducing. It’s not just the vague notion of society that’s to blame, or the readily available flaws of parents who you get to see every day at their worst; no one is innocent.

But wait, what experiences could Shoma have that would leave him so jaded? He seems to have a working support system through his siblings, and while he definitely felt betrayed by his parents, and is happy to leave them in the street where they threw themselves under the bus, is there any evidence to suggest that he let that betrayal dictate his life to that extent?

“You’ll keep observing until our family’s ruined through and through. That’s how everyone’s been. Our only choice is for us siblings to live alone.”

Again, it’s not hate or any sort of abuse that puts a child in a penguindrum, it’s a starvation of necessary nurturing- love. More than that, casual concern isn’t enough. Cards that were signed by people who didn’t even read them, gifts bought by people who don’t know how much money they have, and routine questions about well-being are gestures that, to an intellectual, are nothing more than irritating. It’s almost like they say “we have to do something because of our relationship, so we just did the easiest thing we could think of.” Sacrifice after all, means nothing if the thing being sacrificed had no value in the first place.

There then arises the question of whose perception of value matters? If I’m Bill Gates and I give you a million dollars, I dare say you would feel special, probably in some way loved, even though it cost me nothing. Or, is it that what you feel is not love, but lust. It’s not me that you appreciate, because realistically I have given you nothing. It’s the gift that you cherish, because it is something that matters to you. I think that’s why ultimately Shoma walks away. He let himself stay and gave Ringo the chance to talk him out- that’s more than I would have done, and many people in that type of situation are probably the same way- even though we want help we can’t bear to even give someone the chance to provide it. There’s less than zero trust in humanity- trust meaning a sacrifice of individual comprehension of a matter, which ties back into Broiler/penguindrum themes. Shoma to some degree recognizes that Ringo’s tears aren’t a sacrifice for him, they’re to indulge her own sensibilities. Ironically, he takes the harmfully selfish route anyways, spawning more penguindrum symptoms.

Finally, I can’t conclude without incorporating my favorite standalone quote from the show, which this piece gave me an opportunity to incorporate. Thanks to GeneralBradiken, whoever gilded the last post, and all you silent upvoters for motivating me to get to this point.

Masako, after pursuing Kanba to “see her love returned” as she tells Himari, has after a long and frustrating journey had just that happen- Kanba threw himself in front of a hail of bullets, saving her life at the cost of his own. Or at least, almost the cost of his own. Unconscious, he is carried away while Masako decides to stay and return his favor- both of them laying down their life for the other. As she prepares for the end, her mind utters a dual purpose pep talk + summary of the moral of her story.

“This world seeks to give the fruits of reward only to the greedy. That’s why I thought my father, who threw everything away, was beautiful.

But, beauty visible to the eye always has a shadow. Therein lies a beautiful coffin. I was a child, and hadn’t yet noticed that.”

Greed is the opposite of love, since it is the opposite of sacrifice. Pure love was demonstrated by her father. Both of these ideas are important, but I’ll let your imaginations do the expanding on them. The beauty of that real love contains some mystery, that while we don’t understand everything, because of the beauty of love we will trust in that uncertainty. That is why “admiration is the furthest state from understanding,”


Love after all, often disregards the will of the individual. What Masako wanted most was not the end of Child Broiling, but her own family’s happiness. She was too naive to recognize that what her father was doing was in no way for her, but she assumed it was because she wanted it to be so. Her love was that of a child, which can only see things that pertain to itself, not seeing the perspective of the very person being loved. And while this love is immature, if you look for it, you will find it far more often than a mature love that has noticed the beautiful coffin in the shadow.

That’s because love has the tendency to induce reciprocation, and while this childish love defines the Takakura siblings’ relationship, it isn’t until life forces them to admit that “lies piled atop lies will never become truth,” that any person in the relationship has their eyes drawn from the immersive beauty to the coffin in it’s shadow. If you never have that experience, you never have a need to acquire that wisdom, and even if you do have the experience, there’s no guarantee you’ll comprehend things accurately.

To summarize and try to put everything together into one thought: love is sacrifice, but love is selfishly motivated, but that's okay, but it's mostly okay only because humans are incapable of perfect love, and there are stricter rules on how selfish your love can be for people who have been burnt before to accept it, and that's healthy because that's sort of a more mature, truer nature of love anyway. Although, if you didn't experience a penguindrum during your development, you may never need to worry about much more than superficial love to begin with.

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I'm glad I wrote this, I think it served to tie the other 3 pieces together and show how some of the stuff connected. Cool ideas on their own are great, but they're really fantastic when you see how they fit together. Thanks again for being willing to read a wall of text, and please share some thoughts of your own. I think I may watch Ping Pong the animation next, would you want something written on that?

Anime Relations: Mawaru Penguindrum, Psycho-Pass

My third, and probably final, breakdown of Penguindrum’s subtler elements is on the Child Broiler. Not because there aren’t more things to say, but because there're other things to do.

Part 1 and Part 2 for reference. Don’t read this until you’ve finished the show unless you’re fine with major spoilers.

Watching the show I thought I had a good idea of what the Child Broiler was, although putting it into words would be difficult. It’d also been a couple days since I finished, and I wanted to brush up quick on it before I wrote something- just to make sure I’d be able to dot all my “i”s and cross all my “t”s. But I made a startling discovery- perhaps there’s just not been much fan writing on Penguindrum in general, but I couldn’t find anything worthwhile on the Child Broiler- an essential facet of the show (the wiki entry is the saddest, most underdeveloped piece I have ever seen). Some people had taken a stab at it with the acknowledgement that they weren’t very sure of anything, and kudos to them for trying, but there wasn’t anything helpful. All this despite the fact that everyone recognizes how important a metaphor it is.

Now, 5 years after the show has aired, let’s see if we can get a clear picture of this central, yet convoluted idea. And when I say “let’s” I do mean “us,” as in I want your thoughts too. I spent time preparing for this piece, instead of just writing whatever was on my mind for the others, and I’ll make every effort to create a detailed image. But there are limits to what one mind alone can create, which are far surpassed by what many can do together, and Penguindrum deserves better than what it’s gotten so far so let’s change that.

The Child Broiler

Let’s first dispel any fictions that literal grinding of children is what the broiler is doing, it’s not.

”Okay, you will all now be ground into dust. It’s not scary! You just won’t know who’s who anymore. You will all become invisible.”

This is the first real description of what the broiler does that the story gives us, via a faceless adult going around the building announcing this type of thing. There’s no reason to doubt the words of this man, and if we take them at face value it’s clear to see that what’s lost is individuality. This is further supported by Momoko’s desperate plea to convince Tabuki, “You have to stay YOU, Tabuki-kun.” What’s at stake is not his physical existence, but rather his will to think for himself. Have you ever thought “this would be so simple if people could just think right like I’m doing” ? Yes, you have, so don’t even try to lie. With political season on us in the US, it’s easy to see every day how people think they have the answer, and someone with a different view just messes everything up. That is what’s being ground up- that independence to say “no, this is right” and disagree with people. Think 1984, (if you’ve read it) or Psycho-Pass, or some other dystopia that’s framed as a utopia. Think North Korea: the greatest country on earth.

The right to dissent, the right to be rude, the right to be wrong- all the things contained in what we like to call “free speech” are the visible iteration of what’s at stake, but remember Penguindrum’s focus is on the unseen, the internal, the inner machinations of the soul. It’s not about what you legally can get away with, it’s about “thought-crime” the very ability to generate a contrary opinion. And why are those contrary opinions so important? Wouldn’t the world be better if everyone did just get along?

No.

Did you know bananas are gradually going extinct? They lack genetic diversity, and are threatened by a disease that they don’t have a response to. Sort of like how a couple centuries ago their human civilizations got wiped out by smallpox when the first Europeans showed up with it. As General Iroh said “It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it become rigid and stale.” Remember at the beginning when I said one mind can’t plunge the depths of how good Penguindrum is and bring the presentation of it back to everyone by itself? Same thing. Opposing political views often have similar merits depending on personal preference of the consequences. Furthermore, eras change, and depending on what challenges are being faced, multiple ideologies are going to go in and out of favor to best deal with those challenges. There is no right answer, you have to solve each problem independently, using critical thinking skills that stem from individuality. And the more people you have generating ideas that are different from each other, the better those solutions will be- even if those ideas clash, since often the best way to refine an already good idea is to have someone criticize it. That’s why feedback is always important, and why companies, and writers, and anyone else who has to compete to stay afloat needs to gather it.

The Child Broiler is a symbol of the social machine the crushes individuality (or, as it would be labeled: “rebelliousness,” “divisiveness,” “hate speech,” “anti-patriotism,” etc.) and supports conformity (or, as it would be labeled “unity,” “tolerance,” “patriotism,” “loyalty,” etc.). This type of thinking occurs at every level of our social structure. Parents want obedient children, coaches want “team players,” friends want someone that agrees with them, and reddit votes up or down based on how closely their opinion aligns with OP. The child Broiler doesn’t represent a specific sect of society, it represents a something that is in everyone, everywhere you look, and to a lesser degree is healthy. Let’s not forget the Takakura parents’ goal was the Broiler’s destruction, and Kanba’s inherited mission was to finish their work. Yet the bombings are sporadic- they’re not centered on any institution, or seem to have any real direction that we can reasonably infer. That’s because the Broiler isn’t an actual physical location that they can just erase.

A less convincing argument, but still a stimulating thought, is observing the parents protecting their children. There’s the time when a mirror is going to fall on Himari, and her mother intercepts it, keeping the glass shards that look just like the ones at the broiler from entering her. The father intercepts a window in the same way to protect Kanba when the storm (of life) hurls it their way. In one of the final scenes, the survival tactic’s realm has lost all life: there’s no catchy song, the lights are out- the silence screams that imagination and creativity are dead. Then, with Hentairi’s first strut, the step shatters into the familiar animation of shards that is being repeated from the broiler. And what happens when they’re cut, which they have to be in order to move, by these shards? Out comes not blood, but some of their penguin-ness (the main metaphor, explained in part 1), their creative, individual natures. In other words, with a little bit of speculation we can infer that while the Child Broiler represents an instant eradication of individuality, the shards that it creates lead to a more gradual lessening of that penguin-ness. Therefore the shards act as an extension of the Broiler, and are a problem. The more people that lose their individuality, the harder it is to hold on to yours. The longer you stay around the reddit hivemind, the more it influences your thoughts, and the same goes for any other type of conformity in any other social structure.

As I’ve said, the Broiler represents nothing concrete or specific, but if it did, it would be College. Those who have been there know that a great deal more emphasis is placed on telling the professor what they want to hear than anything else, and learning how to repeat that process with your bosses for the rest of your life. A good deal of why you go is to make “contacts” and once you're into any sort of professional field you spend the next 20 years brown nosing because “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I’m not an expert on Japanese/Asian culture, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they stamp out these tendencies quite a bit earlier than Western culture does, at the age children who go to the boiler are shown at.

Of course, you’re free to pursue non-collegiate routes with your life, but it’s more or less the norm to in the US. Similarly, no one drags kids to the child Broiler, they seem to come and go at their own will, and as Tabuki tells Yuri “You and I were already lost children. But most children in the world are the same as us.” They see the Broiler as a way to ease their pain, “goodbye to the me who amounted to nothing.” “Failure to meet expectations depression” is a penguindrum symptom both common and severe. Since the talent has gone as far as it can, the only alternative is to give up on any dreams and surrender to the tide of humanity to carry wherever it will. In order to stay afloat, the ship sacrifices the ability to determine it’s own course. In order to stay alive, the penguin lives in the barren wasteland of snow and ice, staying alive by the heat of its companions, reproducing, and living an unremarkable life, distinction only possible in the ocean.

Did you know that babies are the smartest people on the planet? If you went to Japan with a 6-month old, and lived in some sort of housing arrangement where you both would be exposed to the language on a daily basis the infant would pick it up better and faster than you, and would be perfectly capable of simultaneously learning English if you or the others it was exposed to used that sometimes too. Of course, you have a head start on the infant in a variety of other mental skills, as well as being physically superior, but as far as natural talent goes, you get rekt. An infant’s ability to figure things out on it’s own is something that is gradually broiled out of it over the course of it’s life.

When each of us is born we possess a natural love of learning, that affinity leads to skill- someone who enjoys something will pursue it more passionately than someone who doesn’t. However, that fire usually gets put out for one reason or another, leading to mass distaste for school before kids even get into their teens. That’s a matter of extreme interest if you’re an educator, and modern teaching theory focuses heavily on preserving intrinsic motivation- on trying to get kids to not hate school.

While theory is great, in practice the results often are directly opposite. I’ll avoid saying too much on why “the system” grounds the life out of learning, because it’s too long of a detour to justify, but suffice it to say college is not the first defeat of individuality, but the last. It’s like in part 2 when I talked about Sho’s reaction to Himari’s death being so melancholy because it was the defeat of a new hope. In college you have a major you choose according to your interests, and an overall much greater level of independence. Slowly as you begin to realize these are largely illusions, and just how much your life is still dictated by the whims of others you, your individuality (which is directly linked to creativity) doesn’t necessarily die, but it does probably develop some permanent, crippling handicaps.

Finally, let’s not forget the eery words of Yuri, in reference to the path that leads one voluntarily to the Broiler, “you and I were already lost children. But most children in the world are the same as us.”

Everyone has different strengths and different talents. Those are going to lead to different preferences, and vice versa- the better you are at something the more likely you are to enjoy it, and the more more you enjoy it the further you will go with it. One penguindrum symptom is a lack of genuine social connections, as a result of distrust formed from lack of support for endeavors and interests that don’t conform to expectations. The most blatant example of this is that both the Takakuras and Tabuki+Yuri are fake families. What the Broiler offers them is a chance to fit in. Whether or not it delivers…

The fact that the faceless masses also feel that way, leading them to the Broiler, I don’t think is supposed to portray the severity of the problem as bigger, or the scope of the problem wider. I take it to be the sort of consolation you use when you are truly lost in the black hole of depression. “It’s okay, you may be a failure, but so is everyone else. It’s supposed to be this way. Life is a punishment after all.” In the end, the Broiler is not a terrible miserable punishment, it’s a permanent submission to mediocrity. “It’s not scary! You just won’t know who’s who anymore.”


Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this let me know if you have any other shows you’d be interested in me writing about. I can’t say if I’ll do more of this in the future, but I certainly fancy the idea at the moment. Don’t forget to share some thoughts of your own!

Anime Relations: Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, NHK ni Youkoso!, Mawaru Penguindrum, Zankyou no Terror

Night before last in the wee small hours of the morning I made a post aimed at people who watched or are watching penguindrum and didn’t get, or any fans who did get it and want something to argue over (I know I like stuff like that). For the time it was posted it got more upvotes than I thought it would, so I’ll continue with a part 2.

As alluded to in part 1, this isn’t an attempt to flush out every nuance of the show. Rather, I want to showcase what I found to be the main theme- the trunk of the tree that all the other ideas branch out from and connect to each other through. To guide the confused, and to give the cult following something to hack at.

I ended part 1 with the conclusion that the name Penguindrum encompasses the dilemma (or conundrum) facing more and more children in our society, whose lives have some metaphorical parallels with penguins. And while I may or may not have emphasized it well, the stress of that struggle on the outside seems to be very normal, something you would say “you just need to put on your big boy britches, and be okay” to. But in fact, that reaction from their social environment causes deeper damage than what people who face visible, understandable struggles go through. The deeper it goes the harder it is to spot, yet more crippling it becomes.

Unmarked spoilers ahead, beware.

Early in episode 14 there’s a scene where Ringo meets Shoma on the street, and tries to talk to him. She’s started to accept her feelings for him. He’s just lost his reason for living and isn’t in the mood to talk to this creepy, abusive girl. Furthermore, while he doesn’t like fate, he does believe in it’s existence, and sees his sister’s second death as an inescapable punishment for his parent’s actions. I’d like to underline the fact that after seeing his sister die once, the second death is all the more gutting- one more solution failed; nothing natural could save her, and now it seems nothing supernatural can either, and that defeat of the new hope is many times worse than the first. It’s in this state of mind that Ringo cheerfully asks “is Himari out of the Hospital yet?” Shoma basically just walks away.

Ringo follows, still oblivious, “you haven’t replied to my messages,” to which Shoma, speaks the thoughts going through his mind (of atonement, earning forgiveness- he’s still trying to fight the unseen enemy called fate), in an empty, dejected voice, with his back to her, and no explanation of what’s happened. He’s not conversing with her so much as thinking out loud to her. He’s still just trying to be left alone, and the course he takes doubles as wallowing in his misery and pushing someone away. She starts to understand what he hasn’t told her. Finally, he yells some hurtful words at her to (passive-aggressively) tell her to get lost, in the manner of a wounded animal that won’t let you get close to help it. She apologizes for being “dense,” with tears in her eyes that he chooses not to see, but can surely hear in her voice, to which he physically (and symbolically) walks away from the small grasp she has on his jacket, leaving her in the middle of a faceless crowd, which continues on like nothing has happened around her, while she is left alone to cry.

It’s a short but moving scene, and to me it served as a big turning point in my experience of the show. It’s about this point in the show that you realize this is going to get complex- in hindsight the earlier episodes contain essential building blocks, but when first going through them it isn’t until approximately this point in the story that you realize this show is trying to present some really good ideas in a really cool way. How, you ask?

Step by step Shoma plays his cards perfectly to get what he wants- to be left alone to wallow in his pain. Step by step Ringo says the right things, and makes the right connections to say what should be said to him- but he is definitively inconsolable. How can someone become literally impossible to console? Either by the being pain too great, or by not permitting someone to get close enough to give him a figurative (and perhaps literal) hug. Whether the pain is too great is untestable for us- it cannot be proven false or true, so it is then not worth discussing.

The fact is, the experiences he’s had don’t allow him to trust people- at least in his mind, in the deepest fibers of his being. For any practical purposes that’s final, and I think that more or less stays true to the end. In the end he wins the unspoken contest not because he’s any more right or more skillful or for any “good” reason, but because he simply has control over whether or not someone can help him. Remember part 1 where we talked about parents not supporting their kids without a rational argument to support that stance, they just have the power? Same thing.

Now, this was a light bulb moment for me. Yamazaki, my favorite character from Welcome to the NHK, said “Drama has a progressive plot, and emotional climax… and a resolution. But our lives aren’t like that. All we get day after day are a bunch of vague anxieties that are never really resolved.” In other words, this Penguindrum scene plays out in a way that we can see what everybody’s aiming for and techniques to meet those goals. In real life, situations like this play out something like, “Hey, I heard (fill in the blank terrible thing) happened. You doin’ alright?” “Yeah I’m fine, thanks for asking.” “Sure thing. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” “Thanks, I will.” And that’s it. Real life is considerably less dramatic than dramas, but the same situations are happening.

Of course, looking at that real life conversation, you would assume the person struggling is capable of toughing it out. That is after all, the impression they are giving, and it’s infinitely easier and more natural to minimize and forget someone else’s troubles than to empathize with them. Cue Yokko Kanno’s “Gotta Knock a Little Harder” with one of the best presentations of self-isolation I can think of. The shoe fits Shoma pretty well.

This type of self-isolation is one penguindrum symptom. Another would be Ringo’s stalking. We’re introduced to her as a stalker, and not just a “normal stalker” (kek), but one with a very particular and unusual fetish. Fortunately, there are some scenes where we see her acting very normal beforehand to give us some clue that she has friends and at the very least a convincing mask of sanity. As you get to be around her more and more you get to see, particularly as her relationship with Shoma develops, that she’s a sane girl who just has a really wacky idea in her head. This is by Penguindrum’s standards meat-fistedly linked to her lack of a family- a dead sister she never knew, a mother who’s too busy for her, a father who is distant and unaware of her spiritual (emotional + social + mental; nothing to do with religion) needs.

There’s a lot that could be said about Ringo that I’m not going to go into. I just wanted to show that there are multiple penguindrum symptoms for a child (to pretentiously use my made-up/plagiarized term from part 1, a specific kind of conundrum). Furthermore, those consequences become apparent in ways that wouldn’t make you suspect they have the same root cause unless you were looking for them to. Shoma’s self-isolation is something that’s mostly just going to hurt him- not others, and it’s impossible to objectively examine as a result. Ringo’s stalking on the other hand is something outward and that is both more demonstrable and it primarily will affect others.

Standard reaction to Shoma’s penguindrum symptom is “yeah, that sucks” and that’s about it. However, psychologists exist because of (and for) people like Ringo. It’’s easy to see that her symptom is serious, even though Fixing Ringo’s problems requires someone dedicating their life to a profession to be able to treat it, but whatever support you feel Shoma needs is not nearly equal. “Not true!” You say, you’re enlightened and think he should see a psychologist too, but that’s because (1) you’re dealing with the dramatization, not reality, and (2) you’re looking at it from the outside in your spare time. Go back to the real life equivalent situation 4 paragraphs back. That happens when you aren’t prepared for it, and are busy taking care of everything so important to your life that you don’t have the time to do anything. That’s not being accusative, that’s just how reality is.

And if you aren’t convinced that Shoma’s symptom is serious, watch Welcome to the NHK. Saito isn’t a hikikomori because he’s fundamentally different from you or I, he’s a hikikomori because of his broken spirit. Watch Black Lagoon: Rock doesn’t decide to become a pirate for material reasons, he does it because his life is void of meaning. Watch Terror in Resonance: the drastic actions each of the kids take are due to spiritual (non-religious context) anguish. And if fictional examples aren’t your thing then look at suicide rates or Columbine shootings or the false relationships and fake happiness on social media. The world is different than it was for more and more of the population. We’ve found stuff that is more interesting than sex, and in that virgin territory we as a society are discovering both wonderful and terrible things, which we are still trying to both describe and adapt to.

Did this get more confusing than the show itself? Oops…

If you feel like you need an analysis of this analysis to understand what’s going on, let me try to summarize things to makes some sense. Symptoms of a penguindrum are varied. Some are external and flagrant (e.g. stalking), but most are internally destructive and almost invisible in reality (e.g. self-isolation). The scope of this conundrum is already wide, and still spreading. The harmful effects of it are seriously serious. Why take so many words to say that? Because the heart of the topic is not something that can be adequately described in analytical terms that can be so condensed. It’s back to the real life equivalent of Shoma & Ringo’s conversation. Standard diagnostic procedures are useless, casual care is meaningless. “You’ll keep observing until our family’s ruined through and through. That’s how everyone’s been.” Are Shoma’s words, in the face of what appears to be obvious genuine compassion- which he has become jaded to. To summarize the summary and bring everything to a point: new measures and methods need to be taken to cure a penguindrum.



Once again things went a different direction than I expected, it’s hard to say but I get the feeling that will keep happening (if I keep going), but at least it was more anime-y this time. I had other things I wanted to say, because his really is a killer scene, but I’m tired and you probably are too, so perhaps another time. Thanks for reading.

Anime Relations: Mawaru Penguindrum

I started Penguindrum Thursday, and finished the 24th (final) episode Friday. It was fantastic, and as a previous (and well written)WT! review describes, if you're able to make sense of the subtler imagery and connect the dots (which is much easier to do during a binge), it really packs a "fulfilling" emotional punch. Watch this show in under a week to get necessary mental continuity.

This is not a review designed to recommend you the show, if you want that read the WT! link above because the next paragraph and beyond will contain spoilers- this is meant primarily for people who watched the show or are watching it, and don't get it. Or, perhaps, fans of it who want to have something to discuss As such, I'll try to write this in a chronological order (of you watching the show, not the story in the timeline), so that you can read up to whatever point you need to, then ditch my writing and get back to watching.

One last disclaimer. I'm sure I didn't catch every theme, or get every symbol, or have the complete artistic picture of what Penguindrum was addressing. Not even close on any of those points (which is why I'll be able to re-watch at some point and glean even more, which gives the show even more value). But it will sound like that from the tone of my writing. That's just how my writing style evolved, and attempts to change it sound lame and weak and I'm too old to change it now so I just keep it. I'll be writing primarily from the perspective of how the show appealed to me, sort of "what I would tell myself," if I had been lost in the complexity.

The Foundation: Penguin-drum

In short, Penguindrum is about childhood. Specifically, the struggle that isn't recognized, or at least that most children in the situation feel is not recognized- the struggle to think for them self. The freedom to go against the will of their protectors and providers on matters of their own life and future. Specifically, their interests and specializations, to risk investing in the possibility to do something unique and fulfilling. And, the near-inevitable failure to surpass the barriers to that freedom. There is no shortage of children at the child broiler ready to give up, conforming to being a cog in society's machine.

If you had a happy childhood, this probably isn't going to appeal to you as much. If you had an explicitly terrible childhood, this might not be relatable for you. If however, you had a childhood that everyone around you said was good, but you didn't feel that way, however you didn't really have any solid evidence to prove it sucked, this anime should definitely speak to you.

As we hear in the first episode, penguins are one of the most graceful swimmers in nature, particularly when you look at animals that live on dry land. However, the degree of their gracefulness in water is matched only by their awkwardity on land, with a distinctive shuffle that, instinctively, makes you think they're silly and clumsy, and all of the other not-so-awe-inspiring things that come to mind when you hear the word "penguin." This scene gets briefly reviewed a couple of times throughout, and "penguin" is in the name of the show, so I think it's fair to say this is where we are intended to jump on board the train of thought.

In water, you can move wherever you want, up, down, diagonally, etc. There is an entire 'nother dimension to move about and be creative in. And, when you look at a penguin racing through water, you can't help but think it's fun, much like the sensation of being able to fly would be. The water represents freedom and lack of boundaries, the ability to go where you want to go and do what you want to do completely- except for where there are leopard seals. On land, (as far as I know) there are no predators for penguins. Antarctica's environment may not be very fun, but it is safe, and therefore it's where your parents want to keep you. Thus is born the eternal struggle between parent and child, one always wanting more freedom, and the other restricting that freedom in line with their own sensibilities, with a line like "you'll understand when you're older" or "my house, my rules."

Since parents have more power than children in pretty much every respect, they decide policy on matters with almost no checks or balances (I'm using political terms for family governing, but I think it works). You'll never be older than your parents, or in any near future have them living in your house, so there is no ground that you can argue with them on, you must simply submit. For the spirit that loves freedom and embraces logic to learn and to convince others, these arguments are the most stifling, oppressive prison imaginable. To combine the ideas of two unrelated people to this analysis, I quote Aldous Huxley and Richard Crossman, respectively.

"An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex"

"For the intellectual, material comforts are relatively unimportant; what he cares about most is spiritual freedom."

I'm going somewhere with all this, hang in there.

If we take both of the above quotes as true, and consider that (despite what it feels like when you survey the general populace) we are living in the most educated, informed, and intellectual society mankind has to this point known, there is going to be a greater and greater thrust among children to explore new things, express themselves, and exercise creative outlets. I've never taken a selfie myself, but I think the trend (as well as picture taking in general) shows how almost everyone in technological societies feels an urge to do, something creative. Selfies are a very small creative thing of course, very possibly the smallest creative thing that ever has been or will yet be, but I think any plausible definition of creativity would unwillingly have to include them. The strength of this example is the pervasiveness of selfies among those who have the ability to take them, not in the artistic merit of the selfie.

For something that is more viscerally convincing, look at the rising trend of anime & manga in the west. As I read in some article recently, you don't find notable sections of Norwegian or Argentinian or Senegalese literature in US bookstores, but you will find it for Japanese manga/anime. We don't find Japanese culture & language to be so confusing and unreachable that it is simply weird, when we do find it weird we generally translate that impulse as stimulating in some way, shape, or form. When you consider that we don't share a border with Japan to give us any material reason to care about their comics & cartoons, and their culture & language are about as different as the East is from the West (was that too ham-fisted? Sorry). The fact that a significant portion of our population is interested in [i]their[i/] entertainment enough to choose it over our own highly developed entertainment industry speaks to the fact that something about that entertainment being different from what we're use to is enjoyable for us- because we like finding unfamiliar things that stroke that creative/expressive/intellectual nerve in just the right way (I refer to the Huxley quote above). That's why we like some Japanese words left untranslated in our manga, and will choose to listen to a language we mostly don't understand in our anime, even if we have the option for our own language. Contrast that with the entertainment you would choose if you had to do manual labor for 12 hours a day so that you could survive winter, and you see what I mean by "the most intellectual society yet." I should add that I don't just include the US in this, which at best was an afterthought of the creators. Rather, I think any first world country will find itself in the same situation.

Now, what does all this philosophical background have to do with the show? The conclusions I've come to to this point represent the frame of mind that the show is written from, and why I said you need a particular type of childhood to spontaneously attach emotionally to the deeper themes in the show (or at least, what I identify as the main one).

Conclusion 1: Kids want freedom so they can have fun as well as learn new things. Parents want boundaries so that the kids are safe. Either force unchecked will go too far, and there are no legitimate checks when it comes to parenting creativity. If you are negligent in feeding your child there are consequences, but not if you don't support them in their dreams. There are consequences if you physically abuse a child, but not if you take away their drawings and tell them that being an artist isn't something they should spend their time on. There are consequences if you sexually abuse a child, but not if you have stiff rules on when, where, and who they socialize with, or otherwise try to influence their sexuality.

Conclusion 2: Society now generates more intellectuals (in the Huxley definition, which denotes interest not necessarily adeptness) than ever before, simply because the average person today processes massively more information than ever before. However, parents are correct in fearing a life spent in pursuit of a creative field- there are many times more failures working dead end jobs to make ends meet than there are glamorous successes. If there really is something intrinsically fulfilling about a job, there will be more competition for it, and a deeper specialization of skills is required. If that dream job is not acquired, those skills will be largely unable to put bread on the table. And while an intellectual isn't going to care about material comforts as much as the average person, they still have needs to be met, still want to spend money on entertainment that stimulates their intellect, and will be emotionally battling their failure to succeed on top of it all- a potent enough battle that there will be physical side effects (e.g. sleeping longer AND being overwhelmingly more tired when awake from depression). There are more intellectuals trying to be fulfilled than ever will be able to.

Conclusion 3: Conclusions 1 and 2 are not new, nor have they never been realized before. However, the scale of the problem has gotten worse. Furthermore, there is no solution readily available. It is a problem no one has the answer for. Parents should have the authority they have, and no outside force is qualified to tell them how to parent their child's creative intellect, or what boundaries should be in place (children with no guidance or limitations placed on their sexual behaviors are sure to have costly misadventures). Neither should the internet/technology be discarded, and a North Korean-like society come about. The problem of intellectual children being creatively repressed by society and their parents is therefore a conundrum. Both for the child involved (who faces the conundrum of how to pursue intellectual paths against the will of their parents, whose support they need), and for an adult aware of the problem who wants to change society and to prevent that repression.

It's then all in the name. Children are like penguins- they see how much better they are in the water, and want to stay in and be free to do what they want and pursue every new thing that comes across their vision with a natural curiosity that leads to intellectual growth that leads to creativity (I really can't emphasize enough how much this image/metaphor works, and not my blocky description of it. But then, if you like Penguindrum enough to still be reading at this point, you probably get that). However, society in general and their parents in particular fight against this, and win. They believe that the lives created for their children are happy, and fail to see the damage done, which is the conundrum. It's not hard to imagine that the lives of children from divorced homes have it rougher than children from the stereotypical standard, happy family formula.

But you know who has it worse than the divorced kids? The kids who live in a home with parents who stay together for religious reasons, or, ironically, "for the kids." Because they don't have the visible dysfunctionality in their lives, they don't get the emotional support they need, and on top of that they have mom and dad fighting endlessly (I learned it in a psych class about close relationships, the textbook for which I sold long ago, so no citation, you'll have to trust me). That same lack of emotional support due to a lack of of recognition of the problem (albeit a different aspect of the nurturing of children) is what makes Penguindrum insightful and unique.

Is the combination of ideas in the penguin metaphor and the word "conundrum" what the creators had in mind with the name? Every fiber of my being says "no." But there is a chance. I think of it as something like a "happy accident" of Bob Ross'. Regardless of what they intended, my suggested portmanteau certainly does fit, as I think will become more and more apparent. Most of all if you have finished the show .

I think that's a good place to start with understanding Penguindrum as well as a theory for describing what a penguindrum is thematically. What is one literally? Don't worry about it.

I guess I should add that the little blue companion penguins are obviously childlike in most of what they do, but are also not meant to carry the weight of this symbol, they're there for other reasons. However, I don't think they contradict it either, like I said, they're there for other reasons.

This went a different direction than I was planning, so I'll do it in parts, maybe 3 or 4. Maybe I won't finish if nobody reads this. If I do go on, it should be more about the show as I had originally planned and less outside references. Either way, it was fun.