Every event in our lives leads down a different track, each path laid out before us or so we would believe. Each decision you make can ultimately decide your final destination, but those around you can drastically change where you end up.
Mawaru Penguindrum is a bit of a novelty, it leaves many clueless and frustrated while others find it pure inspiration. Being what it is though, I found it enjoyable but extremely difficult to follow along with.
Of course there are cons and pros to everything so lets start out with what was all good.
Some people call the plot genius and unique, I found it to be very unique myself. Basically almost everyone in our cast is out to find this penguindrum for a means to their own ends, saving a life or bringing back another. The main characters we will call: 1, 2, and 3 simply reflecting their alter ego penguin sidekicks, mainly 2 brothers and their sister. These three self proclaimed siblings live in a small shack going about their daily lives until death strikes the sister. Along comes a magical penguin hat, a catchy theme song, and a bossy entity. This entity tells the boys they must obtain the penguindrum or suffer the death of their sister. Off to a fair start already, plenty of drama and some moments of action. Feels almost like a broadway play, it watches like one too. Some funny moments were thrown in as well like the random western scene, totally going off the map but its still funny. Sadly like some others I know of, due to its confusing plot I was tempted to drop it early. Thankfully I didn't drop it.
Lets dive deeper into the characters. To me I felt that the characters backgrounds were touched upon a little too much. A majority of the flashbacks gave some insight on who a person was, but the flashbacks took up a good portion of screentime, could have left out some of that. The toughguy brothers, our pretty older couple, and the red head with her "Crush them" catch phrase. Their persons were not rushed though which I was thankful for, each bit of detail came out gradaully so you didn't have to overload all in one go. You learned who belonged to who and about a mysterious child broiler that bonded so many of our cast at a young age. Another star, Momaka, has a pretty good amount of attention given though already dead. Her dairy was orginally thought to be the penguindrum because of its supernatural powers. To take and to give anything one person desires. Oh, lets not forget the penguins in the background, they were pretty funny at times if you stopped to watch them.
Now what orginally caught me was a part of the art and the musical scores. These being the theme songs and the awkward shojo animation style.
You always knew that song was coming when the hat would signal "Survival Strategy". A fairly catchy tune and great animation to go with it, not that a song ever goes good with any video though. The opening theme songs are enjoyable, I do prefer the second one though. I have a hard time following the ending themes because there are many of them but many people pass end themes nowadays so its out of mind. But to be perfectly honest the art style being shojo will turn some of your viewers away, a big percentage of anime fanbase are males. I have a hard time with all the bubbly and sparkle moments that are bombshelled on random scenes, and look at those eyes. Its still pleasent to watch though not being a blown out of proportion shounen genre.
I was forced to pull my hair out from utter confusion during some episodes. On top of it all I had to rewatch a thing or two just to understand it.
Keeping the audiece thrilled and keeping them guessing was both a strong and weak point. The plot was really difficult to follow, some things explained later, some exposed later. The whole penguindrum thing drove me crazy from the start. The insane amount of scene transitions and flashbacks got to me after a while, and they did annoy. A typical good plot starts out slow, rises up, blows up in yours face then slows to a stop. Im not sure if this was broken up into arcs or what but it felt like a rocky mountain trail, easy in some places hard in others. You need to hook strong or lose viewers, this did a bit of hooking and casting. Yes, it was hard to follow with bits of information being placed randomy about its story. The ending felt a little rushed and too many pieces were brought into light near climax. One other annoying thing to point out was the lack of background characters. In some busy scenes all that was shown were silly little stick figures. This was severly distracting and made me feel like I was watching something they decided to cut budget on.
To be perfectly honest though, I did enjoy this up to the end, I could definitly use a rewatch simply just to understand the story. If you want something unique that takes risks give Mawaru Penguindrum a go.
