Oh Mawaru Penguindrum… you and your double meanings:

Tabuki: “Well, it was just a plumbing problem in the condo. Yuri called me out at night. it was a huge ruckus! But I’m glad our new place didn’t get ruined.”

That’s just ribald, teach. Keep your tawdry sex life to yourself! Of course, the ambiguousness of meaning covers more than just sex jokes. “Project M” could stand for anything: maternity, murder, Momoka — you name it. After all, these are just words associated with Ringo. Who knows what the “M” stands for with regards to Masako.

Before we jump headfirst into the meat and potatoes of the analysis, I know a lot of people think Mawaru Penguindrum posts are pretentious and whatnot. Hey, I have fun writing these things, but if you don’t enjoy reading this kind of stuff, then don’t. Instead, just go here.

Ringo, the anti-sister
Ringo’s not just crazy; her world is falling apart. She doesn’t know when fantasy begins and reality ends. Case in point, her Western-inspired hallucination occurs in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day and draws a crowd of perplexed onlookers. When Ringo nearly runs into her father with his future family, Ringo doesn’t see an innocent, little girl by her father’s side.

Instead, Aoi appears to Ringo as a seductive sea serpent coiled around her father. Love is full of subtleties; there is sexual love, but there is also familial love, love between friends, so on and so forth. Love, however, has become confusion for Ringo. She can no longer distinguish between the different forms of love. Everything is tinged with sexuality to Ringo, including a little girl like Aoi. But is Ringo just a girl with an overactive imagination? Consider this:

“We humans are not naturally born into reality. In order for us to act as normal people who interact with other people — who live in a space of social reality — many things should happen like we should be properly installed within the symbolic order and so on. When our appropriate space within the symbolic order is disturbed, reality disintegrates.” — The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

Ringo’s family fell apart at a very early stage in her life. As a result, she shows signs of arrested development. I don’t want to invoke Freud since I don’t very much agree with his psychoanalytic theories, but it’s hard not to see that Ringo harbors some variant of the Electra complex. Her rival, however, just happens to be her very own sister. Her complex is such a serious problem that any young woman who comes into contact with Ringo’s paternal role models (i.e. her father and Tabuki) morphs into a thieving, scheming anti-sister.

Ironically, it is Ringo who schemes. It is Ringo who wants to steal another woman’s man, and this, too, has multiple meanings. Ringo isn’t just stealing Yuri’s fiancé
but also her sister’s former lover. All for what? So she could steal her father back from Aoi. Essentially, Ringo is projecting her own misgivings and insecurities onto other women. She is the anti-sister. Ringo goes so far as to steal Yuri’s identity in an attempt to bed Tabuki. Considering how she wishes to cannibalize her sister’s memories and life, assuming them as her own, it makes sense to see Ringo also attempt to become Yuri. Even though Yuri is the dreaded rival, as the saying goes, “If you can’t beat’em, join’em.” Ringo is merely embracing the anti-sister within her heart.

So as Ringo gradually descends into her neuroses, I bet the dream-like sequences will just increase in frequency unless anyone can pull her out of the abyss. And if she can’t slay the evil witches, i.e. Yuri and Aoi, perhaps the next best thing for Ringo is to become one of them and slay herself. After all, what will remain of Ringo if her plans succeed? She’ll become some Frankensteinian amalgamation of Momoka, Yuri and and the innocent Aoi. Oh yeah, she’ll be pregnant too. What a bizarre thought. Somehow, Ringo believes that this will bring her old family back together.

The Western
No more theatrical, Takarazuka Revue-inspired fantasies for Ringo. In her latest fantasy, she now sees the conflict between her and Yuri play out as a Western. Here’s thus another take on Ringo’s mission. It has been argued that the falling out of the Western genre in American cinema is due a particular ideological shift. Western heroes and heroines are known for risking their lives for noble purposes:

“These films are about ethical ordeal, courage and risk: for what would you risk everything? This is the central concern of Westerns generally — at what crucial point do you gather the courage to risk life itself?” — Conversations with Zizek

Appropriately, Ringo sees herself nearly die in a Western duel with Yuri. Ringo has already resigned herself to death if it is necessary to win Tabuki’s (and thus her father’s) love. As elaborated in a short, vaguely-related conversation with 2DT, there’s something romantic in Ringo’s mission: “I must destroy myself to give our pain validity.” In recent times, however, we find this act of self-sacrifice less and less ideal. We tend to think of people like Ringo as nothing more than deranged fanatics. This is true from a certain point of view.

From another point of view, however — especially Ringo’s — the poor girl is just trying to repair her broken family. She’s sacrificing everything, including her own virginity, just to feel the warm embrace of both her mother and father again. Isn’t there thus something tragically sad about her story? Wouldn’t we also risk it all in order to save our families? Well, I think I’d personally draw the line at rape and murder, the former being a crime Ringo comes close to committing.

But Ringo’s motivations, while morally outrageous from our comfortable vantage point, isn’t exactly uncommon. In recent times, what has stories like 24 contributed to public ideology? Aren’t there plenty of people who would be ready and willing to torture a terrorist in order to save the lives of their family members? Go ahead. Ask people on the streets what they’d be willing to do. All of a sudden, Ringo’s eagerness to rape her dead sister’s former boyfriend doesn’t seem all too lonely in its absurdity. Oh sure, it’s still wrong — I wouldn’t dare excuse such an act. What I’m trying to say, however, is that there are a lot more Ringos out there in the world than we might think.

Hypocrisy
Shouma, the seemingly innocent boy hero, finally couldn’t take being silent anymore and confronts Ringo near the end of the episode:

Shouma: “You don’t care about Tabuki and Yuri’s feelings, then? … Your heart is pitch black, darker than any girl I’ve ever known!”

But Ringo is right when she retorts that Shouma is not as innocent as he thinks he is and neither is his brother. The brothers, especially Kanba, will do whatever it takes to keep their “family” together in spite of the fact that their sister should be dead and the parents have disappeared off to god knows where. After all, Shouma isn’t playing the part of Ringo’s therapist. He’s only helping her out to get his hands on her diary. In Kantian terms, he’s using her as a means to some end; essentially, he’s not a moral person.

–
To put it another way, has Shouma ever considered Ringo’s feelings? Has he ever really tried to understand what the girl is going through? To both of these questions, the answer would be “not really.” Shouma’s just out to save his sister. So when Shouma sacrifices himself to save Ringo at the end of the episode, one must naturally wonder… did he perform a supererogatory act for Ringo’s sake, or is he just preserving her life for a bigger cause, i.e. Himari’s sake?

Well, this sure does feel familiar…
I’m feeling a bit of deja vu. I seem to remember having experienced a story with somewhat similar themes as Mawaru Penguindrum’s. It involves a cute girl dying in the future and a protagonist doing whatever it takes — even going so far as to violate morality — in order to prevent this from happening. Hell, he’s so hellbent on his mission that he rarely spends any time with said girl anymore.

So what should I see in this episode of Mawaru Penguindrum? Shouma and Kanba are so focused on their individual missions that they’re hardly around for Himari anymore. What’s the point of preserving your family if you’re not going to be together as a family. Anyway, I can’t quite remember the name of that other anime I’m referring to. I know it’s just on the tip of my tongue, though!

For anyone who thinks I might be accusing anime of unoriginality here, no, I’m just being facetious. Don’t get your drawers in a twist over this. Yes, both shows are very different in other ways.

Everything else
• I like the persistent metaphor that the penguins are extensions of their respective owners.

As Shouma and Kanba argue, their penguins also fight over a cooking mishap.

• Did anyone find it strange that Aoi is apparently familiar enough with Ringo’s father to want him as a dad, but Aoi’s mother still refers to the guy as Oginome-san. Isn’t that a little impersonal for your future husband? I bet the whole proposal scene was all in Ringo’s head anyway.

• Finally, an anime admits that tea and ‘caeki’ are sinister business! I gotta say… I hate montblancs.

Too much sickening creme on top.

• Again, a rainstorm serves as a backdrop for romance or, in this case, forced fornication.

• Tabuki and Yuri appear to share a very tiny bed. It’s also in tacky red and black. How very Billy Idol of them….

To be honest, the whole apartment looks ugly to me.

• At first, I thought Ringo’s plan was a little silly. If Tabuki’s passed out, how exactly are she going to rape him? It seems, however, she didn’t drug him to such an extent. He seems to have just enough consciousness that a Ringo in a blonde wig might just suffice. Ah well.

• That diary has the worst binding ever.

It was in the rain how long? Probably ten or fifteen minutes at most.

• Oh boy, this post is already over 1,700 words. What’s the point — I bet none of you will have read this far!