[Review] Mawaru-Penguindrum

Rolling Penguin Drums (輪るピングドラム)

A scene from episode 3 that was also used in the trailer.

When this anime was in it's first few episodes, nobody knew what this anime was about. The first few trailers was about love and destiny, but, out of the blue, we have a trailer that shows a cat crashing into a penguin, and the fish that the cat was carrying hit a girl (Himari Takakura) nearby and a lot of crazy action that contradicts the earlier trailers. You were probably even left wondering what on earth you watched by the end of that trailer.

Masako Natsume

To sum this anime up: here's a summery of what I though of this anime.

Arch 1: Himari is declared dead, but mysteriously comes back to life when the hat bought earlier revived her again. Around this time, the penguins are introduced.

Arch 2: Himari asks the brothers to retrieve a thing called a "penguin drum". It was latter found out that it was a diary that a girl (Ringo Oginome) that she has in possession.

Arch 3: The Takakura brothers start the hunt to retrieve the diary by finding the right time to steal it while unaware. It was through this that the brothers found out that she stalks an another man.

Arch 4: The hunt is made more difficult when Ringo made friends with Himari.

Arch 5: The love relation between the man Himari was stalking, and an another woman.

Arch 6: At this point, I don't even know what the hell I was watching. Not sure why I didn't drop at this point.

Arch 7: It was found out that the Takakura siblings aren't actually related by blood, and there are more conflict with the characters.

Some guy

Arch 8: It turns out that Ringo's sister and some guy was split into two black rabbits and two hats 15 years earlier around the believed terrorist attacked in the subway, with one being featured in the first episode.

Arch 9: Epilogue. The Takakura brothers became random children on the street. Himari appears to had a different set of parents and no siblings. No memories from when she had those "brothers" were brought over, but seeing traces of it made her cry without knowing why herself.

Storyline-wise, it's one big mess. Too many characters were introduced, obvious and unnecessary diversions form it. The penguins introduced in the beginning, and one more (for Kanba's actual ferternal twin, Masako Natsume) seemed to be completely forgotten and give nothing more than background distractions. Seems that they must show a subway train interior of some sort in every episode, along with "Today's slogan", in the place of where ads would usually be, different in every episode.

Also, I thought Ringo is a minor character that would only appear for a while, but it seems that she appears in every episode! She looks ugly, and the colour scheme of the uniform, which I have to tolerate, is awful. That, or the design seem to be stuck in the early 2000s. (If you watched K-On, you would know what my standard of a good-looking character is now.)

Would I recommend this? If you are bored, yes. Otherwise, a strong no. I don't care how many other people say otherwise.