Imagine Finishing Mawaru Penguindrum

Remember how last year, I watched (and wrote about watching) Mawaru Penguindrum, and paired it with the episode reactions from the Imagine Me & Utena podcast? And how the IMAU reactions had only gotten through episode 17, but they had been on hiatus for long enough that I figured they weren’t going to come back to it, so I went ahead and watched the rest of the show?

The IMAU folks came back! After a year-and-a-half gap, they started up again, and got through the rest of the series!

(It’s in my folder of “podcasts that stopped updating a long time ago, but didn’t officially finish, so I check in once or twice a year, just to see if anything’s changed.” And sure enough, something had.)

Overall, I didn’t like the Penguindrum anime. There were some good parts, even a few great ones, and I still listen to the music — but that wasn’t enough to outweigh all the parts that were bad/rushed/nonsensical/poorly thought-out/generally-unpleasant.

Still looking forward to finally finishing the IMAU recaps. If you’re a fan of the series, or even if you also didn’t care for it but ended up watching the whole thing, check them out. (Direct link to the RSS feed.)

#MawaruPenguindrum

Anime that are more Communist then Hayao Miyazaki
https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/05/anime-that-are-more-communist-then.html

#Anime #MayDay #LaborDay #InternationalWorkersDay #InternationalLaborDay #RoseOfVersailles #LadyOscar #DearBrother #RiyokoIkeda #Gundam #HathawaysFlash #YoshiyukiTomino #MawaruPenguindrum #Penguindrum #RoboticsNotes #Durarara #PreCure #PrincessPrincipal #PrismaIllya #HayaoMiyazaki #Ghibli

Yakushimaru Etsuko Metro Orchestra – nornir

#nowplaying #nowlistening #yakushimaruetsuko #mawarupenguindrum   🥁

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux5E1h1n1-c

The bad Utena video got me to take another shot at watching #MawaruPenguindrum, Ikuhara's first series after a long post-SKU hiatus. Chasing each episode with the watchalong from the #ImagineMeAndUtena podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/imaginemeandutena

The hosts are watching mostly-unspoiled, so there's a lot of "wow, we have no idea where this is going either," but they'll dissect moments that I didn't think that hard about, or go over cultural background I didn't know. Which is cool and helpful.

At one point I figured I'd start watching the show once all the IMAU episodes were out? But they stopped cold after episode 17 (of 24), and that was 9 months ago. No idea if that was just Life Happening, or if the show did something so dramatic and off-putting they couldn't keep watching.

Guess I'll find out!

So I started watching #MawaruPenguindrum and I'm not sure what to think of it at the moment.

It's definitely a #IkuharaKunihiko work. The visuals are stunning and very inventive. I feel that like #Utena, we are invited to distianciate ourselves from the characters, Brecht style. But the line is blurrier in this case.

Ringo plays the role of Nanami in this story

I have been re-watching Mawaru Penguindrum because yeah I can't remember much from the first time. All that I remember is about the huge train accident that happened in Japan some time ago. So this gonna be me talking about the revelations that happens in the anime.

I can't say for sure if this is real-life tragedy, fiction or both and what's written here is based on my opinion (or maybe some internet finds and reads later after it ends).

#Anime #MawaruPenguindrum #Penguindrum #KunihikoIkuhara