Review for Penguin Drum Box Set 1

Introduction

Mawaru Penguindrum is directed by Kunihiko Inuhara, the auteur that directed the Revolutionary Girl Utena television series, and the Adolescence of Utena spin-off feature film that re-imagined the series. So expect metaphor, expect complex narrative, deceptive characterisation, expect pop-culture references, expect allegory, expect layered and beguiling storylines, expect mind-bending symbolism, and also expect this review to be wholly inadequate at judging the worth of this series. After all, I only have time to watch Mawaru Penguindrum just once before I have to commit my opinions to print. I haven’t seen the Utena series, but I’ve watched the Adolescence of Utena movie some five times and I still have barely scratched the surface of what is going on there. I expect Mawaru Penguindrum to be just as esoteric, if not more.


Their parents are absent, but in their brightly coloured and happy home, Himari Takakura, and her brothers, twins Kanbe and Shoma are enjoying life. At least they would be, except that Himari is terminally ill with a disease that no doctor can cure. It’s all the brothers can do to have a Himari day, and grant her wish to visit the aquarium, so that she can see the penguins. She even buys a novelty penguin hat. But the stress is too much for her, and she collapses and later in hospital she dies...


... And then comes back to life. A strange force has extended her life, and possesses her body when she wears the penguin hat. It promises to extend her life even further if Kanbe and Shoma will find for it the mysterious Penguindrum. To help, it sends three penguins, penguins that no one else can see. The twins keep being sent on missions that will hopefully help them locate the Penguindrum, but no one knows what the Penguindrum looks like, and their three penguin helpers are more hindrance then help.


The first half of Mawaru Penguindrum is presented across three discs. Twelve episodes from Kazé Entertainment, distributed for them by Manga. Incidentally, it’s called Penguin Drum in the UK, the Mawaru may be on the box, but it’s not on e-tail site listings.

Disc 1
1. The Bell of Fate Shall Ring
2. A Dangerous Survival Tactic
3. And Then Eat Me Resplendently
4. The Princess That Flutters Downward


Disc 2
5. That’s Why I’m Going to Do It
6. You and I, Bound By M
7. The Tamahomore Girl
8. Even If Your Love Is A Lie, I...

Disc 3
9. The World of Ice
10. Because I Like You
11. So You’ve Finally Noticed
12. The Circle That Surrounds Us

Picture

Mawaru Penguindrum gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer across three dual layer discs. The image is a native PAL conversion, complete with 4% speedup as requisite. The image is clear and sharp throughout and the show’s retina challenging colour scheme comes across to excellent effect. While the character designs may be a little generic, the animation most certainly isn’t, with studio Brain’s Base taking a page from Shaft’s book in bringing a whole lot of imagination and variety to the screen. The show can be energetic and fluidly animated at times, but thanks to the three disc format, compression signs are minimal on these DVDs.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 Surround English and Japanese, with player locked translated subtitles for the Japanese track, and player locked signs only for the English dub. You might notice some signs of pitch correction applied to the audio, particularly in the background music. I went with the Japanese audio and was quite happy with that, and watched the show all the way through that way. The dialogue is clear, and the music, action, and ambience to the show gets a nice bit of space courtesy of the stereo. The subtitles are timed accurately, but apparently Kazé spent as much time proof-reading them as Sentai did, as there are more than a few typos to live with. I gave the dub a try. Twin brothers, one has a generic American accent, the other approximating a German accent. What the...! Gave up on the dub.


And here’s the bad news. Once again, Kazé are unable to show text captions and dialogue translations simultaneously on screen. For a show like Penguindrum, where everything means something, including the on screen text, that is potentially a deal-breaker.

Extras

The discs present their content with animated menus, reflecting the Tokyo Metro map design. All discs autoplay with Kazé trailers, Persona 4: The Animation, Journey To Agartha, Code Geass, Black Lagoon and Planzet.


As you may have come to expect from a Kazé release, the discs are locked up so tight as to be completely user unfriendly. No access to your player timer, no changing audio or subtitles on the fly, and no exiting an episode to the main menu to change audio, and then resume it where you left off.

Disc 1’s sole extra is the Promotional Video for. Disc 2 has the karaoke opening, with karaoke subtitles burned into the video. For a change, Kazé have also supplied translated subtitles for the song lyrics, the only place on the disc that you’ll see them, and it’s the only place on the disc where you have control over whether the subtitles are on or off. Disc 3 has the karaoke version of the end credits, and that has the same deal with its subtitling.

Conclusion

Now is the time to keep it brief, partially because of my annoyance with Kazé’s lack of quality, but mostly because this review can’t do Mawaru Penguindrum justice. Just as I suspected from a Kunihiko Inuhara creation, this is dense, esoteric, complex and multi-layered. Watching it just once is no way to truly comprehend it, and watching it for a review, with pen and pad at hand, and keeping an eye out for technical issues as well as evaluating the content, is going to result in an even less satisfying appraisal of the show. Add to that, this is just part 1 of the series, and following an in at the deep end beginning, the story hoards its secrets assiduously, giving with one hand and taking with the other, demanding that the viewer work at comprehending it, rather than dishing out its narrative on a plate. By the end of this half of the series, the pieces are only just beginning to come together, only the broadest outlines of the overall picture are revealed, and after the initial confusion, you might just get a tinge of satisfaction, the impression that you might just have figured out where this series is going. Of course the next episode may just turn up and prove you wrong, but this is really one series that needs to be judged in its entirety, not by halves, and certainly not piecemeal.


The narrative is fairly easy to grasp. Himari Takakura, little sister and apple of her brothers’ eyes is terminally ill, dies, and then comes back to life courtesy of a novelty penguin hat. Possessed by a mysterious personality, she demands that the twins find something called a Penguindrum, in exchange for permanently saving Himari’s life. So it is that each episode, the brothers will be pulled into an alternate reality where Himari (plus hat) will reveal the latest ‘Survival Tactic’, the next mission that will take them closer to finding the Penguindrum. So far so surreal. No one actually knows what the Penguindrum is, and they get three ‘invisible’ penguin helpers to assist them on these missions, all somehow reflecting the siblings’ differing personalities.


The first Survival Tactic is to obtain a certain diary from a schoolgirl named Ringo Oginome. First they have to shadow her, search her possessions, and then get closer to her. She seems like an ordinary schoolgirl at first, but quickly reveals a darker, more worrying side. She’s a stalker, a girl in love with the boy that tutored her when she was younger. Now Tabuki is a schoolteacher, Kanba and Shoma’s teacher to be exact, which makes things complex. Ringo’s obsessed to the point that she spends her nights camped out under Tabuki’s apartment, and it soon turns out that her plan to seduce him is carefully documented in the diary that the brothers need. She isn’t beyond enlisting Shoma’s aid in breaking Tabuki up from Yuri, the actress he is engaged to, and getting him to fall for her instead, with the promise of the diary.


But things are never that easy. It turns out that there are other people after the Penguindrum, other factions involved in all this. Another girl named Natsume is going around with a penguin helper of her own, erasing the memories of Kanba’s old girlfriends, while trying to get the diary for herself. Himari isn’t the only one who issues Survival Tactics when she puts on a novelty penguin hat, and a librarian named Sanetoshi Watase has an interest in Himari, and a part to play in this. The characters are only placed on the board at this point, and how they will play the game is yet to be seen. One thing does become clear, these aren’t just random characters, they have intertwined and unexpected destinies, as well as a shared past that are only just touched on as this half of the series concludes. It also becomes clear that the conflict between fate and free will has significance in the story, and how that manifests is yet to be revealed.


Mawaru Penguindrum is art expressed as anime. You can’t judge whether this is a masterpiece or pretentious folly just by watching half of it alone, and the answer to whether it is a masterpiece or not will be different for everyone that watches it. Indeed just what this show means, what lies under its story will also differ depending on the viewer. Beneath its anime conventions lies complexity and layering that you have to think about, unravel, contemplate and mull over. This is a show where everything means something, or can be made to mean something by the viewer. The imagery, the camera angles, the dialogue, the artwork, it is all weighted with intent and meaning. Sentai’s translation of it, the subtitles and the dub have raised enough controversies of their own. Of course the onscreen text all means something as well. And thanks to Kazé’s usual ineptitude, if you watch the Japanese version, most of the on screen text is not captioned. If you want to know what the little penguin captions say, what the subway moving adverts say, what that notepaper on the old guy getting a blowjob says, you’ll have to watch the English dub and hope that it’s sign translated there. That’s not an easy prospect given that Kazé lock these discs. You effectively will have to watch the same episode twice, and put up with that dubious dub.


I hate having to say this, and I would much rather that a domestic release be worthy of purchase, but this release of Penguindrum really isn’t. If you are a fan of this show, then you will want the release in as good as quality as possible, and questionable though aspects of the Sentai release are, it is better than this. If you are curious about Penguindrum, and want to see if it is for you, then this is alright for renting, but when it comes to purchasing, look abroad. Besides, Kazé are only releasing this on DVD, other territories get it on Blu-ray, albeit reverse importation hobbled 1080i interlaced releases. Anecdotally, Sentai’s Blu-ray has less than stellar video quality, but it does have both of its soundtracks as lossless. Siren Visual in Australia have re-mastered their 1080i release, and its video is purportedly better, but the English dub on that is Dolby Digital lossy. On the other hand, the Italian Blu-ray is apparently 1080p, which is good if you can speak Italian, although in this case being fluent in Japanese would be of more use.

Is Mawaru Penguindrum worth buying? Ask me after I’ve seen part 2.