Well finally! The thing that should have happened last episode happens in this one instead! They succeeded in getting Ringo into their house, with her bag and presumably the Penguindrum, and yet they had to wait until THIS episode to put the damn hat on Himari and get the Survival Strategy to kick in, and even when they did it was by ACCIDENT. Sheesh.
I love the expression on Himari's face right now.
I can’t really call this episode filler; in fact I have no reason to call it filler. There should be a name for those episodes that do in fact have bits of plot to them, but don’t seem to directly advance them at all. Because that’s basically all that happened. There are a lot of little pieces of information in this episode; the kind that you completely forget about until later when you’re like “Ohhhhhhh yeeeaahhhhh”.
You think you're supposed to be paying attention to Ringo, but in fact your looking at Himari going "OH DAMN SH*T'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN!"
Like in that one episode of Star Trek TNG “Defector”, there’s a quick five-second sentence when Captain Picard mentions he’s going to take a communication from some Klingon captains in his ready room, and then it is never mentioned again until the climax when they are head to head with the Romulans and then Klingons decloak and Picard is all like “WHAT CHU GONNA DO NOW SUCKAH!?!”. Though he never actually said that, and I just completely went out of my way to make a Star Trek reference, but regardless…
If this was reality, half of his body would have been ripped off by the pavement at this point.
Misdirection is a common thing, but the entire episode is full of it. Is that orange-haired girl killing people with a slingshot? Where is Kanba getting the rent money for their house that was conveniently delivered to him in a penguin-stamped envelope? Oh, and whatever happened to that inferred incest from way back in episode one? You going anywhere with that?
DUN DUN DAAAAAAAAAAA!
And what about penguin hat herself? She’s all mystical and powerful enough to stop a girl from dying, and create a magical train realm in their living room, yet she can’t stop Ringo from running up to her and punching her in the face?
BOOM! BITCHSLAP! (Ok, she didn't actually hit her, she just ripped the hat off her head but w/e its more fun to think of this as a cat fight.)
Still, it makes for an entertaining twenty minutes. Now to catch up on everything else…
