As Mawaru Penguindrum, draws to a close, the nagging sensation that every person in the story is somehow living in a completely different timeline is confirmed. Like a retinal afterimage, each of them appear to exist in the others’ realties – and at least two exist in most of them. Himari and Momoka do not appear to […]

Realities converge, merge and resplit on the second disk of the second Penguindrum collection. Now that we know (symbolically, at least) what Yuri and Tabuki had in common and what their goal was, the arc climaxes in an actual climax and we think…what else is there? Well…. We’ve assumed one single truth from the beginning of […]

In the first half of Penguindrum, we learned that each of the characters appeared to be existing in a wholly different reality from the characters around them. On the first disk of the second half of Penguindrum, we learn why. Himari’s health takes a turn for the worse, but that is set on the back […]

The first volume of Penguindrum comes to a close in Disk 3, by introducing two major plot complications, several new visual symbols and a twist of fate. Or should I say…destiny? We learn in a most roundabout way possible why Natsume Masako is after the diary. We see that Himari has a separate history of her own, […]