Mawaru Penguindrum - Destination Fate - Final Thoughts

When I was watching this anime, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I wasn't even planning to watch this series to begin with. But after looking at some of the images and screenshots, there were very bold and colorful, and had some cute penguins in it, I was like, why not, I'll watch this. 

Story: Kanba, Shoma, and Himari Takakura are siblings living together under the same roof without any adult supervision. Himari has a poor health condition which doctors cannot find a cure for and she has a short amount of time to live. So, Kanba and Shoma does their best to take care of their sister. 

One day, during their trip to the aquarium, Himari collapses and was quickly sent to the hospital which later she was declared dead. However, all of the sudden, Himari wakes up while wearing the penguin hat that her brother bought for her from the Aquarium's souvenir shop. A different voice speaks through Himari and she yells out "Survival Strategy," which takes Kanba and Shoma into a different dimension. The person who was possessing Himarai tells that if they want their sister to live a long life, then they would have to find the "Penguin Drum." The brothers has no idea what this is or what it looks like. But she further tells them that a girl named Ringo Oginome possesses the "Penguin Drum." This sends the boys on a mission to find the "Penguin Drum" and hoping that this will save Himari.  As well as three penguins that tags along with them on their fate journey.

Thoughts: From the start, I was like what the heck am I watching, it makes no sense what-so-ever, but around midway through the series, the story finally starts to make a little sense. However, this whole fantasy theme  sort of reminds me of the "Alice in Wonderland" type of themes. Alice ends up tumbling down the rabbit hole and find herself in Wonderland, meeting different characters and witnessing events that don't seem to make any sense to her. But there were symbolism and meanings that goes behind each event. It's kind of similar to what was was happening in this anime, but here in the Penguindrum world, real life and fantasy intertwines with each other. The characters stumbles upon into the Penguindrum world, from time to time, where their back story, flashbacks, and secrets were revealed.

There were tons of symbolism, metaphors and foreshadowing going on in every episode. There were some basic and obvious symbols that I understood and a lot more other symbolism and metaphors that I didn't even understand. I definitely needed to look up some Mawaru Penguindrum  references on the symbolism. Then, I found even more deep analysis that my mind cannot process on. But still, even after watching the ending. I still didn't understand what was going on. However, the strangeness of this story was unique and I had let go of my logic and just go with it.

Here, we have many variety of characters and I loved each and everyone of them. Even though some of them has flaws, but I was rooting for them until the very end. However, I liked how each character has their own unique style of animation when it comes to revealing their back story. The way they represent each symbols and metaphors for different characters were intriguing and poetic. And, it just feels so surreal. It has a wonderful cast of characters and they were fantastic.

It's an odd-ball show, but it was very entertaining. This show goes through many different kinds of emotions. Like, it began in all seriousness, and the next thing you know, it turns into comic mischief, and then it flips around to the most shocking and disturbing moments. It had a lot of unpredictable moments in story which I liked because almost every episode ends in a cliff hanger and it always manages to surprise me. I had no clue what was going on or what was going to happen next, but I enjoyed this wild ride. 

This is definitely one of my top favorite anime of 2011. I think that the perfect phrase to describe how great this show was, as one of the characters favorite slogan to say, it was "Fabulous Max!"