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** SPOILER FREE REVIEW**

Overview :

While watching Mawaru Penguindrum, I was stricken by the feeling that this was one of these animes that try to accomplish too many things at once. The art is beautiful, the animation is decent and the story could have been very interesting.

But they tried so hard, that the story crumbled. The characters make no sense as human beings, I feel no humanity coming from them. And the story which is told in a random order feels wrong, we are kept in the dark on purpose. There are so many questions left unanswered that by the end of the anime, after trying ... so hard to make sense of it all, I felt truly disappointed.


On to the specifics :


Story : 6/10

The story is touching, it tells us about how meddling with fate is wrong, how our bonds to one another are important. But at the same time, there are a lot of unexplained things that are brought on board.

The story is full of flashbacks that are trying to give us light on those unexplained things, but this is not nearly enough, and the fact that all the events are brought at random through flashbacks makes it even harder to understand.

I feel like too many things have been decided to the the plot's convenience, rather than to the story's understandability.

The end was however rather interesting and it may deserve your attention.

So yeah, I feel like it was a good idea at first, and that someone really tried to think this through, but they couldn't manage it properly.


Art : 10/10

Rather outstanding, full of colors and details. There are some things such as the broken glass concept and why is himari always naked at the end of the visions that I don't quite understand, but all in all, it was rather pleasant to my eyes.

The penguins were rather fun to watch and I guess their main purpose was to distract us from the psychological pressure of the story (or maybe they were there so we wouldn't pay too much attention to the plot because it was broken, but that couldn't fool me).


Animation : 8/10

Pretty good. There are moments like the Seizon Senryaku with its little jingle that are noticable in terms of outstanding animation. So overall, it is better than what I'd expect from my everyday anime.


Sound 6/10

Not much to say about it.
I didn't really enjoy the openings or the endings, even though they are correct.
And sometimes I felt like the type of background music was out of touch with the atmosphere, but that wasn't really that important.


Character 2/10

That's really what took its toll on my overall appreciation.

The characters make no sense. Their bonds to one another change non stop from friendship to hatred, or from love to disinterest, and so on. This is not natural ! You can not consider your family of yesterday as your enemies of today, it is not human.

The characters truly lack humanity, I cannot understand them properly if their train of thought doesn't reach me in an understandable way. I just felt pushed around by their ways of evolving and interracting with one another.


Enjoyment 5/10

I tried so hard to understand the story and the characters that I lost myself on the way... How can I enjoy something that doesn't make sense to me ? My eyes were very pleased by the images, yet my brain felt confused all the way through the end.


Overall 6/10

This could have been a masterpiece if it hadn't been so overcomplicated / illogical. I wish someone would take it, brush it carefuly with the comb of passion and make all those imperfection go away, because I truly feel like this could have been one hell of a ride.