Erotically inclined series Mawaru Penguindrum returns with its usual round of perverse antics and penguins – alongside a fair bit of abstract Ringo nudity reminiscent to some finer paintings.
This eigth episode of penguin related affairs focuses on the expected pair of Ringo and Shouma – Shouma has reached a point he’s fed up with Ringo’s idiotic criminal activities. However after a quick babble with Kanba, he comes to realize what he’s known for a while now – he has no other choice. Thus his Ringo “babysitting”, or rather, enslavement, continues.
Ringo has become completely distressed as Tabuki moves in with his misleadingly named heterosexual fiance Yuri. Ringo’s newly crafted master-plan out of desperation for the success of her “Project M” involves essentially raping Tabuki by any means possible. Her intended course of action to accomplish this goes into effect immediately – she, while accompanied by Shouma, decides to visit Tabuki at his new residence, yet she doesn’t go empty handed.
She brings with her a gift – once which Shouma finds rather suspicious, and considering her mental instability, his worries are far from unfounded.
As they arrive and begin to engage in menial chatter amongst themselves, Ringo offers forth her boxed item of gratuity. The identity of this mysterious object turns out to be a fairly robust in appearance cake. Once the cake is out, the guys go down – Shouma, Tabuki, and perhaps even the penguin, are all knocked out, presumably from having ingested the poisonously infected pastry. Shouma and the penguin mildly recover to continue their quest.
Shouma starts to ease his way around the penthouse – he’s unable to walk, resorting to more or less what can be described as “shimmying” his way around to the room where Ringo is diabolically stripping nude and equipping a blond wig. It becomes a quick, short lived struggle between a scantily clad Ringo and an intoxicated Shouma over Tabuki’s virginity. Luckily for Tabuki, his beloved Yuri arrives – prompting Shouma and Ringo to escape.
Outside in the heavy rain, another conflict arises between the two over the diary and their individual ideals. Ringo’s diary falls many floors down to the soaked concrete – yet surprisingly, as she rushes down and recovers it, a motorcycling masked side-character appears from the darkness and ends up tearing the diary in half during an attempted theft of the tome. Although not taking it in its entirety, this unknown fellow does secure the stolen half torn with their hands they drive off in the rain.
Ringo despairingly walks out into the street with her damaged diary – completely oblivious to the oncoming vehicle, yet in that split-second of her impending death, Shouma dashes in to take the hit in her place.
This episode does a fair amount of great things – the diary is finally moving within the story after having idling for quite some time. Not only that, Ringo’s reached a total dead end with her obsession for Tabuki while the other events of this episode seemingly solidify her romantic angle with Shouma.
Her facial expression as she comes to comprehend the situation around her, Shouma having been struck by a car, is beyond what the word “devastated” could describe.
