Trauma? I don't have one

Several months of work have paid off in this video. In it, I discuss Penguindrum's relationship to real-world events and social trends. Since I made it for YouTube, I go over information that I'm sure most Penguindrum-heads are already familiar with. I did, however, do a lot of research for the video, so there may be suprises even for hardcore fans. You can use the chapters to navigate to the parts that interest you most.

hey, thanks for the ask!

first of all, don't feel bad. I watched Penguindrum in 2020, and I didn't even like it until 2022. at first it grated on me, until eventually it finally clicked. I've had a long time to stew on the series, which is why I'm able to write about it :)

Penguindrum is scattered. you can see this in its aesthetic (god it's all over the place) and in its plot (so many weird rabbit holes). it may not be possible to "make sense of it" entirely, though I do think that its thematic elements blend together by the end.

Penguindrum's excess of "noise" may be related to the difficulty of its production. for one, Ikuhara was all over the place creatively as it was being made, at least according to staff members. also, its chaos may have been employed purposefully to disguise its controversial subject matter.

this interview pre-dates Penguindrum, but Takemiya Keiko told Ikuhara that she ended up deciding that she couldn't understand Utena intellectually and would just have to "feel it" instead, and Ikuhara took this comment as the "highest praise." I read a lot about Penguindrum and its historical background, but that didn't make me like it--only gaining an appreciation for its emotional landscape did that for me. don't feel pressured to come up with a grand theory, just try to feel what the characters feel and experience the catharsis of the finale.

as to the supernatural/spiritual elements, you don't have to take them literally. "God" in this context is just a personification of the way things are--the idea that some entity must be deciding the outcome of events (a very human way to understand the world). to conceptualize the idea of fate, I would think of it in terms of time.

time is one of RGU's major themes, but Penguindrum deals with it too. are we bound by the past? is the future already set in stone?

I've had some strange experiences in my life which I feel are echoed in Ikuhara works. it's very difficult to put into words, but here goes. I think that the characters in Penguindrum feel trapped by an inexorable sense that they're moving towards a disaster, something they cannot prevent. they try to fight against this, or they give up and resign themselves to it. the idea that "there is only one way things could ever be" seems frightening.

but by the end, they come to see fate in a different light. the truth is, "the past," "the present," and "the future" are all divisions made by the human mind, based on how we experience the world. these "time periods" are actually co-existent. this means that it is the case that there is only one way things could ever go (fiction is an interesting way to explore this, since a story as experienced by the audience has a predetermined beginning, middle, and end). however, once you see this as truth, it is no longer a horrible thing. it doesn't mean that we have no free will, because "the past" is no longer this separate thing which determines our lives, but instead is something still existent.

this isn't the same thing as omniscience or omnipotence, because we still live life sequentially and we are still constrained by the laws of the universe, by the actions of other people, etc. it's just that once you've had this realization, you no longer feel trapped by the continuity of time.

Shoma is the best character to demonstrate this with. he feels doomed by his fate, by his parents' actions. he can't stop being their child, he can't protect his siblings from the consequences of what they did. he thinks this means that he will never "get out of his box."

in the final episode, Shoma sees fate for what it truly is, telling his siblings "our love and our punishment too. we'll share it all. it was our beginning. it was our fate!" as in, fate isn't something to be resisted, it is there with you all along. the siblings' relationships began with a cycle of sharing the good and the bad, and it ends with it. that is what was bound to happen all along.

consider this imagery from the second Penguindrum opening:

this illustrates two ways of looking at time; is it a straight line, or is it circle? if you see time as a line, as linear only, then it is deterministic. but if it is cyclical, everything that happens, including suffering, is all a part of a great pattern. it's not going anywhere, but it should show us that everything that's ever happened and everyone that's ever lived are all one, one great process, and no piece can be separated from any other.