Penguin no Mondai
This is one weird show. Sometimes it is painfully predictable, at others funny in a bizarre, unexpected way. Things happen like Beckham finding a suitcase full of money or meeting his evil brother. The OP sequence is idiotically simplistic (the lyrics basically consist of a total of three words), yet somehow hypnotizing. We leap right into the fray, with Beckham in a school classroom. Where did he come from? Is he really a penguin? Why is he allowed to attend school? Those trivial issues are ignored as Beckham does both the most stupid and the most unpredictable things imaginable--the sheer craziness is hilarious. Well, hilarious and/or having the effect of fingernails on a chalkboard; it's hard to say for certain which. Despite the ultra crude animation and simplistic, cutesy character designs, I don't think this was meant for children, not unless Japanese children are already familiar with concepts like "stalking". I've come to think of PnM as a sort of endurance test; the good and the bad points of the show kind of cancel each other out with the result that I want to watch it, but not very much. Five minutes of this stuff would have been about right for me, but this goes on for ten. Still, I am sometimes pleasantly surprised by the laughs which I get out of something which I was certain would be childish and crude.
Last updated Tuesday, September 02 2008. Created Sunday, April 20 2008.
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