Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 50

Short Synopsis: Porfy tries to find out what happened to Mina, while the creators are having the time of their lives teasing the hell out of us viewers.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
OMG! OMG OMG! This was such an awesome episode! Oh, the irony, this episode really showed the big strength of the World Masterpiece Theatre series: you SO want these kids to meet each other again, and time and time again, the creators find some thing that gets in their way.

Porfy is really excited as he brings Rose to the poster he found at the end of the last episode. Her hair changed, but he’s nearly sure that it’s Mina, though Rose doesn’t believe it (after all, what would she be doing in a movie?). She tells him that he’s going to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out to be her, but in the end he manages to convince her to accompany him in order to watch the movie.

After watching the movie, Porfy’s sure: that Mina is his sister. Rose can still hardly believe it, and manages to convince him to get some sleep before trying to find her. Mina meanwhile gets complimented by Tiffany at her singing ability, and Tiffany assures her that she’ll once get the chance to sing in front of a large crowd. The manager then arrives, carrying a box of fan letters. Most of them are for Tiffany, but there also are a few for Mina among them. Unfortunately, none come from Porfy. But then again, the movie just premiered, so there’s plenty of time left.

The next morning Porfy is very early to bother Rose, who wants to sleep. So instead, she tells him to go and check out the movie studios, where she might be. When he arrives, he however is just taken as an ordinary fan by one of the guards, and even telling the guard about his sister obviously doesn’t help. Porfy tries a bit more, but eventually he gives up when the guard is distracted by other people.

Meanwhile, Natalie is happy for Mina for the amount of fan letters she received, but Mina is still feeling down because she didn’t see Porfy. Natalie then asks whether her brother was the only reason for her to start acting, and that she doesn’t seem to realize how special it is to be able to act with Tiffany. The fans might become disappointed when they learn about that.

Rose meanwhile didn’t realize that Porfy would take her seriously to go to the movie studio, and she’s really worried when he leaves. When Porfy fills her in about what happened, she offers him to contact a few former friends of her who still might know a thing or two. However, then she asks Porfy what he’s planning to do once he finds Mina. Porfy then answers that he’s going to return to Greece. This however is something that Rose didn’t anticipate, and even though Porfy doesn’t have anything he left behind there, he still wants to return, and she immediately starts acting all strange.

When Rose meets her friend Amelie, she really finds out that the child is called Mina. Instead of telling the good news to Porfy afterwards, though, she tells HIM THAT HE WAS WRONG, and the girl turned out to be SOMEONE ELSE! This was in the hope to get Porfy to stay with her, but in the end, it just means that he’s going to continue to search for her. Mina meanwhile is still thinking about how blunt Natalie was to her, and she’s beginning to take joy in acting, and is beginning to understand what Natalie told her.

The episode ends with Porfy, running into none other than ZAIMIS. Yes! Zaimis is back!

Really, I first thought that Rose would be able to get Porfy and Mina back together, but instead, she turned out to be getting in his way. This is why it was so important for her to be well developed, and for her to create a genuine bond with Porfy: her whole affair with Tiffany didn’t just make her to hate acting and Tiffany, but it also made her afraid to lose any more close friends, up to the point were she made such a foolish claim to Porfy. And also: Zaimis’ return has to have some sort of meaning. What exactly is his role in these final two episodes?

And holy crap! It only occurred just to me, but Porfy’s wishes to go back to Greece and Mina’s wishes to continue acting don’t go along together at all. The two may meet each other again, that’s for sure, but it’s a whole different question about whether the two of them are actually going to reunite, and live together. It would mean that Porfy would just follow Mina around, unable to do anything. I know this series at this point, and the creators wouldn’t have spent so much effort on Mina, accepting the acting business if there wasn’t some sort of hidden meaning.