Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

Short Synopsis: Paris is big. Mina isn’t there yet. Porfy’s out of money. So yeah, he’s still going to have to kill some time.
Highlights: Calm before the storm!!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Porfy no Nagai Tabi is a very good series, but as I’ve mentioned before: overall just isn’t as good as Les Miserables, but one thing that it did do right was the OP: it fits for the entire series. In Les Miserables, people at one point were fighting and dying for what they believed in, and the OP still showed a bunch of little girls. ^^;

The episode starts as Porfy walks around one of the rich parents of Paris. Obviously, it’s not the most wanted part of the town by fortune tellers, so everyone acts annoyed at him, especially if he continues to bug them. A kind baker then directs him to the right places, and how it’s not the time for the fortune tellers to show up yet. Porfy then feeds some of the local pigeons and gets reminded of Apollo again.

That evening, Porfy sees the first cards since his arrival at Paris and idiotically mistakes the owner as Carlos. The supposed “Carlos” pushes Porfy away, who then hits one of the waiters, dropping one of his dishes. The waiter is very annoyed, although Porfy doesn’t seem to realize this because all he’s interested in is the food he just ruined: it’s Greek. Porfy says that he came from Greece, but the waiter obviously couldn’t care less. He then forces Porfy to the cook. Since Porfy doesn’t have any money and is familiar with the Greek dishes, he offers him a job. Porfy’d rather search for Mina, but the waiter, Xalupurous (Christ, what a difficult name), reckons that he can just search for Mina if he’s not working.

Alex(?), the cook, then shows him around and offers him a bit of food, since he’s a nice guy. It turns out that the restaurant desperately needed a new waiter since they recently sacked one of their old staff, and none of the French people was able to remember the right dishes. While Porfy washes the dishes, he chats a bit with Alex. It turns out that he was born in France, but his parents came from Greece. Porfy then accidentally breaks one of the dishes, making the waiter (I’ll just call him the waiter, since Xalopuro-thingy is just too complicated) gets even more angry. Later, when Porfy is peeling potatoes, he complains again because there’s too much of the potato wasted this way. The waiter then sends him to take away the dishes that are done.

One of the guests, reading a book, is getting bothered by a drunk. They struggle a bit, and she eventually pushes him onto one of the other tables. She however gets blamed for what the drunk did. The waiter tells her to leave, and even though Porfy tries to say that it wasn’t her fault, the waiter doesn’t listen and the woman leaves in anger, leaving her book. Porfy then brings it back to her.

A bit later, Porfy and Alex are finally done with the dishes. The waiter then pays Porfy with an incredibly small amount, due to the plates he broke and dishes he wasted and because of the book he brought back to the woman (he wasn’t supposed to). He then orders Porfy to be on early the job the next day as well. Porfy says that he doesn’t have a place to stay, but the waiter refuses to let him stay at the restaurant. Porfy then walks away, and runs into the woman from before again, who wants to thank him for bringing back the book. Apparently, she has been waiting for him, and overheard how he doesn’t have a place to stay. She introduces herself as Rose.

Porfy then tells her about how he’s searching for his sister, and lost just about everything, but Rose tells him to cheer up. She shows him around the house, and suggests how he should sleep on the couch in the living room, and of course take a bath, since he’s been sleeping outside all this while. When Porfy is watching outside, she takes him to the roof where they can get a better view.

They look at the stars for a bit, and then Rose says that she’s about to get to work. She puts on lipstick, and notes that it’s hard for a woman to be living alone. When she’s left, Porfy notices one of her paintings which has been flipped over. One of the faces of the painting has been crossed out with lipstick, and looks a lot like the actress Mina used to admire and the episode ends.

So yeah, it was a bit coincidental, out of all the woman Porfy could have ran into, but it’s a fascinating idea nonetheless, and the sacrifice the series has to make for it is more than worth it. I really like how, just before the finale of this show, the series decides to reserve two episodes to flesh out Mina’s love form movies a bit, by giving a bit of background for her favourite actress. After that, it’s really anything that could happen, and it all depends on how much time the creators want to spend on the series’ aftermath. There are seven episodes left, six if you count the next episode, which will conclude Rose’s story. I’m really curious to see how the final reunion will work out. The reunion with Alecia was downright awesome, and it’s now time to see whether the creators can make full use of nearly fifty episodes of building-up.

Short Synopsis: A certain character makes her reappearance.
Highlights: Every single scene.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10 (Fantastic)
This episode doesn’t need an elaborate summary. All that you need to know in order to understand it can easily be summarized into one paragraph:

Porfy continues travelling, but due to the loss of Apollo he forgets to take care of himself and just wants to go to Paris as soon as possible. In the end, he collapses due to fatigue as he nearly gets hit by Alecia and her father’s truck. Alecia tries to get Porfy back to consciousness, but Porfy only utters that he needs to go to Paris. The rest of the night, Alecia’s father then drives to Paris, while Alecia takes care of Porfy (SO INCREDIBLY CUTE). Porfy wakes up after having a good night’s sleep, and returns back to his senses. In Paris, he says goodbye to Alecia, and even though she wants to come with him, he declines.

First of all: PORFY YOU IDIOT! CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT ALECIA REALLY WANTED?!

Second of all, this definitely was the best episode of Porfy no Nagai Tabi since the earthquake-arc. Alecia’s return was every bit as good as I could have hoped. The summary is indeed very short, but the real power of this episode lied into the visuals, not the audio. After all, at this point, the series doesn’t need any more exposition. Enough has been said at this point, and it’s now really time for the characters to just do their thing.

Alecia was downright awesome, even though she only appeared in two episodes of this series. Her crush on Porfy was so incredibly heart-warming, and the scene of the two of them together, in the back of the truck was especially memorable . I really like how this episode also decided to go for subtle drama, and deliberately kept the mood of the entire episode dark and quiet, instead of upbeat and a bit extreme, like the previous episode.

It also seems that Mina finally returned to her senses as well, and she remembers everything that happened at the earthquake and how she saw Apollo in Rome. It really looks like the finale of this series is going to play in Paris (in other words, it’s going TO START IN THE NEXT EPISODE!!), and my guess is that the series’ big climax will be in November, where December will deal with the aftermath. My big question for that aftermath is Alecia: once everything is over, and Porfy and Mina are either together, or have split up again, will Porfy go back to Alecia. It’s just too much of a shame to leave such a beautiful romance like this.

Oh, and on a side-note: I just love how, at the end of every episode, the background artists decide to whore their awesome skills. I should have known that they’d go all out once they’d reach Paris. That bird’s eye view of Paris was downright awesome.

Short Synopsis: The reunion with Mina doesn’t become so certain anymore and Major SPOILER ahead.
Highlights: It’s finally time for the creators to use everything they’ve built up for…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Holy crap, I knew it! My suspicions became sure at the beginning of this episode: the creators have been systematically removing everything that ties Porfy and Mina to Simitra, up to the point where there were just two things left: Apollo and Apollo’s medallion that Porfy made. Yeah.

The episode starts with Porfy, arriving at a local farm, and he asks the farmer whether he can give him some water. The farmer’s wife then returns a bit later with a rumour about a small girl who travels with her fortunetelling mother in the next town. It sounds too good to e true, but Porfy goes to check it out anyway, as the farmer gives him a few apples, and he and his wife feel pity with the guy.

Meanwhile, we see Mina again. She’s inside a train, and at that point she asks Isabella to tell her fortune. The first card that she opens unfortunately happens to be the death-card (foreshadowing, anyone?). Isabella then comments on how Mina has changed a bit. She’s indeed become more open when compared to when we last saw her.

Porfy meanwhile arrives at the town from which the rumour came, and indeed the villagers seem to recognize the description Porfy gives them. Meanwhile, Isabella’s father has troubles with his back (foreshadowing, anyone?), and they decide to travel on foot because the train won’t show up. Porfy meanwhile finds the inn the rumoured Mina is staying in, though they just checked out. He manages to find them, just before they hit a bus, but like suspected, they are some completely different people.

However, they do seem to know Isabella and the others, and in fact they met them once. Especially the girl was able to accurately describe Mina. They’ve got no idea where they are now, but nevertheless, there’s a good chance that they’re going to be heading to Paris. So, Porfy plans to head North, with the assurance that Mina’s doing fine (foreshadowing… anyone?).

At the local inn, Mina enjoys Isabella’s performance, and then suddenly she breaks down due to some vision she had or something similar (foreshadowing, anyone?). A bit later, we see that Porfy’s lost in some remote forest, with a hunter nearby (if that isn’t foreshadowing, then I don’t know anymore…). Porfy runs into said hunter, who asks what he’s doing there. It turns out that Porfy’s on some private property of that hunter, and even though Porfy tries to apologize and tell him that he’s lost, the hunter doesn’t believe him, and thinks that he’s the guy who has been stealing from his lands. He then sees Apollo and shoots him.

Meanwhile, something strange happens with Mina, and she somehow seems to feel Apollo’s death, and this time, she breaks down completely. She even calls out Porfy, for the first time since they separated. We switch back to Porfy, as he has just created a grave for Apollo. We never see him cry about it, nor do we know whether he did or not. And the episode ends.

I must say that even though there were so many signs of foreshadowing, Apollo’s death still made a lot of impact there. I think that this episode also introduced the final arc of this series. There first was the Greece-arc, which was slice of life, then the Earthquake-arc came, which was downright sad, the Slow Travel-arc then came, in which the stories took up three or four episodes, then the Fast Travel-arc, which was instead episodic, and now the Final Arc comes, which focuses on both Porfy and Mina, travelling to Paris, and it’s probably going to go back even more to the Earthquake-arc, but with an even more depressing mood. The question is of course going to be: does the final arc have what it takes to surpass the amazing Earthquake-arc?

With this episode, we also know for sure: SOMETHING is going to have to happen to Isabella’s father. There’s no other way to interpret his aching back. I also predict that whatever it is that will happen to him, it’s going to trigger Carlos’ time-bomb. What surprised me was how mellow Carlos was in this episode. There wasn’t even a bad word that came out of him.

There’s also something I’ve been wondering for episodes right now, because I’m also watching Perrine Monogatari at this point. Porfy grew up in Greece, so he’s not used to bad weather. Now that he’s in France, and it’s starting to become Winter, then won’t the guy catch a cold at one point? It’s strange, because there have been no signs foreshadowing this yet, and at the same time with nine episodes left, there still is enough airtime left for that to happen.

I’m also wondering: Mina’s death card was about Apollo… but did the creators mean more by that? The creators have been systematically killing everything from Simitra so far. Will they also give Porfy and Mina the same treatment. Like mentioned above: their reunion suddenly doesn’t become so certain anymore.

Short Synopsis: In the city, Porfy works at a local car mechanic.
Highlights: Talk about striking when you least expect it!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Okay, so I’ve gotten a lot of varied feedback on the new episode rating scale, some positive and some negative reactions. As a result, I’ve changed the scale a bit yet again, where anything above or equal to 7/10 means that I liked the series, as opposed to 6/10 (which was too low) or 8/10 (which meant me handing out only 8/10s for 95% of the cases). I’ll probably repeat this message in my next post, because only three people seem to read my entries about Porfy.

In any case, this episode of Porfy managed to surprise me yet again. As for the reason, here’s the summary. There’s a lot of talking in this episode again, so I hope I got everything right.

We never get to see the woman from the previous episode again, but Porfy managed to find his job, and is working at a local car repair shop along with another guy, who seems to be slacking off quite often. He tells Porfy about a local legend of a female thief roaming around one of the town’s buildings. He doesn’t like his boss either, but it seems that that day he tells Porfy that rumour turns out to be his last day of work.

That night, when Porfy’s trying to sleep, he can’t, because said guy makes too much noise. He then goes to sleep in one of the cars that they’ve been repairing. Unfortunately for him, said female thief has set her eyes on that car, and drives off with it, unaware that Porfy’s also in it. When he wakes up, he obviously tries to stop her, and through the chaos they crash into a tree, with Porfy unconscious.

When Porfy wakes up, the woman put some band-aid on him, and run into her hiding-place along with him. It’s a place in the sewer that was used as a hideout for the resistance during the war. Now for the complicated part: the woman is named Marianne, and she has a daughter Kristel. Apparently, she had her from a German soldier. Because of the hate between the French and the Germans, Marianne wasn’t welcome in her town anymore, and went off to work abroad, leaving Kristel in the town to be cared for at the local church. The townspeople, however, betrayed Marianne’s requests and sold Kristel off to a rich family in Germany. At least, that’s what makes the most sense. I’m not sure how exactly the woman became an escaped prisoner, but I suspect that she was put into prison because she sided with that German officer, and escaped because she heard of her daughter. A strong mother who’s willing to do anything for her kid.

We then switch to two policemen who are apparently on the case of getting Marianne back to prison. Porfy meanwhile has agreed to help Marianne meet Kristel, and they go to the local church, where the German couple is coming to pick her up. Porfy acts as a decoy for these policemen, while Marianne finally gets to see Kristel, though this turns out to be a bit different from expected. It seems that the people from the church have told Kristel that her mother is currently in a foreign country, and that her mother is going to come back to her soon (referring to her release as a prisoner, probably). What’s more: Kristel’s new parents are very rich, and she’ll be able to live a much better life than living as the daughter of an escaped prisoner who’s constantly on the run. At that point, something snaps at her.

Porfy has meanwhile succeeded in shaking off the policemen a bit by using the local goats of the Church. Marianne then runs into him, and from out of nowhere she starts attacking the guy, and blames him for taking Kristel away from her, even though he isn’t the one to blame. I’m not exactly sure what she said because she talked nonsense, but it definitely made a huge impression on Porfy to see a once strong woman change so suddenly.

And just when you think the episode is over Porfy runs into the owner of the car repair shop who comes to collect a part of Porfy’s reward for catching Marianne (he did use the car in the repair-shop for that, after all) and to deliver the message that the other mechanic-guy robbed his place, INCLUDING Porfy’s rucksack. After a bit of searching, he finds the rucksack shredded and his father’s tools gone.

Holy crap, the creators really picked a nice time for that. Throughout the entire series, Porfy had continued to run into people who tried to go after his rucksack for various reasons, but every time he managed to pull through and got it back. I should have KNOWN that this of course was just another part of a build-up, just like the rest of the series. Of course the creators wouldn’t just let him keep it like that if they kept showing small hints over and over again that showed that Porfy shouldn’t take his rucksack for granted.

This series is really getting interesting, now that the building-up is finally over and it can start using all the things it built up for. There are ten episodes left with this, so there really isn’t much time left for this series to just goof off with random stories anymore, and something tells me that the real meat of the series is about to arrive. There are at least three major events that are about to happen: Alecia’s return, the explosion of Carlos, the walking time-bomb, and the reunion of Porfy and Mina. Then the creators are also probably going to use Apollo for something, and I’m going to eat my hat if the owl-carving isn’t going to come into play at some point.

The thing I also like about this series: Porfy was devastated at the loss of his tools, that’s what the end of this episode showed pretty clearly. And yet, I know that he isn’t going to keep on angsting about it. He’s a strong guy, and in the next episode, he’s just going to continue travelling, and has just become a bit stronger. That’s INDEED how good angst should be used.

Short Synopsis: Porfy goes along to the salesman’s home and wrecks a potential marriage.
Highlights: The pacing really gets faster and faster as the show goes on!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Well, there you have it. A few episodes ago, I wondered whether the soundtrack would change, now that Porfy’s in France. And here you go: this episode starts playing the accordions; I should have known.

In any case, the salesman grabs Porfy firmly, but he does offer him a ride to his house. There, it turns out that he has a daughter and two sons, who are living in a rather poor house. They offer him a couch to sleep on, and when he wakes up, the two sons have drawn a moustache on it. The salesman has already left for another job. Porfy then goes with the two of them (after having washed his face of course) into the town, to ask for Mina. He then finds out that they too don’t have a mother. When they look at one of the cars at the local toy store, he decides to make one from wood for them.

Back home, it turns out that Cecile, the daughter, is quite similar to Mina. She’s gentle, and likes acting and movies. She also dreams to become an actress, but she knows that she’s never going to make it. She even recites her favourite movie in front of Porfy just like Mina did. When she does, however, the owner of the house they’re living in pops up and tells her that her father is three months behind on rent.

A little while later, Porfy’s done with the car, and the two sons are very enthusiastic to see it, especially because it’s modelled after their father’s truck. Cecile offers Porfy to stay for as long as he wants, but Porfy leaves immediately after he realizes that he’s taking food from a very poor family, especially after the little sons start complaining that they haven’t had enough dinner.

We then see Porfy as he walks across a (beautiful) lake, and he sees a boat there. The only problem is that his money has finally run out, so he just goes there to look. He there meets a couple that’s about to marry, though the guy is telling a bunch of lies about his supposed family in Greece that was struck by an earthquake, in order to get some money from the woman, Matilda. Porfy, coming from Greece and having endured that earthquake, unknowingly exposes these lies while worrying about them, and Matila slaps the guy. But as it turns out, Matila was the one who was rejected because of Porfy’s meddling, and not the other way around. Matilda actually liked how he was nice to her.

Still, Matilda ends up buying a ticket for Porfy. (At this point, we don’t hear Porfy telling about his sister anymore, so I assume this gets omitted from now on). Matilda asks him what he’s going to do next, and so Porfy says that he needs to work for a bit of more money, and she happens to know someone who can hire him. The episode then ends as the boat arrives at yet another beautifully drawn town.

That beginning of the episode was really a nostalgic moment, which anyone will probably recognize from their childhood. That “oh, I screwed up and he’s going to punish me”-feeling, while the salesman just kept silent. He’s quite an interesting character; he hardly said anything and just accepted that he was fooled by Porfy.

This is also a thing that only took me so long to realize, but the pacing of this series just keeps going faster and faster. The series started off with a very sloooooooow slice-of-life arc that took up 12 episodes. The disaster-arc was also pretty long. Then came travel-arcs from three to four episodes, until Rome, after which the show became episodic. And now, as the series enters its final quarter, the stories become even too short for individual episodes, and every episode shows Porfy as he meets two different places. The only exception was when Porfy met the car mechanic and the woman in the abandoned city, but if you consider those as one standalone arc, then everything falls into pieces perfectly. Let me just say that this definitely ISN’T something I expected this series’ finale to turn into!

At this point, I consider Les Miserables to be a bit better than Porfy no Nagai Tabi, but that’s only because of the longer travel-arcs. Not only was their pacing slow, but their writing was just way too sloppy for this series, whereas Les Miserables was very thoroughly built up through its entire story, and had some very effective climaxes because of it. I don’t expect Porfy to become better than Les Miserables in its final quarter, simply because Les Miserables surpassed itself in just about every aspect for its final quarter, but it’s nevertheless getting interesting where the creators will be going. The pacing will definitely something to look forward to, as it removed just about the only flaw of this series out of these travel-arcs: the incredibly slow pacing. The creators have also shown that they’re masters at building up, so really… what the heck could they be planning?

Short Synopsis: Porfy meets a bunch of idiots and grows as a character.
Highlights: You really don’t suspect this from the WMT!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Whoa, Porfy! This isn’t something I saw coming. Bloody hell! With this episode, Porfy no Nagai Tabi really set itself apart from the other World Masterpiece Theatres, or at least the ones I’ve seen. The World Masterpiece Theatre may be an incredibly well written and versatile franchise, there’s one common theme that returns in every one of them I’ve seen so far: no matter how much they try to blend the borders between good and bad, the protagonist is always on the right side of justice. Whatever happens, the protagonist is a character who always tries the most noble of all solutions. And here Porfy comes.

But first a summary of the first half of the episode. Porfy is walking, and he’s getting rather tired. He sees a farm, and decides to stay there. Nobody’s home, but he sees a bed and decides to rest there. He gets woken up by a guy who looks like he’s in his late twenties. Porfy immediately wants to leave, but before he does he asks about Mina, who the guy obviously hasn’t seen. He then notices that the guy’s a painter, who’s much into modern art. Porfy then shows him some of his sketches (apparently, he’s been sketching in his free time), and they’re of course hilariously bad, though they’re getting better.

Porfy then tells the guy that he’s going to France, to search for his sister. It then turns out that the guy has the same plans, and he plans to head to Paris and study there to become a famous painter. Then, however, it seems that there’s more going on, when his angry mother comes to bother him because he didn’t show up for dinner again. He acts really rude against his mother, and claims that he needs to work hard to study for the concourse he’s entering. When the woman leaves, though, he doesn’t go to study, but instead happily chats with Porfy and goes to sleep afterwards.

Porfy is not upset because the guy is a lazy bum, but more because of the way he acts against his mother (having lost his parents, this obviously is understandable). His mother is also really unhappy with him, how he keeps slacking off. The next morning, Porfy prepares to leave because of this, but before he does, the guy’s mother shows up to bother him again, and he again tells her that he doesn’t have the time, and that he plans to leave her. He tells her how he regrets being born from his mother, and how he’d be able to live the easy life if he was born in Paris. He then remembers Porfy again, and invites himself to go with Porfy to Paris. Porfy then loses it and starts yelling at him, how he still has his parents. After that he immediately leaves the house.

Next up, Porfy walks past a suspicious-looking guy, and indeed he invites Porfy to sleep in his car. And indeed, he’s just trying to lead Porfy to a desolate part of the forest to rob him. Porfy however, notices this in time by questioning him about the car he’s in, and asking some smart questions about it. He tries to run away, but gets caught, but in the end he manages to fend off the attacker with a big stick and a lot of effort.

Porfy then sees a vegetable salesman, who is sitting by the road with his goods. The salesman hasn’t seen Mina, since he came from France. He buys one tomato from him, and then gets an interesting idea. He moves a big branch onto the road. When the salesman arrives with his truck, he stops to move the branch and in the meantime Porfy sneaks under some of the bags of what I assume is flower of some sort. The truck then arrives at the border. The guy seems to be familiar at the border, and the border-guards seem to know him. That’s why they don’t make too much effort in checking his load, so Porfy managed to get away undiscovered.

Porfy screws up when he tries to get off the truck, though. The salesman stops for a bit and Porfy tries to sneak off, but he’s too infatuated with the strange substance called “snow” that he forgets that he’s not supposed to be seen. He gets caught and the episode ends.

Really, Porfy has taken some relatively huge gambles in this episode. He could have just asked the guy to hide him, or waited for another car, but instead risked being discovered, and so got the quickest way across the French border. I must say that I like that a lot: Porfy is no longer the goodie two-shoes, and instead is starting to see that there are times when you need to ignore rules. It’s interesting: I always expected Porfy to just grow in a straightforward line: in the beginning, he’d meet guys who were out to get him, which made him stronger and less naive (which he also displayed in this episode). And yet at the same time, he heads into an entirely different but at the same time realistic direction.

This begs the question: what the heck have the creators in store for Mina?