Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

Short Synopsis: It’s back to travel-arcs as Porfy runs into a bunch of streetpunks.
Highlights: A travel-arc it may be, but there’s plenty of development for Porfy.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so the inevitable happened: this series returned to the travel-arcs. Still, this episode was definitely among the better travel-stories of Porfy’s journey. It’s interesting: the smaller the arcs are, the more impact they make. This episode was excellent, and let’s hope that the next arcs will be so as well.

Porfy walks around a bit, and meets a guy who has trouble with his car. The guy acts very annoyed, but when Porfy fixes it he suddenly becomes very nice. It seems that he mistook Porfy for a bunch of street punks. He offers Porfy to come by for dinner, but Porfy needs to continue on and ask for Mina. A guy, a few years older than Porfy then offers Porfy a bit of bread, and he offers to help Porfy search for his sister. The two spend some time together, and they get some ice cream together (Porfy obviously notes that his mother’s ice cream was better).

As it turns out, Guido (the guy)’s parents are gone. He lives together with other guys who like him lost his parents. He offers Porfy to spend the night there. The guys all seem scary at first, but they greet Porfy nicely, apart from one of them, who keeps glaring at him. They turn out to be travelling, just like Porfy.

That night, they eat bread and soup (which of course doesn’t taste that well). Later, when everyone’s asleep, Porfy thinks how nice it must be to be together with everyone. Guido offers Porfy to join them, but Porfy declines. He needs to search for his sister. He also reveals that when he’s found Mina, he plans to return to Greece and restart the gasoline stand (foreshadowing?).

Georgio (the angry guy) then also, when nobody watches, threatens Porfy to leave as soon as possible the next day, saying that this isn’t the place for him to be. Porfy shrugs it off, but he does intend to leave the next morning. Guido is up early enough to accompany Porfy for a bit. He then tells Porfy a story about how his parents used to love cars before they died, but that car was taken away from them. They finally managed to track down the people who stole away that car. Porfy then says that he’ll help them retrieve that car.

Guido then gives him his purple jacket to wear, while Georgio looks at him very angrily. Later, Porfy and Guido arrive at a rich-looking house and Porfy manages to break into it, and they drive away. They split up later, where Guido says that he’ll hide the car, and Porfy tells him to take care. When he returns at the hideout, everyone’s suddenly gone. After a while, a couple of angry people (among the man from before) come looking for he car. They confuse Porfy for the leader of the pack due to the purple jumper that he’s wearing.

They chase him, until Porfy reaches a dead end, but Georgio manages to save him by distracting the men with a bunch of firecrackers, and they manage to escape. Porfy asks whether Guido has betrayed him, and why he did it, but Georgio just tells him to go away as soon as possible. He then gets beaten up by Guido for being so soft on Porfy. He was the idiot that let himself get betrayed. Guido meanwhile has already forgotten Porfy’s name and the episode ends.

Trust and betrayal is really a HUGE theme of the travel-arcs in this series. They lacked in the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc, which probably is another reason why they felt dull. In this episode, everything comes together, though. Porfy gives his entire trust to the street punks, and never once critically thinks of why they’re so nice to him. Why would they give him bread if they have to feed so many mouths? And I guess that that was the purpose of the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc: they meant to show the niceness of people: people are willing to take care of others, but there are just as many people who take advantage of this.

Porfy’s really going to emerge as a stronger person after this. This episode and episode 31 were a real example of his naivety ending him up in trouble. It’s also awesome to see that the background artists could flex their creative muscles again for this episode. Some of the shots looked absolutely gorgeous, and amongst the best that this series has shown.

Oh, and on a side-note, I got rather disturbed when I checked on my google-hits a few days ago. For the past seven and a half months, the term “Porfy Sucks” has generated 1487 friggin’ hits! Fouteen hundred! I mean, I can understand why someone would want to search for the term once or twice, but what are fourteen hundred people doing searching for a show that sucks? That’s likely even more than the people who are watching it, for christ’s sake! I’d love to hear from one of these people who entered the search term what made them search for it, because I’m baffled right now. I mean, I can understand that not many people are interested in this series, but this is getting ridiculous.

Short Synopsis: This episode had an onsen-sequence. Now that’s going to attract some viewer (not).
Highlights: That Carlos is a walking time-bomb.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Sarcasm aside, this episode rocked. I expected this series to go back to lacklustre travel arcs again, and instead we get a Mina-episode. There’s not even one scene where Porfy appeared, and instead this episode was all about developing the trio Mina, Isabella and Carlos. Oh, and what a wonderful job it did.

The episode starts at a bar in the evening, where Carlos screwed up and his deceit was found out by one of the people he played against. Mina and Isabella try to get away unnoticed, while Isabella’s father stays behind. The next day they take the train to the next city. Carlos tries to blame Mina for distracting him, but the fact does remain that he was the one who screwed up. Carlos then asks Isabella whether she plans to carry Mina among with her forever, though Isabella doesn’t know what to answer.

In te next city, Carlos notices many rich people, while Mina looks interested at the cars (notice how this is the first time she’s ever done that. Before she had no interest in them) and Isabella tells her that there is an “onsen” in the city. Usually an onsen means a hot spring, but in this context, I think “sauna” fits better. In any case, Isabella promises to take Mina there if business goes well.

When Isabela and Mina are working, a young boy approaches Mina, introducing himself as Heinz. Mina gets scared, though, and runs away. Heinz tries to follow her, but he suddenly gets trouble breathing. Mina gets Isabella away from one of her customers in an attempt to get help, and Isabella shows her how to fix his breathing problems (I wonder how she first found this out).

Heinz turns out to be the son of a count, and so when the count arrives, he pays quite a bit of money as a thanks of saving his son. Isabella grabs the money away from Carlos when he wants to use it, saying that it was her and Mina who saved the son, not him. The two of them use this money to go to the sauna. In there, they meet one of the customers that day (the one that Mina interrupted), though she doesn’t seem to mind after hearing what happened to Heinz. She also compliments Mina about her great voice. Isabella introduces Mina as her daughter. She later apologizes for that, but Mina doesn’t seem to mind.

When they return, Isabella’s father seems to have returned, and is happily drinking with Carlos. Of course, the two have to break up again because Mina needs to sleep. In the middle of the night, Mina wakes up (probably from a nightmare, but we don’t get to see what exactly she dreamt) and looks at her mother’s watch, and then at Isabella, and then smiles as she falls asleep again.

The next day, the count arrives again, and he wants to borrow Mina for one day, as it seems that Heinz has taken a liking to Mina. Isabella tries to disagree, saying that Mina isn’t a toy, but she ends up agreeing in the end (and Carlos doesn’t seem to mind after he gets some money). They go to a funfair, and for the first time Mina leaves Isabella, in order to play with Heinz.

When they return, it seems that Carlos and the count had a little talk, and the count seems to be willing to adopt Mina, so that Heinz finally has someone to play with. It seems ideal for Mina: she gets enough food every day, proper education, a warm bed. When the deal seems closed and Heinz wants to take Mina away, Mina resists, and runs back to Isabella. Heinz and his father try to convince them otherwise, but Isabella’s father (I’ve got to find out his name someday) explains that Isabela cares about Mina, just as the count cares about Heinz.

Heinz asks that when he meets Mina again, whether they can play together or not. After the answer is yes, he leaves, while Carlos is visibly angry, saying that Isabella’s going to have to take care of Mina and the episode ends.

I really hate Carlos right now, but then again, you can understand why he’s getting angry. Before Mina arrived, he had all of Isabella’s attention for himself. They were lovers once, so seeing Isabella getting taken away from him (and by none other than an unknown kid) must indeed be annoying the hell out of him.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated side-note: this was my 2000th post. Damn, I didn’t realize that I’ve been posting that much.

Short Synopsis: Will Porfy be able to find Mina in Rome?
Highlights: World Masterpiece Theatre: masters at delaying the inevitable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10
Holy crap! Mark, you were absolutely right: the creators had no intention to reunite Porfy and Mina so easily whatsoever, but they made this so god damn close, it’s annoying, and yet it’s exactly episodes like this that show the huge strength of the World Masterpiece Theatre series. This episode restored my faith back into this series entirely.

The episode starts as Mina stands at the market square, and advertises for Isabella. It works, and Isabella gets more customers than ever. Porfy meanwhile still has no clue where to look for Mina (apparently Apollo never managed to convince him of Mina’s whereabouts), and Olga continues to steal the bags of innocent tourists with an interesting smirk on her face.

Isabella compliments Mina on how well business went that day, so she takes her out for a bit of dinner. Her husband and father, unfortunately, weren’t as lucky and just lost nearly all of their money from a bunch of talented card-players. That evening, Porfy gets treated especially well by Bruno, the innkeeper. Olga then arrives and gives him an overly large sweater that she managed to steal.

When Isabella and the others are having dinner, Carlos is obviously angry, as his father mentions that in such a large city, there’s bound to be other talented card players. Isabella then apologizes to Mina, at how the restaurant they’ve chosen is too crowded, but Mina just shrugs it off and Carlos gets annoyed at Mina again.

The next day, Porfy gets a BIG clue from one of the guys who stands at the market. He’s seen Mina along with Isabella that day, and he reckons that they’ll be back in the next one. Porfy rushes home, happy that he’s about to find Mina. As he and Olga eat their dinner, one of the other guests gets annoyed by the poor quality of the soup that got served. Olga secretly makes fun of her behind her back. Carlos and his father meanwhile return back from another day of work, and this time they made big bucks. They reckon that they’ll still remain in Rome for one day (!!), and then travel further.

The next day, Porfy gets woken up loudly by the hotelkeeper, and gets falsely accused of having stolen the bag of the above-mentioned woman. He tries to explain that he hasn’t stolen anything (obviously, Olga was behind this). The attitude of the hotelkeeper changes entirely, and he locks him way into his basement, telling him to stay there until he tells the truth. The woman tells the hotelkeeper to call the police, but the hotelkeeper thinks that Porfy’s a bit too young for that. Olga meanwhile acts like nothing happened…

Porfy tries to escape, but fails. At the same time, Mina and Isabella get ready to work that day as Carlos flirts with Isabella a bit and tells Mina to make sure to work properly. They work throughout the day, as Porfy is still locked up. He tries to escape at one time by pushing the hotelkeeper aside, but gets caught very quickly by a very angry Bruno.

One of the market salesmen (the one who told Porfy about Mina and Isabella) was about to tell Isabella about a “guy who was looking for them”, but he gets interrupted by a customer. Carlos meanwhile, gets a visit from the two guys from two days back, who took away all their money. They beat them up and take away all their money. Carlos then suggests leaving Rome immediately, so they go to Isabella to pick her up.

Back at the hotel, Olga is about to leave as the angry woman comes down to complain again, and she accidentally opens Olga’s bag. Lots of stuff then pop up, and Olga flees, while Bruno goes to Porfy and tries to apologize. Porfy rushes to the market square, though, without paying attention to him, but Mina is already gone. When he talks to the market salesman of the day before, he tells them that Isabella and Mina were picked up by two people and boarded a bus, probably to continue their journey to a nearby city, but he doesn’t know what kind of bus, since they all look like each other. The episode ends with a shot of that very same bus, as it leaves the city of Rome.

Now THIS arc is exactly why I love this series so much. The arc was very short for this series, it only lasted three episodes, of which one was a recap. And yet it was chockfull of cross-references, flashbacks, foreshadowing and symbolism. I should have known that it wasn’t a coincidence that Porfy made friends with a thief. Especially since Olga was portrayed as someone who may do things against the law, but she minded her own business and was portrayed as a friendly and rather witty woman. The former arcs also always made Porfy make friends with genuine and honest people, so you wouldn’t expect this arc to be any different, and yet she does get Porfy is so much trouble, because he trusted the wrong person.

And really, now that I’m getting to know this series, I’m getting really worried about Mina. I mean, how many times has it been that Carlos has looked down upon or criticized Mina? If that isn’t building up, then I don’t know anymore. Nothing really happened between them in this episode, but there still are 21 episodes left for this series, so there’s plenty of time for them to get on each other’s nerves. Ultimately, Isabella is seeing Mina as a replacement for her daughter, and at one point this really has to go wrong, and the question is: can Porfy really find her before that happens?

Next up should be random travel-arcs again, so I’m not sure what the creators have planned. I really hope that they’re going to be more interesting than the Sicily-arc. It’s strange… there was hardly any build-up there, and it felt much more ad-hoc than the rest of this series.

Short Synopsis: In Rome, Porfy and Apollo continue to search for Mina, as he meets a poor woman with a similar fate.
Highlights: So! Much! Foreshadowing!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Now THIS is exactly what I’m talking about! Forget the Sicily-arc or the Maximilian-arc. THIS is exactly what makes me such a fan of Porfy no Nagai Tabi and the World Masterpiece Theatre in general. This episode was so much alike the episode in Les Miserables, where everyone kept missing each other, and you SO want these people to meet each other. It’s the same here. Porfy was INCREDIBLY close to meeting Mina, and yet he missed her in this episode.

The episode starts inside the hotel that Porfy’s staying in, in which he meets a woman in rather old clothes. The inn-keeper is friendly, and offers him some extra food. Porfy then heads into Rome, in search for any trace of Mina; he asks an ice cream salesman, though the guy obviously doesn’t know. He points Porfy towards some sort of square (Uradori, or however you spell it), where often a lot of people come. Meanwhile, the woman we saw introduced earlier steals the bag of an innocent tourist.

She didn’t have much money on her, but there was a valuable-looking pendant among her stuff. A bit later, we see her sell various amounts of things she stole on the street. Porfy meanwhile sees an impressive-looking car, though he realizes that this isn’t the right time to get all giddy over things as cars. Apollo, meanwhile is also looking all around for Mina.

At the Uradori, Porfy eats a bit and then looks around a bit. He then ends up at the stand of a familiar-looking gypsy(!!!) who tells fortunes. She offers him a free fortune, since business that day has been bad. Porfy doesn’t believe it, but he stops to listen to her anyway. The first card she opens is the death-card, signifying death in his past. This intrigues Porfy enough to continue listening to her. Some next cards are the wheel of fortune and the world. The next few cards aren’t shown to neither Porfy nor the audience, strangely enough. Before Porfy can ask why, the woman from earlier meets him, thinking that Porfy’s about to head into some sort of scam, and pulls him away from the fortune stand. Before he leaves, the next card does get revealed: the moon, symbolizing betrayal. Away from Porfy’s sight, the final card that gets opened is the sun, important for later this episode.

A bit later, the woman scolds him a bit for falling for such an obvious scam, as they return to the hotel they’re staying in, and have dinner together. It turns out that the woman has also lost her family in the war. She also grew up in a nice coastal city, just like Porfy, and then offers Porfy more food.

Isabella meanwhile packs up her stuff after a bad day, and then returns home to her hotel room WHERE MINA IS. In the same cafe, her brother (at least, I think it’s her brother, either that or it’s her husband) and father are doing their usual business, and it becomes apparent that her brother/husband doesn’t like Mina one bit, and how he dislikes how Isabella treats Mina like her lost daughter. Her father shrugs it off as normal behaviour for him.

Then, we switch to Mina, as APOLLO LANDS ON HER BALCONY! He’s been searching for her all along, and finally managed to find her, but he gets scared away by a sudden Isabella entering the room. Mina recognizes him, though. It turns out that she had a small fever (which was the same that killed Isabella’s daughter, Lily). Isabella is indeed incredibly kind to Mina as she helps her with her medicine. Her brother/husband then enters the room, and starts arguing with Isabella over Mina. Mina is the one to break them apart, by begging not to argue. Her brother/husband then leaves, saying that Mina’s going to help Isabella get customers the next day.

Meanwhile Apollo FAILS TO GET THROUGH TO PORFY, and can’t convince the guy that he’s seen Mina! The episode ends as Mina’s luring customers for Isabella, AT THE EXACT SAME SPOT AS THE DAY BEFORE, while Porfy’s still searching at other places.

Now this episode showed exactly what this series is best at: lots and lots of building up, foreshadowing, symbolism and subtle references. You want these people to find each other so much, and yet at the same time they continue to just barely miss each other. At the same time, the tarot cards in this episode just spoke book-parts in terms of foreshadowing. The woman (I think Olga was her name) that Porfy meets finally feels a bit interesting again. Not just because she’s like him and lost all her family, but also because it feels much more like the two of them just bumped into each other naturally, compared to the rather questionable Sicily-arc.

The past two arcs of Porfy really lacked what makes the rest of the series so great. There was hardly any building-up, and they just didn’t feel as unified as the rest of this series was. The reason why the first thirteen episodes were so great was that they were vital in establishing the characters, but the Sicily- and Maximilian-arc really slowed down the development. Still, they did serve their purpose, and they were vital in order to keep Porfy busy and get him to Rome. These arcs were really meant for him to straighten out his thoughts and let him catch a bit of breath.

And seriously, what the heck could the creators be planning for the next bloody episode?! I mean, Porfy and Mina are incredibly close to meeting each other, but do the creators really intend to let them meet each other in Rome, or will they continue to play this cat and mouse-game for a bit longer?