Category: Porfy no Nagai Tabi

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?

Short Synopsis: Porfy travels.
Highlights: Just when you thought that the background artists couldn’t get any better, they surpass themselves.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, the summary can be very short this time, seeing as this is one of these episodes where hardly anything happens. Porfy travels, and he once meets an angry farmer because he picked up olives that reminded him of home, and he runs into a woman later, who also lives alone just like Porfy. This episode really was all about its atmosphere, and the psychological aspects of travelling, and it did an excellent job at that.

Porfy finally enters France, but at the same time he also lost Mina’s picture, the only thing he had to remind of her. He also gets quite arrogant when he talks to the farmer, and I finally noticed that his development hasn’t just made him stronger. He may have matured, but he throws away all reasons when he’s reminded of his sister, and for the past number of episodes, this still hasn’t gotten better (foreshadowing, anyone?)

Also, was it just me, or was the woman Porfy ran into some sort of subtle revenge for Fantine in Les Miserables, how the creators weren’t able to show her becoming a prostitute due to the censors? It’s never explicitly said, but a lot of hints pointed towards that woman being some sort of prostitute, especially the way in which she wouldn’t let Porfy enter her car. It’s a very subtle addition from the creators: the children are never going to notice it, while it’s a bit of extra realism added for the adults.

And oh my god, I already suspected this, but the background art was absolutely gorgeous in this episode. Especially the time Porfy spent in the forest, and that final beautiful shot of the town at the foot of the Alps was just awesome. In any case, this definitely was the quietest episode of Porfy yet, but its storytelling was wonderfully subtle.

Short Synopsis: Erm… without going into spoilers: Porfy meets a market saleswoman in a town with horse-races.
Highlights: Hard to say without going into spoilers, but let’s just say that stuff that’s typical of the World Masterpiece Theatre happens.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Awesome episode! This really showed that the creators are nowhere near finished with the development of the different characters, and even now they still continue to evolve. And this episode both progressed the development A LOT, while also symbolizing some of the changes that occurred within Porfy and Mina.

The episode starts with Mina and Isabella again, as Carlos prepares to go into the city. He asks Mina whether she’ll come with him, but she declines, which obviously isn’t the best way to get on his side. Porfy meanwhile walks IN THE SAME CITY, looking around at a big market. He accidentally steps on the clothes that one saleswoman is trying to sell, so he tries to pay this off by fixing her car.

Carlos meanwhile, lost big. So what does the bugger do? He finds Aneke’s watch and SELLS THE THING. Porfy meanwhile managed to get the saleswoman’s engine working again, so she treats him to a few delicious sandwiches. She wonders whether Porfy is staying for long in the city, and wonders whether Porfy wants to work a bit for her, so that he can gain some money, so Porfy agrees, as it seems that his original money is beginning to run out.

Mina meanwhile discovered that her watch is missing, and is searching for it like crazy. Isabella and her father try to stop her, but Carlos shrugs it off. In the end, they can barely convince her to search for it in the next morning. She then spends th rest of her time, curled up in bed, without talking to anyone while Carlos continues being an ass to her.

The next morning, the saleswoman explains Porfy how to draw customers, and she leaves to enjoy the local horse races. While Porfy is enthusiastically trying to sell stuff, he suddenly notices a certain watch at the stand of one of the other salesmen. He continues to bug the salesman to tell him who sold him it, which very quickly gets on the salesman’s nerves, especially when Porfy starts distracting him from another customer. When Porfy starts to forcefully take his watch back, the guy ends up shredding Mina’s picture: the only thing that Porfy had that people could recognize her by.

Carlos, meanwhile, lost all of his money at the horse races. When he returns, Isabella waits for him, and questions him about the watch. He then says that he sold it, and says some pretty bad things about Mina, while Mina’s listening. Mina starts desperately attacking Carlos, after which Isabella calms her down and smacks Carlos instead. Porfy meanwhile lost all his energy and refuses to sell anymore. Fortunately he made enough money from when he still was enthusiastic, so the saleswoman is grateful to him. Because she did win big at the local horse races, she pays him generously, with enough money for Porfy to buy back the watch. Unfortunately… it’s already sold.

Next episode, it’s time to say goodbye to Italy, as the series moves into France. I’m interested whether the soundtrack will change, because even in Italy, the background tunes still yelled “Greece”. 😛

But really, this was an excellent episode, and especially the reason why I fell in love with this series. It had two storytelling-techniques that are typical to the World Masterpiece Theatre, and which are part of the reason why I like this entire franchise so much. The first is the way that the creators keep teasing the viewer, by letting the characters miss meeting each other for just an instant, which was used a lot in Les Miserables. It worked even better there, because back then, you REALLY had no idea when the characters were supposed to meet, due to the huge storyline. Because Porfy’s story is a lot smaller, there are indeed going to be predictability issues, but because its main cast is so much smaller, it can spend much more time to flesh them out and develop them.

And the second is the way they manage to amplify setbacks so much: everything goes right most of the time, but when things go wrong, they really GO WRONG, which makes for a very big impact. Perrine was such a series that loved using this technique as well. With Porfy it’s the same: the creators love to tease the viewer. At the end of this episode as well: we don’t get to see how badly Mina was hurt by Carlos’ stupid actions, or how Carlos reacted to Isabella’s slap-fest. We’re going to have to wait till the next episode, or god knows when they’ll show up again. In fact, it seems that Porfy has managed to overtake them at this point, and will be entering France before the others do.

One thing I also love about this series is how the background scenery subtly changes, depending on the location. I’m especially looking forward to when Porfy manages to hit the alps and enters France, considering how beautiful the sceneries already were.

Short Synopsis: Porfy meets an old dog who stubbornly keeps following him.
Highlights: An episode for the animals, and what a lovely episode it is!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Awww, that was such an adorable episode. It was incredibly cute and at the same time the conclusion was so powerful and awesome. What an adorable dog. What an absolutely adorable dog. To prevent myself from repeating myself even further, here’s this week’s summary:

Porfy is camping out again, wondering why he didn’t take a bus. Apollo meanwhile catches himself a mouse, and suddenly a huge dog appears, and cuddles up to Porfy. The two fall asleep that way, and the next day the dog continues to follow Porfy on his journey, even though Apollo doesn’t like it. When he sees a passing vehicle, he manages to get the driver to ride him to the next village, but the dog won’t move out of the car’s way until Porfy gives in and lets him ride as well, with Porfy obviously having to explain that the dog isn’t his.

Then, when the driver drops him off, Porfy gets hungry and buys a sandwich. He at first doesn’t want to give the dog anything, but eventually he shares his second sandwich with the animal. A local pastor then arrives, and takes interest in the dog. He notes that it’s already quite an old do, and how it could be following Porfy because it’s also travelling around. Apollo, while watching, meanwhile runs into a pretty female owl, which he begins to follow around and try to appease. When it starts raining, the two spend their time inside a hollow tree, while the female starts to like Apollo more and more.

The dog meanwhile decided to show Porfy around a bit, and takes him to a local stream where he could fresh him up a bit. While he’s taking a nap, Bernardo runs off with his bag, and Porfy chases it over and over. When Apollo hears Porfy, he decides to leave his new lover for Porfy. Porfy meanwhile is very angry at the dog for takng away his bag (including the tools from his father; always a touchy subject for the guy). But as it turns out, the dog just wanted to show Porfy a beautiful scenery (and beautiful it is!).

Porfy then looks around, and the dog has died. He creates a proper grave for it, and continues on with his journey with Apollo and the episode ends.

The creators made clever use of Apollo in this episode. Uusally, he’s the voice of reason for this series: whenever he’s freaking out, something bad is about to happen. In this case, he just didn’t like the dog, period. That did give the feeling that something was fishy about that dog, which the creaotrs really used to make it look a bit ambiguous. While in fact, the dog just knew it was about to die, and wanted to do this with some great scenery, next to someone who treated him well until the end.

I also finally noticed the pattern of this series: arc-climax-arc-climax-arc, where the arcs mostly are long, and the climaxes are short and powerful, although the first climax did take up quite a few episodes. What’s more interesting though is that each successive arc takes a different focus. The first one was slice of life, the second multi-episoded travel arcs, and now the third one features single-episoded travel arcs. I think that around episode 40 or 43, the next climax is going to come, where the final arc is going to wrap everything up.

My prediction is that the next climax will feature the bomb finally exploding between Isabella and Carlos. It’s probably going to be an arc where he finally had enough of Mina. In the final episodes, Porfy will then finally meet her (I get more and more the feeling that this will happen as late as possible) and run into Alecia.

So yes, something tells me that the final quarter of this series is going to be an amazing one. 🙂

Short Synopsis: Porfy meets a masked woman who lives together with a terrible sister.
Highlights: The series’ attempt at mystery turns out pretty nicely.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
The key to having a successful episodic series is knowing that you can play with your own concept. Because the episodes are relatively short, there are many chances for different storylines. If all you’re going to do is a dull pool or beach-episode, then yeah, it’ll get boring. The past string of episodic stories though has shown a great variety of different characters, settings and focuses. This time: mystery.

I don’t really think that this episode deserves a comprehensive summary. What basically happens: Porfy meets a masked woman, who lives near an abandoned gas station. She has a sister who has terminally ill, and Porfy often hears her fighting with said sister. As it turns out, the woman lost her parents in a fire, five years ago. She herself gained a scar on her face from it. Because of this, she became scared to show herself in public, and ended up wearing a mask. She then created an alternative personality called Sandra, to ease herself from her loneliness. This episode had lots of messages against self-loathing.

In the end, everything was between the girl’s head. The villagers didn’t hate her at all; she just scared herself into isolation. In any case, in terms of mystery, this episode did pretty well, even though this isn’t a mystery-series. It was pretty soon obvious that Marissa had a bipolar disorder, so this episode wasn’t much about its surprises, but instead Marissa turned into quite a sympathetic character in the end.

This episode also had a lot of references to Natsume Yuujin-chou. I’m not sure whether that was intentional or not, but Natsume also meets a lot of Youkai who are originally masked, and then at the end show their faces. Porfy no Nagai Tabi showed a more “realistic” side to this story. (Not that Natsume Yuujin-chou isn’t realistic enough already, but more in the way of nothing supernatural).

Short Synopsis: Porfy gets caught in a rainstorm.
Highlights: Talk about different from a usual Porfy-episode.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Whoa, instead of the usual travelling stories, this episode goes to tackle existentialism and throws a critical eye at religion. This probably was the most thought-provoking episode of this series yet, especially since it built further upon Damon’s words, back in Greece. Unfortunately, it also meant lots of talking, so I didn’t quite get most of the dialogue. Anyway, here’s what I did pick up:

It’s evening and pouring outside, while Porfy walks down a path, soaked. In the meantime, Carlos, Mina and Isabella are dry in a local pub, while Carlos is losing big, up to the point where he attempts to gamble Mina away. Isabella obviously doesn’t appreciate that attempt, so she smacks him. I mentioned before that Carlos was a walking time-bomb, but Isabella is also beginning to look like one.

Porfy meanwhile arrives at a small cottage. A local pastor (riding a motorbike with side-car) seems to be using the cottage as well, as a shelter for the rain. While Porfy leaves his clothes to dry, he tells the pastor what happened. He stopped by an inn, but they didn’t let him in (probably because the rooms were full, but that’s just my guess). The pastor introduces himself as Juliani, and Porfy tells the usual story about how he’s trying to find his sister.

The next morning, Apollo wakes up to find Porfy with a nasty cold, so he wakes up Juliani, who brings him to the local monastery to rest. Porfy has a few nightmares about Mina, A while later, Porfy wakes up in one of the beds at the monastery, and Juliani greets him. The fever subsided, and Juliani offers him a bit of hot wine, a local recipe against such a fever. The head monk of the monastery then arrives, and greets him as well.

That night, the head monk and Juliani have a small discussion. It was quite hard to understand, but it seems to come down to that Juliani was once a Greek as well, but he stayed at the monastery because of the word of Christ. The next day, Porfy joins Juliano as he preaches in front of a crowd. He talks about what faith is, and saving the poor, but again, it’s hard to fully understand what he’s talking about.

That afternoon, Porfy runs into the head monk, wondering whether he could help cleaning or something. The head monk then laughs, and wonders whether Porfy wants to confess things in front of the church. Porfy then starts to wonder again why god put him and Mina through such hardships. The rage this time is worse than when Porfy lashed out at Damon because of this, probably because he was still very confused.

In any case, Juliani answers with quite a peculiar answer: he claims that Porfy, travelling around because he believes he’ll meet Mina is the same as himself, becoming a Christan because he believes in Christ.

It’s interesting, how most anime lash out against religions, but Porfy no Nagai Tabi instead asks the question of why people still continue to believe in god, even though he puts them through hardships. Especially in Porfy’s case, he has a lot of reasons to doubt god. I myself am very far from a Christian, but it’s interesting to hear the other side of the story. Juliani had a good point: it doesn’t matter who you believe in.

And by the way, I noticed how there was hardly any background music in this episode. The effect was very interesting: most of the series, apart from the earthquake-arc and some others had mostly bright and colourful music. Now that that’s gone, the entire atmosphere of this series suddenly changed to a more down-to-earth version. Also, it’s subtle, but you can see that Porfy is beginning to grow up.

Short Synopsis: Porfy arrives at a town with some strange customs.
Highlights: Porfy’s back! New background tunes! Awesome background art! Thought-provoking story! Increased pacing! No “I need to save you”-subplot!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, I think the phrase “IT’S ABOUT BLOODY TIME” fits here like no other. It’s been more than TWO WEEKS since this episode aired. I suspect that the one guy who did the uploads for this series went on a holiday or something, and that’s when you get this. Still, I have no idea who this bloke is, but thanks for continuing to upload this wonderful series, even though its low popularity.

The summary is going to be very short this time, as I have a ton of thoughts and I still have two more episodes waiting to be blogged. Basically, Porfy arrives at a town, and stays with a poor family. There’s something strange going on in that town, though: they have a ritual where they sacrifice old things to the angels, so that they can live a happy life afterwards. This goes for dolls, but also living things as donkeys and old people. The entire episode was basically about Porfy, realizing that there are people with very different customs than himself.

And the best thing: HE NEVER DID ANYTHING TO CHANGE THEIR VIEWS! There was no sort of “here he comes to save the daaaaaay!”-themes that you could find in the travel arcs between episodes 20 and 30. This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for: Porfy who meets other peoples and cultures, and gets a bit of a taste of their customs. I really wonder what Porfy would have done if he ran into this town, right after starting his journey. I bet that he would have bugged the villagers to change their ways.

I must say: I really hope that the episodic stories continue. It’s strange: some series are better when their stories are just one episode long, while others are better with multi-episode arcs. As it turns out, Porfy’s travel arcs are at their best when they’re just quick storylines that only take up one episode. It really keeps the series on its toes, through the already incredibly slow pacing of this series.

Also, the background art in this episode seemed better than it’s ever been. Especially the flower-garden was absolutely gorgeous, but the entire town was beautiful. There also were some new tunes added to the soundtrack, and they also sounded really nice. They added to the empty mood that came from the town in this episode.

Still, I do think that the next instalment of the World Masterpiece Theatre does need to put some more effort into establishing its viewer-base. As this episode showed, there are hardly any people who are interested in this series, apart from World Masterpiece fanatics that happen to know Japanese. You indeed need to put some effort into this series in order to be really able to enjoy it, since nothing really happens throughout the first twelve episodes. I think that the next WMT, whatever it’s going to be, needs to spice its introduction up. Make people want to come back and watch it, instead of starting immediately with the building up. There’s no doubt that this is one of the most well-written series of 2008, but that’s not going to matter if nobody wants to check it out. Seirei no Moribito, for example, did things a bit more wisely: it also had a lot of slice-of-life moments, where nothing really happened, and its pacing was also very slow, but the third episode did feature an awesome fight-scene that kept its viewers watching long enough to see the other beauties of that series.