Category: Porfy no Nagai Tabi

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?

Short Synopsis: Recap
Highlights: Strangely enough, this was EXACTLY what this series needed…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so I’m obviously not going to summarize this recap-episode in detail. What I do want to talk about is everything else that happened here. I rated this episode high for a very good reason, because this episode may very well put itself on the short list of great recap episodes. The thing is that Porfy no Nagai Tabi has obviously turned a bit stale for the past two arcs. Porfy didn’t really grow, how he ran into the right people felt a bit awkward, and the drama nor the slice-of-life matched up to what we saw in the earlier parts of the series. The creators have shown that they can write great travel arcs (the abandoned city-arc was just amazing), but for the past months, Porfy lost a bit of its spark.

And that’s why it’s so great to look back at the amazing earlier parts of the series, when all of the characters still were alive/not missing. Porfy also had a very good reason to be nostalgic: at the airport of Rome, he ran into none other than Barnes, who had picked up rumours about a Greek boy that was lost in Italy. He then delivers him a letter from Zaimis, so this indeed was the perfect place to put such a recap. And of course, that little teaser at the end of the episode, that showed that MINA IS STILL IN ROME was just icing on the cake.

This really reminds me of the third arc of Les Miserables (about the first similarity that I spotted between the two series after their introduction-arcs): I remember clearly that very annoying episode where everyone in Paris kept nearly running into each other. And at the same time, it was such a great way of building up, for when the characters finally met with each other. Overall, this episode formed a pretty nice conclusion to the first half of Porfy no Nagai Tabi, and although we may have a few more boring travel arcs in store, the fact does remain that it’s still building up for the moments in this series that really matter: the reunion with Mina and Alecia. Porfy no Nagai Tabi doesn’t have the grand story of Les Miserables, but at the same time it’s much more personal, and I love how the two series are so different from each other, despite being both World Masterpiece Theatres.

Short Synopsis: Jack, André and their families help Porfy in his search for Mina.
Highlights: The themes of saying goodbye pop up again.
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Really, it seems like for every season, half of the good shows seem to concentrate themselves on the same day. This time it’s… Tuesday. Especially since Mission-E, Natsume Yuujin-Chou and Porfy’s raws will always show up too late for Monday, and in the evening there’s Ultraviolet, RD and Himitsu for me to blog… and here I wondered why the rest of the week was so quiet. ^^;

In any case, my usual summary for this show may get shorter, because there are so many other series to blog today. This episode starts as Jack, Michael and Porfy search the different coastal cities for any trace of Mina. A big person in Palermo shows up, who turns out to be acquainted with Jack’s father, and who’ll promise to search for Mina as well. He doesn’t seem to like André and his hate for Americans.

The next day, it’s time to go to the church again, though the focus falls at Jacks father and André’s father. I couldn’t fully understand it, but they took a note-book and crossed a few names out. At the end of the church session, the pastor took a moment to ask those who were present whether they’ve seen anything about Mina, but nobody turned up. When Porfy, Michael and Jack return back home, their father suddenly appears in an apron (it seems that he felt like cooking a bit) and Bobby (Jack and Michael’s older brother) has gone to America. André meanwhile makes his people search Sicily for Mina. It’s his father who finds the clue they need.

When Michael learns about it, he quickly wakes Porfy and André tells him the things he knows: apparently, she was in the company of a woman and two gamblers, and she went from Palermo to Rome. Porfy then immediately prepares to got o Rome, but Jack has a little surprise left, as it seems that jack’s father has his own private plane, which makes Porfy able to catch up a lot of lost time if Mina went to Rome, just by boat. Jack checks what the plane’s code-name is (“Heart Thief” :P) as the plane takes off, Porfy says goodbye to Sicily and the episode ends.

I’m not quite sure what was up with Jack’s father, but I do have a hunch. This episode showed how Bobby left to America, and in the near future, Jack and Michael too will depart to the United States, leaving their father behind. This seems to suggest that their father has problems of his own, and the list of names probably is the list of his subordinates, who were probably all sent away, so that he’d be the only one to take the blame of whatever trouble he’s in.

Overall, the big theme of this arc was the concepts of family. Now that this arc has finished, it does make sense, and I now understand how this arc and the previous arc are linked to each other: they both showed Porfy a different concept of a “family”, something that he lost entirely. The current arc showed how important the bonds are to the big families that live in Sicily, and how one would go through fire for the sake of his own family, while the previous arc was about having the warmth of a place to return to.

My interest in Porfy has been rather low for the past months, because I feared that the rest of the series would just be a string of random arcs, but thankfully they all turn out to have their own meaning to develop Porfy. And of course, this series is at its best after countless episodes of building-up, so I’m wondering where the Rome-arc will take this series.

Short Synopsis: In this episode, Jack attempts to propose to the girl he loves.
Highlights: Fun episode, though André’s character-development could have been more subtle.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
After the previous episode, I remember doubting what kind of new element this arc could bring to this series. This episode answered these doubts: humour. Porfy no Nagai Tabi has never been a comedy, but this has definitely been its funniest episode, where you’re meant to laugh at and with the characters.

Jack, Porfy and Michael drive to Monica’s house at night, where Jack reveals that he used to work in the army during the final parts of the war. Andre meanwhile is still sulking about Jack’s actions of the previous episode. As it turns out, the biggest reason why he hates the guy is because he’s American, and the Americans killed his father (an Italian) during WWII. Monica tries to talk him out of it, and how Jack didn’t have anything to do with the pilot who shot down their father. André has been drinking, so obviously he doesn’t listen.

We then switch to Porfy, Michael and Jack, who stand next to Monica’s window, trying to get her attention without notifying André. Apollo provides the solution by softly pecking on her window. When she opens it, Jack ruins everything by yelling at the top of his lungs about how he loves Monica. André’s reaction was priceless, and thankfully Jack (or should I say, Porfy, Michael and a love-struck Jack) manages to get away before André catches him.

n the next day, Jack and Michael help Porfy to search for Mina, but nobody has seen her, but Sicily is just way too big. Michael then gets the idea to check during the next church meeting, because lots of people will be there (including Monica). The next day, the pastor agrees to help Porfy (and Jack) execute their plans for that day.

When Monica and André arrive at the church, Andre goes to a local bar to drink, while Monica heads for the confession booth (or however that’s called). To her surprise, it’s not the pastor sitting at the other side of the booth, but Jack, who’s hiding from André. Porfy and Michael are meanwhile hiding, to avoid being spotted by André, but they then see a suspicious pair of legs, coming from under André’s car and Porfy decides to check it out. The guy quickly runs away when he discovers being spotted, but as a result, André’s bodyguards suddenly turn up and start chasing them. Things get from bad to worse when they also run into André, who captures them and realizes that Jack must also be in the church.

In his anger, he runs right into the confession-booth, and thinks that Jack was hiding at the other side of it, throwing all kinds of curses at the pastor, who obviously gets rather angry and starts chasing him with a cross. When things have settled a bit, Porfy tells him about the strange guy who was messing with his car. It turns out to have been some kind of bomb, set to detonate when the engine starts. Nobody knows how to detonate such a bomb, so the solution that comes up is to push the car into the ocean (which is quite far away, though).

Jack helps André and his bodyguards, and the two forget their differences a bit. This was the only part of the episode that felt a bit fake, as André’s development was a bit too sudden. In any case, Monica, Porfy and Michael follow the car in their own, as Jack and André reach the coast and push the car in. André finds it a pity, because he liked that car, but Monica suggests him to just buy a new one. André then leaves, with the message that he won’t object to Jack’s marriage to Monica.

Next episode should prove to be interesting, as the focus should shift back to Porfy, trying to Mina. This episode may have been fun, but I can’t help but think that this is the weakest part of Porfy no Nagai Tabi. Since it’s a travelling anime, it doesn’t have the advantage of keeping its characters, and it must continue to introduce new ones. The abandoned city was the best example of this, but now that Porfy’s development seems to have stalled a bit, this series needs something new to be introduced fast now. But then again, knowing this series, it’s probably building up for something.

Okay, so the creators did not plan some big climax for episode 26, and instead just introduce a new arc. This begs the question: what the heck are the creators planning for the final 26 episodes of this series?

At the start of this episode, we see how Porfy rides the freight train of the previous episode. He soon falls asleep, and doesn’t notice that the train boards a ship, heading for Sicily. He figures that now that he’s on the island anyway, he might as well check whether somebody saw Mina. At a local market, Porfy sees a lot of fish shops and he asks a fish-selling boy whether it’s hard to catch a fish. The boy then says that it’s quite easy, and Porfy rushes to the shore to catch himself some fish, without having to pay for it.

At the shore, Porfy located a big one, and when he’s about to catch it, he gets help from a boy of his age that suddenly popped up, named Michael. Te two of them manage to catch this fish, and bring it back to the boy, mentioned above. The local mafia, however, are quick to catch him, and they bring him to their mansion. Basically because it’s not allowed to catch any fish without their consent.

The mafia-boss that speaks to them turns out to be a rash man, who apparently knows this Michael. Of course, only one fish can be overlooked, but Michael turns out to be a member of a rivalling mafia-family, which rather complicates things. Porfy tries to take the blame for catching the fish, but the guy doesn’t want to listen. They get saved by Monica, the guy’s sister, who apparently isn’t that worried with the rivalry between the two families.

She called for Michael’s brother (father?) to come and pick them up. While they’re waiting for them, Porfy tells Michael and Monica about Mina, and he shows them Apollo. Then Jack (the brother) comes in a cool sports car, and he nearly starts fighting with Andre (the angry guy) if it wasn’t for Monica.

Porfy then eats dinner at the Michael and Jack’s family, and Porfy meets Jack’s father. Apparently, he’s an American merchant who trades in olive oil. Afterwards, Porfy spends a bit of time alone with Michael, who explains him the apparent meaning of a family. That evening, Porfy helps fix Jack’s car a bit, and he heads off to what I guess is Monica’s house to see her. I suspect that both of them are in love.

At the moment, there are so many possibilities in which this series can go. I’m personally hoping that from now on, the stories will get darker as the series progresses, but let’s see what the creators have in mind.

What caught my attention was the huge amount of Americans with blond hair. If I recall correctly, then only one American in this series didn’t have blond hair. Interesting, how with the huge amount of realism in this series, this one detail remains a bit inaccurate.

Ah, I should have known. There are no villains in Porfy no Nagai Tabi. A simple fight over the toilet doesn’t cause one to become mortal enemies. Everyone has his or her own reasons for acting. I so expected the mayor to come up with a terrible scheme to humiliate or hurt Porfy. Instead, he just looked for the quickest way to get rid of him, aka help him search for Mina. I totally forgot that possibility existed as well.

This episode was really heart-warming. It starts as Porfy helps around Iralia’s farm with all kinds of chores, and looks at the trees which in a few weeks will give off some ripe fruits. This reminds him of home again, and gets his spirit down. At the city hall meanwhile, Maximilian removes a poster that has been put over Mina’s poster, as the Mayor runs into him again, thinking how ridiculous it must be to keep searching, through Maximilian says that any piece of information is welcome.

Unfortunately, at this point there’s still no sign of Mina. Iralia’s father makes a proposal, that if Porfy doesn’t end up finding Mina, whether he’d stay with them or not. Porfy, however, declines and says that he’s going to find Mina, no matter what. Iralia’s father figures that this would have been the obvious thing to say. Then Maximilian returns home, and he brings along Daisy, and Daisy proposes to introduce Porfy to her father’s shop. In there, Maximilian orders a new bag for Iralia, to give her for Christmas.

Daisy then mentions how she wants to see the new bag when it’s done, though Porfy then notes that by the time the bag finishes, Porfy will already be gone, though Daisy says that he shouldn’t be thinking that way, and when he finds Mina, he could come back to this city again. They then visit what I guess is the storehouse for Iralia’s farm, or something similar. Maximilian then starts telling ghost stories, as the Mayor suddenly pops up with the news that he might have seen someone with news about Mina. Ironically, he’s carrying the same bag model that Maximilian ordered.

Porfy wonders whether the mayor still is angry about the time with the toilet, but the mayor quickly changes subject. Apparently, a guy who works at a local funfair thinks he saw a person who looked like Mina. Porfy immediately wants to go to that person. After Porfy shows this person the picture of Mina, and tells her that a guy with cards was with her, the guy says that this might possibly have been Mina, and they went to a city in the west.

After hearing this, Porfy wants to leave immediately. Iralia suggests Porfy to leave the next morning, but Porfy wants to chase after Mina as fast as possible. With that, comes saying goodbye, but first Porfy gets to ride a merry-go-round along with Daisy. As it’s the first time he’s seen such a thing, he had the time of his live while riding it.

A bit later, Porfy says goodbye to Iralia’s parents, who give him a bit of payment for the chores that he did, and Rebecca is actually crying to see him leave. Iralia, Maximilian and Daisy then drive Porfy and Apollo to the station. When they do, they say goodbye and Porfy heads off to the train, with Daisy being the saddest to see Porfy leave. After waiting a bit, however, Porfy finds out that the train he was supposed to take was cancelled. A freight train which was on the station is also heading in the same direction, so Porfy jumps on it and lands on a pile of bags, and the episode ends.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi has two different faces: heart-wrenching drama and warm slice-of-life. This episode showed the best of the latter, where the themes of saying goodbye in the final parts brought a really nice conclusion to this arc that I really didn’t see coming. With this, I also have no idea what the creators have been planning for episode twenty six, because it doesn’t look like it’s going for the big climax now that it just rounded up the longest arc ever since Porfy started travelling.

It’s a bit of a shame that Porfy stays so long at the same places. I was hoping that he’d continue to travel as soon as the issue between Iralia and Rebecca was solved, but instead it seems that the creators have bigger plans for this arc. Considering the nature of this series, I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Especially considering Les Miserables’ strange behaviour at this point: episode 26 was the only filler in the entire series, and after fooling me like that the tension suddenly sky-rocketed in the episodes afterwards. Will this be the same for Porfy no Nagai Tabi, or will this arc be more heart-warming in nature?

Porfy’s attempts to convince Iralia to go and see Rebecca fail, and she runs away. Maximilian and Porfy then try to enter Rebecca’s house, but she refuses to respond. The next afternoon, Iralia goes shopping again, and takes Porfy along with her. They stop by a local cafe to buy a drink, and Iralia buys some chocolate cake for Porfy as thanks of all the hard work he’s done.

Iralia then apologizes for the thing she did, and how it’s not so easy to just see Rebecca. Porfy can’t understand why people would try to be so difficult on this matter, and he then offers to make Rebecca want to meet her. Obviously, directly asking her is pointless, so he takes away her small glass statue, with the note that if she wants to have it back, that she should come to the cafe.

Unfortunately, Porfy didn’t realize that there were more cafe’s in the same town, so he and Iralia end up waiting at the wrong cafe. Hoping that they aren’t too late, they rush to the right one (which was supposed to be Rebecca’s favourite cafe). Iralia and Rebecca make settle their differences surprisingly fast, and they’re on good terms again once Maximilian arrives to check up on them.

Another surprise guest then shows up: Daisy. Apparently, she too went shopping with her father. Her father then suggests putting up a poster about Mina in the local city hall. A lot of people get there, and a friend of Daisy’s father once found his cat back through this method. They go back to Maximilian’s house to gather some paper and make said poster (including a very bad drawing of Mina by Porfy). Porfy and Maximilian then go to the city hall to put up this poster.

A problem arises, though, when Porfy needs to go to the toilet and he ends up fighting with the local mayor over the only available urinal. The episode ends as said mayor looks at the poster, with a rather angry face.

The most notable thing about this episode is the ease at which Iralia and Rebecca just made up like that. Usually, I would be face-palming at the ease at which such grudges are settled, and it’s true that lazy anime often use this technique in order to get “it over with”. But here it got me thinking, and it does make sense in a way. The biggest reason why Iralia and Rebecca refused to talk to each other was not their love dispute between Maximilian, but instead it was the fact that they refused to talk to each other. Because of this, fear took over and they started forming melodramatic theories of why the other wouldn’t want to see her, and through the years, this just escalated without the two of them ever getting a chance to make up.