This series continues to be absolutely stunning! Seriously, there hasn’t been a weak moment, ever since the earthquake. This episode finally finishes the introduction of this series, and shows Porfy starting his “Long Journey”. It really does seem like it’s going to take a long while until we see Mina again…
The episode starts with Porfy, not sure what to do. In the end, the one who’s able to remember Mina and tell him where she went was the old blind lady. She tells how the two of Porfy and Mina had the same scent, and how Mina boarded a ship that goes to Italy. Now that he finally knows what happened to his sister, Porfy runs to a quiet alley to cry his lungs out.
When Porfy comes back to the harbour to check up on the fees for the boat, they turn out to be too high for the small amount of money he carries with him. He heads into the city, to check whether people are looking for a job. The first person he asks comes with the sad news that nearly nobody in the city has a car, and they work mostly with horses and donkeys. The guy then nicely offers Porfy a part of his lunch, saying how children shouldn’t suffer. Porfy says how he’s looking for money to board a ship, and then the guy comes with the idea to bring Porfy to an old man whose house needs painting. At this point, Porfy is indeed willing to do anything.
When he arrives at the old man’s home, the old man thanks him. He’s apparently been living alone for a long time now. When he asks where Porfy came from, Porfy says he’s from Simitra. The old man remembers how that place was hit by a huge earthquake, and Porfy tells him about what happened to his parents; he starts crying when he talks about it. The old man then comforts him, and says how Porfy’d better start working. When Porfy’s halfway done, the old man asks him to buy some food for dinner.
When they’re having dinner, the old man offers a surprisingly large amount of his food to Porfy. When Porfy says how he shouldn’t bother, the man retorts that it’s nothing, and how it’s a delight to be young. Porfy works for two days, and on the second evening the old man asks Porfy whether he knows what Mina’s thinking. I turns out that Porfy didn’t even think of that yet. The old man then says how Mina should be feeling the same thing he is, being separated from her parents and all.
Porfy finishes on the third day. The old man then gives him a really big amount of money for the job, even more than that’s needed for the boat fee. Added to that, he also offers a backpack for Porfy to use. The old man says how once you get older, there are enough things that you won’t need anymore, and he feels that Porfy would make better use of it. Porfy then leaves and the episode ends, as the old man wishes him good luck.
Apologies for the rather rubbish summary this time. The dialogue in this episode was particularly difficult for a Porfy-episode, and it featured more monologues than usual, so I wasn’t able to understand everything perfectly, like I usually do with this series. That aside, this episode was yet again amazing. When I started watching this series, I originally thought that it would go down about the same path as Perrine Monogatari (which is currently being subbed by C1), but it turns out I was wrong. Perrine puts much more emphasis on the bad sides of money, while Porfy no Nagai Tabi just solves Porfy’s money issues in one half of an episode.
Old people also have a really interesting role in this series. They really serve as mental guides for the children. First Damon, and now we have the old blind woman and the old man who offer Porfy support, and they encourage him to go into the right direction, hardly knowing anything about him. It’s different from usual anime, who mostly have the mindset of “the old ones need to step aside for the young ones”. In this case, they really try to help Porfy get over the horrible things that happened to him, without ever trying to look important for the storyline.
