Once again, PopoloCrois manages to produce a horribly creative episode. The entire combination of Pietoro, Narcia, Gamigami, Ston, Sanda, Hyuu, Pablo, Hilda, the advisor and a newly introduced character turned this episode into a great intermezzo. Still, it remains an intermezzo, mostly focused on Narcia joining up with Pietoro, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
We start with Narcia trying to find where Pietoro went, though she can’t seem to find him. That’s of course logical, as he left the castle at the previous episode. She gets joined by the advisor and a matter of very good timing in her search of the prince, until they both run towards Pablo, who explains the situation. Pietoro, meanwhile, ended up in some kind of port town. Because he’s travelling incognito, he hears various gossip about Pablo, Gamigami and himself. This, of course, isn’t too good for his overall mood. Then he meets a very excentric old guy, dressed in mexican influences, who keeps staring at his lunch as it if was dropped from the heaven. Pietoro tries to flee from him, but the guy keeps following him, and he keeps staring at such a brilliant way, that Pietoro eventually gives in and shares one of his sandwiches with the guy.
When the guy manages to get yet another sandwich out of Pietoro, he begins to get a bit mad at him, though the guy tells him a valuable lesson. Pietoro won’t become one of the big shots if he frets over something small like a stolen sandwich. This person then claims that he’s a hero. We never get to know whether this is true or not, but it does make Pietoro think about himself. After all, the guy doesn’t act like a hero at all, more like the village idiot, and of course Pietoro sees this too, and asks the guy to prove it. Then the guy begins to question whether Pietoro’s the real prince or not. And of course, Pietoro never really thought about this. He has as many ways to prove that he’s the prince as the guy has to prove that he’s a hero.
Gamigami, meanwhile, decided to lock himself up in his chamber while waiting for his robots to have found Pietoro. Hyuu comes to scold him again for slacking off, and then he uses an extremely ingenious way to send Ston and Sanda out in order to search for him. I won’t tell what, as you have to see this for your self, but it does involve a very big rocket. (^^;) His robots are meanwhile out in order to put up wanted-posters for Pietoro, and Narcia manages to see this. She then decides to help Pietoro in his quest, so the goes to Hilda in order to use her mirror in order to find him. Hilda’s nowhere to be found, so she uses Hilda’s cauldron to make something, what on first sight looks like the potion needed to activate the mirror.
Gamigami, meanwhile, took a little trip into the Popolocrois forest, in order for a bit of mocking, self-pity and a small nap. Narcia is meanwhile horribly messing up the potion, in her opinion at least. Through some miracle, she manages to get the potion working, but it was actually a desperate idea of her in order to prevent Pietoro from getting caught: change every single being in Popolocrois into Pietoro! Not only does this make Narcia look too cute when she finds the flaw in her plan, but Ston and Sanda also mistake Gamigami for Pietoro and take him to Hyuu, and Pietoro himself really has to think about why he is the real Pietoro, and the others impostors.
Hilda then manages to eventually correct Narcia’s mistake and turn everyone back, but not before Ston and Sanda carried Gamigami to his castle and the strange old man (who also got turned into Pietoro) managed to teach Pietoro a few valuable lessons. What follows is a Pietoro who really believes that this man is a hero, and Hyuu recognizing that Gamigami isn’t the real Pietoro. Ston and Sanda, still not knowing that they’re dealing with Gamigami, then attempt to get rid of him through the same method Gamigami used at them at the beginning of the episode, though he manages to change back right in the middle of the process. Ston’s reaction at that time was just absolutely priceless.
Anyway, in the end, Hilda lets Narcia use her mirror in order to find Pietoro’s location, so she manages to find him easily, and the two are together again, and the episode ends. This episode really was another masterpiece. Especially Narcia was too cute, though Ston and Sanda were also really shining as bad guys. Another thing I just love about Popolocrois is that everything just can go wrong. And when it goes wrong, it goes wrong at extremely creative ways. The most memorable examples are, of course Gamigami trying to get his inventions to work, though this episode also showed a great example of Narcia not thinking about some of the problems regarding her plan to change everyone into Pietoro.
