Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 30

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?