Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 31

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.