Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 42

Short Synopsis: In the city, Porfy works at a local car mechanic.
Highlights: Talk about striking when you least expect it!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Okay, so I’ve gotten a lot of varied feedback on the new episode rating scale, some positive and some negative reactions. As a result, I’ve changed the scale a bit yet again, where anything above or equal to 7/10 means that I liked the series, as opposed to 6/10 (which was too low) or 8/10 (which meant me handing out only 8/10s for 95% of the cases). I’ll probably repeat this message in my next post, because only three people seem to read my entries about Porfy.

In any case, this episode of Porfy managed to surprise me yet again. As for the reason, here’s the summary. There’s a lot of talking in this episode again, so I hope I got everything right.

We never get to see the woman from the previous episode again, but Porfy managed to find his job, and is working at a local car repair shop along with another guy, who seems to be slacking off quite often. He tells Porfy about a local legend of a female thief roaming around one of the town’s buildings. He doesn’t like his boss either, but it seems that that day he tells Porfy that rumour turns out to be his last day of work.

That night, when Porfy’s trying to sleep, he can’t, because said guy makes too much noise. He then goes to sleep in one of the cars that they’ve been repairing. Unfortunately for him, said female thief has set her eyes on that car, and drives off with it, unaware that Porfy’s also in it. When he wakes up, he obviously tries to stop her, and through the chaos they crash into a tree, with Porfy unconscious.

When Porfy wakes up, the woman put some band-aid on him, and run into her hiding-place along with him. It’s a place in the sewer that was used as a hideout for the resistance during the war. Now for the complicated part: the woman is named Marianne, and she has a daughter Kristel. Apparently, she had her from a German soldier. Because of the hate between the French and the Germans, Marianne wasn’t welcome in her town anymore, and went off to work abroad, leaving Kristel in the town to be cared for at the local church. The townspeople, however, betrayed Marianne’s requests and sold Kristel off to a rich family in Germany. At least, that’s what makes the most sense. I’m not sure how exactly the woman became an escaped prisoner, but I suspect that she was put into prison because she sided with that German officer, and escaped because she heard of her daughter. A strong mother who’s willing to do anything for her kid.

We then switch to two policemen who are apparently on the case of getting Marianne back to prison. Porfy meanwhile has agreed to help Marianne meet Kristel, and they go to the local church, where the German couple is coming to pick her up. Porfy acts as a decoy for these policemen, while Marianne finally gets to see Kristel, though this turns out to be a bit different from expected. It seems that the people from the church have told Kristel that her mother is currently in a foreign country, and that her mother is going to come back to her soon (referring to her release as a prisoner, probably). What’s more: Kristel’s new parents are very rich, and she’ll be able to live a much better life than living as the daughter of an escaped prisoner who’s constantly on the run. At that point, something snaps at her.

Porfy has meanwhile succeeded in shaking off the policemen a bit by using the local goats of the Church. Marianne then runs into him, and from out of nowhere she starts attacking the guy, and blames him for taking Kristel away from her, even though he isn’t the one to blame. I’m not exactly sure what she said because she talked nonsense, but it definitely made a huge impression on Porfy to see a once strong woman change so suddenly.

And just when you think the episode is over Porfy runs into the owner of the car repair shop who comes to collect a part of Porfy’s reward for catching Marianne (he did use the car in the repair-shop for that, after all) and to deliver the message that the other mechanic-guy robbed his place, INCLUDING Porfy’s rucksack. After a bit of searching, he finds the rucksack shredded and his father’s tools gone.

Holy crap, the creators really picked a nice time for that. Throughout the entire series, Porfy had continued to run into people who tried to go after his rucksack for various reasons, but every time he managed to pull through and got it back. I should have KNOWN that this of course was just another part of a build-up, just like the rest of the series. Of course the creators wouldn’t just let him keep it like that if they kept showing small hints over and over again that showed that Porfy shouldn’t take his rucksack for granted.

This series is really getting interesting, now that the building-up is finally over and it can start using all the things it built up for. There are ten episodes left with this, so there really isn’t much time left for this series to just goof off with random stories anymore, and something tells me that the real meat of the series is about to arrive. There are at least three major events that are about to happen: Alecia’s return, the explosion of Carlos, the walking time-bomb, and the reunion of Porfy and Mina. Then the creators are also probably going to use Apollo for something, and I’m going to eat my hat if the owl-carving isn’t going to come into play at some point.

The thing I also like about this series: Porfy was devastated at the loss of his tools, that’s what the end of this episode showed pretty clearly. And yet, I know that he isn’t going to keep on angsting about it. He’s a strong guy, and in the next episode, he’s just going to continue travelling, and has just become a bit stronger. That’s INDEED how good angst should be used.