Short Synopsis: Mina finishes her parts of the recordings and Porfy gets into a bunch of fights.
Highlights: Finally it’s time to address the Rose vs. Tiffany subplot.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I must say that the World Masterpiece Theatre series have a unique sense of endings. While you would expect the final parts of a 52-episode series to be full of tension, where everything the series has built up for comes together, the endings I’ve seen so far do something completely different: Akage no Anne’s climax only popped up something like four episodes before the end, completely unexpected, and Les Miserables’ climax ended seven episodes before the series was supposed to end. Porfy’s the same: I really expected a continuously sad final arc, much like what happened at the earthquake arc. Instead of that, it builds up, features a big climax when Porfy runs into Alecia, and then goes into a completely different direction with a final arc that starts with a very careful and quiet build-up. It really does feel like Porfy is only going to meet Mina in episode 52 this way.
Anyway, summary: The waiter is counting the money for the day, and something is missing. He immediately blames Porfy, who obviously never took anything. He threatens with the police, but the cook comes in to the rescue by pointing out that the missing coin is in one of the beer glasses, apparently a few customers did this to re-enact a scene from a certain movie.
The waiter then looks strangely at Porfy, wondering aloud why he’s in the wrong: money was missing, he didn’t know about the beer glass, so it’s obvious that he suspected Porfy for it. He then starts randomly complaining, and eventually insults Porfy’s father. Like always, Porfy can’t take this at all, and would have attacked the waiter if the cook hadn’t stopped him. Porfy quits immediately. When he asks for his pay for the day, he gets denied again, because he dirtied his apron in his rage. When Porfy comes home, he’s obviously in a bad mood, but initially doesn’t want to talk about it. When Rose asks further, he starts crying and Rose tries to comfort him a bit.
Mina meanwhile is still in a totally different world. Mina asks whether the filming of the movie gets completed that day (I can only guess that a few weeks or months have passed since the previous episode), and Tiffany confirms that. Mina then gets excited, thinking that the movie is already ready to be broadcast, but Tiffany then explains her that it takes much more to reach the final product.
The final scene that needs to be shot is one where only Tiffany is needed, where her character gets poetic a bit inside a field of corn. Mina makes for quite a cute action by forgetting that Tiffany’s supposed to be on stage and standing right next to her like a little sheep. The production crew cal her back a bit, since her job is already finished by now. The scene gets shot, and the entire production crew celebrates that the shooting of the movie has finished, Mina and Tiffany get flowers and the whole crew goes out to have dinner that next evening.
Porfy meanwhile has been cleaning for two evenings because he doesn’t have anything left to do. Because of that, Rose offers to take him to a roller-skate park after she’s taken a shower. During that time, Porfy looks at the picture again, and manages to confirm his suspicions that the other person with Rose is Tiffany. Rose then comes out of the shower, and Porfy starts talking about that picture, though this falls really wrong with Rose, and she starts yelling at him. Porfy doesn’t know when to quit, and eventually Rose kicks him out of her house, refusing to let him back in.
The rest of the episode doesn’t really need a summary because hardly anything is said in it, though in the end Rose is finally about to tell why she hates Tiffany so much. I’ve been waiting for this: Tiffany has been portrayed as such a perfect woman, that I’m eager to see her more darker parts. She’s most definitely an ambitious woman, but how ambitious exactly that is, we have to wait for that one more week.
One of the things that I’m impressed about with this series is how the creators decided to handle the weaknesses of the characters. Usually in anime, characters only have small weaknesses, no weaknesses at all, or the weaknesses are so exaggerated that they become either annoying or stereotypes. It really takes skill to portray a character with serious weaknesses, and still maintain the characters interest as to not delve into a hopeless emo-fest. After all, flawed characters are interesting to watch when you first meet them, and they only start to shine as they develop and learn from their flaws. Porfy and Mina are really good examples of good characters with serious flaws: Porfy doesn’t know when to stop talking and completely flips when his parents get mentioned, while Mina can hardly think of her own, and always needs to be near an adult or mother-figure. Their flaws feel real, provide some nice conflicts and yet they don’t appear too often to overshadow their entire personalities.
