天下制覇

First person to figure out the father of the Mochi Mochi spawn wins a bagel.

Impressions:

Yeah yeah, I’m getting to it. I let it start capping while the Shana stuff was uploading… then the problems with that… which means I’m slow to get started on the summary. It looks like a very nice episode though, ending with Potemayo’s freakish spawn and Guchuko’s very cute spawn. I’ll leave who fathered them to your imagination. Summary, normal impressions, and my final thoughts on the series should be up within a half hour or so. Some caps may also change if I see something that MPlayer missed.

A rather nice episode to end the series, bringing everything full circle with the… things… blossoming and becoming mothers themselves. Guchuko’s little kid (Guchuchin?) has its work cut out for it, though Potechin already shows all the signs of taking after her mother… what with chewing on everything and anything within arm’s reach. I feel a little insulted that they seriously though anybody in the audience would really believe that they’d kill the little Mochi Mochi, and could have used a bit more Nene and Guchuko in the episode overall, but Yasumi in drag was scarring enough. Sadly… and strangely… I think Kaoru is the only male to show up in more than half the episodes who never put on a skirt. We’d have to go to the polls to count the number of episodes that Sunao’s dad has been in, but it’d be close.

Seriously though… what the hell ‘pollunated’ Potemayo to produce that? It looks like the rabid offspring of Potemayo and the residents of The City With No People.

Final Thoughts:

I don’t think anybody was really sure what they’d be getting into when Potemayo started airing. Here was this show absolutely oozing with bright colors, small cute creatures and very young character designs. What we got instead consisted of a lot of gender bending jokes, the compressed violence of Guchuko, and the sheer unabashed weirdness of a little anthropomorphic cat beast. I mean, seriously. Potemayo and Guchuko have all the dynamic range of pokemon. Hell, for all we know, they could be pokemon.

The show was an absurdist comedy though. Making sense is something that happens elsewhere. There was nothing fundamentally deep or cerebral about Potemayo and that’s what made it a lot of fun. JC Staff managed to use the two girls to their utmost and found all sorts of jokes to make with them instead of relying on the same thing over and over again, and really, the strength of the show was in how strong the characters were. Every single one was very well defined, and while Mikan and Sunao are archetypes that we’ve seen a thousand times before, the rest of the cast are all dynamic enough to contrast well with their predictable personalities. Hell, I’ll even say that the two provide a centering point in reality for the rest of the absurdity to take place around them. It’s an old trick in comedy used in everything from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Rozenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

And now that I’ve tangentially mentioned Shakespeare and Eddie Valiant in the same sentence, I’m probably rambling. Potemayo was an absolutely wonderful show full of charisma, charm, and absurdist humor that really seems hard to come by in an anime world that all too often seems filled with pandering and the same nosebleed punchline over and over and over again. It’s a crying shame that it only aired for a few short months.

Rock on, JC Staff, you crazy devils. Rock on. 

Potemayo, Sunao and his father are sleeping together. He keeps remembering what Mikan said about being kind to his father and looking at Pote’s flower. He falls back asleep, dreaming on a tropical island when he was young. Sunao sits on the porch reading when as generic a triabl guy as you can find tells him that his mom’s fallen asleep and they can go play. Sunao agrees and leaves with him, though looks back at the house that he left, thinking about his sick mother. She has ‘typhu’, which I can only imagine is typhoid fever… and you’d be amazed that typhoid fever has never come up before

The tribal dude asks Sunao what he wants to play. Sunao says anything is fine, so the tribal dude suggests sumo saying he’ll use half of half of his strength.

The two go at eachother… with Sunao getting thrown off a cliff and into the ocean. He washes ashore a little later… the dude saying he’ll use half of half of half of… etc his strength next time. Sunao remembers how good of a friend Moriya (?) (tribal dude) was and how much time the two spent together, learning to write and whatnot. The two both write letters to their mothers, yada yada.

Sunao’s mother reads the letter he gave her and laughes from her bed.

She calls him over from hiding around the corner and makes him sit next to her. She thanks him for the letter, hugs him and makes him read it to her. It’s a pretty normal letter about looking at the flowers with Moriya and wanting to do it with her too.

She thanks him and tells him that she’s feeling better because of it and will cook dinner for them. Moriya tries to stop her, but she continues and creates a giant mess all over the place.

That night, Sunao falls asleep on her bed in her lap. His father comes in and the two talk about what a good boy he is, etc until he starts waking up. They quiet down and Sunao’s dad starts nuzzling her leg. He stops when she calls him a little kid… and then he apologizes to her. She calls him an idiot for worrying about such things.

Soon after, Sunao was sent away from the island with his mother. In a hospital, he’s reading a letter from them with his mother. He wants to show her the cherry blossoms, so he takes her outside in a wheelchair. She tells him that Japan is really the country that she likes the best.

Not long after, Sunao is dressed all in black and reading another letter from Moriya saying that Sunao shouldn’t be sad etc etc. His father comes to get him, but Sunao darkly walks past without saying a word.

Sunao’s father wakes up with tears in his eyes. He wonders what kind of embarrassing dream he was having… and Sunao gives him the elbow drop. Sunao’s dad wonders if the two were having the same dream.

Potemayo tries to bring Sunao some… danish thing… and falls over backwards. Potemayo in general is having issues keeping her baalnce with the huge flower on her head.

Mikan is brushing her teeth at home, thinking how stupid she is and how she should deal with Sunao. Yasumi is brushing his teeth next to her… in a skirt. Their mother busts in and tears the clothes off him.

Kyo wakes up as well, slow and lazy as usual. She hears a knocking on the glass door… and then it breaks. She looks over and sees Guchuko repairing it after breaking in. She leaps over, scaring poor Guchuko half to death. She slams her head into the door in surprise… with one of the worms leaking blood from the impact.

Mikan and Yasumi are walking to school, both still annoyed at various things.

Guchuko tries to communicate to Kyo why she’s in. This is mostly done by hand waving and little grunting. None of Kyo’s family can figure out what she wants, though she does start growling when her father shows up. Guchuko looks around the room for… something.

Nene and her chariot are at the crosswalk. Poor poor Mudo.

Mikan wonders what she should say to Sunao when they meet. She runs into Yasumi, who has stopped because Sunao turned the corner right ahead.

She blurts out multiple apologies. Sunao tries to say something, but Yasumi grabs Mikan’s hand and walks past him. Sunao watches them go for a moment, but after Potemayo shakes him a couple times, he follows.

Guchuko finally makes a decision and walks right up to Kyo and puts her little paws on Kyo’s knees.

Mikan is trying to get Yasumi to let her go when Sunao grabs her other hand. On his head, Potemayo goes into sort of a trance. At Kyo’s house, Guchuko is doing the same. Both start grunting and straining… it sounds very uncomfortable… and then both their flowers bloom. Potemayo and Guchuko both float into the air for all to see…

Guchuko smiles and blushes, then the flowers burst, sending a shower of petals all over the place. Potemayo falls as Sunao’s mother says how beautiful the cherry blossoms are.

Sunao catches Potemayo… but she’s totally lifeless. Mikan tries to wake her up. Both her and Sunao have tears in their eyes… and Mudo falls to his knees. Kyo is holding Guchuko and telling herself that it’s not possible. She hugs Guchuko close.

Mikan puts her hands on Sunao’s cheeks and hugs him. Yasumi gets annoyed, but decides to do nothing. Sunao weakly thanks Mikan for always being with him and caring for him. She puts her head on his and simple nods.

The chicken flies around them and then lands on Potemayo, who stirs and wakes up. Sunao lifts Potemayo in happiness.

At Sunao’s house, all the cast is there to watch Potemayo dance. There’s karaoke too. Kyo tries to feed Potemayo a gucho ball, but Guchuko predictably kicks her away, starting the two fighting again. Mikan and Sunao are in the kitchen making food for everybody. Yasumi is about to interfere, but Tomari drags him away. Guchuko and Potemayo rush past… almost. Sunao grabs Potemayo and chastises her for dangerous play. He smiles at her. On her head, the chicken pecks out a seed.

Next on the karaoke is some other crazy dance. The party continues long into the night. Finally, everybody has gone home and Sunao is cleaning up. He finds the seed on the ground and throws it in the garbage.

 

That night, while everybody else sleeps, the trashcan rumbles.

In the morning… Sunao wakes up to a strange thing on his crotch. He asks Potemayo what it is, but she doesn’t know either. She tries to communicate with it… but it bites her head.

As the ED song runs, we see scenes of everybody walking to class, meeting the new creature, etc. Kyo has a new little beastie too, but it’s shy, shaking with fear, and far more human looking… clearly Guchuko’s shy little offspring. Even in the end, Potemayo has been outdone by the little one.