Short Synopsis: Recap
Highlights: Strangely enough, this was EXACTLY what this series needed…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so I’m obviously not going to summarize this recap-episode in detail. What I do want to talk about is everything else that happened here. I rated this episode high for a very good reason, because this episode may very well put itself on the short list of great recap episodes. The thing is that Porfy no Nagai Tabi has obviously turned a bit stale for the past two arcs. Porfy didn’t really grow, how he ran into the right people felt a bit awkward, and the drama nor the slice-of-life matched up to what we saw in the earlier parts of the series. The creators have shown that they can write great travel arcs (the abandoned city-arc was just amazing), but for the past months, Porfy lost a bit of its spark.

And that’s why it’s so great to look back at the amazing earlier parts of the series, when all of the characters still were alive/not missing. Porfy also had a very good reason to be nostalgic: at the airport of Rome, he ran into none other than Barnes, who had picked up rumours about a Greek boy that was lost in Italy. He then delivers him a letter from Zaimis, so this indeed was the perfect place to put such a recap. And of course, that little teaser at the end of the episode, that showed that MINA IS STILL IN ROME was just icing on the cake.

This really reminds me of the third arc of Les Miserables (about the first similarity that I spotted between the two series after their introduction-arcs): I remember clearly that very annoying episode where everyone in Paris kept nearly running into each other. And at the same time, it was such a great way of building up, for when the characters finally met with each other. Overall, this episode formed a pretty nice conclusion to the first half of Porfy no Nagai Tabi, and although we may have a few more boring travel arcs in store, the fact does remain that it’s still building up for the moments in this series that really matter: the reunion with Mina and Alecia. Porfy no Nagai Tabi doesn’t have the grand story of Les Miserables, but at the same time it’s much more personal, and I love how the two series are so different from each other, despite being both World Masterpiece Theatres.

Short Synopsis: This episode follows Chiko and Ken, as they try to get the doomed zeppelin down safely.
Highlights: An excellent aftermath to an amazing arc.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
The previous episode was an absolute chaos, so it was only natural that the aftermath would be more straight-forward, and yet this was a very solid and entertaining episode, which really served to get the cast closer together, especially Ken and Chiko managed to settle their differences as they tried to get out of that bomb-filled zeppelin. An interesting twist was that all of the guests turned out to be alive, and the wine was just rigged with some strange stuff that quickly made them unconscious. The blood that they seemed to cough… just turned out to be wine.

One thing that my limited Japanese didn’t fully understand is what went on between Chiko’s aunt and Tome. The end result was Tome, blackmailing the aunt, but I’m not exactly sure how she did it. Did she feed her the same poison that was fed to Chiko, so that if she were to go to the doctor, her plans to poison Chiko would be revealed?

Overall, I’m really impressed by this arc, but the question remains: what is going to happen in the final eight episodes. Hashihime mentions something about the final parts of the series diverging from the manga, and turning into “detective girls”, and the ED seems to confirm this.

The detective-girls do have potential, and it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of mysteries the creators can come up with, but I’ve got one major issue with it: Haruka. The OP and ED continue to portray her as a major character, while her actual role in this series has been incredibly small. The only time that she did stand in the spotlights turned into a disaster, when she knocked a big strong man unconscious with a bunch of toys. If this series really is going to turn into a detective girls-thingy, then I fear that Haruka’s brattiness has the potential to ruin everything. She’s about the only member of the cast that feels stupid, and I really hope that the creators will manage to develop her sufficiently.