Would you buy a car from Panda?
What They Say:
Panda works his way up the ladder and Penguin dreams of flying.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the previous episode having a rather stronger focus on Full Time Panda, I can definitely appreciate the show that takes the time to step away from the core cast. It had fun and gave us a bit more time with Rin Rin, who I like in small doses. But the show also knows it has to go back to the core cast fairly regularly since they’re the real draw and tend to have the most fun. But it’s welcome to break up things with them so that it doesn’t get to be too much of a good thing, something I was afraid the show would suffer from at some point.
With this episode, the first half is given over to Panda as he’s all excited about the new part time job he has. Him getting jobs isn’t a regular occurrence, but he is the type that seems like he wants to find new things to do all the time, for a few minutes at least before it gets either boring or too much. This time around he’s working at a car dealership. When we see him working at the dealership, it’s comical since he does kind of treat it like the zoo where he cna nap on the cars, doesn’t know what’s going on and is just generally lazy. Yet in his own weird way, he can actually sell these things. Not entirely because of his skills though and things turn in an amusing way as he essentially becomes the store mascot. It leads to some other areas as well thta are just as hilarious as we see what Panda would be like in the business lecture circuit.
With some good fun there, the second half shifts to giving us some time with Penguin, which is always a good deal of fun. We’ve gotten a lot of history on penguins in general and plenty of relly fun Penguin material, but here we get a little bit more into his head as he has his dreams of flying. After establishing he does not have wings but rather flippers (among many other puns), we get to understand some of his irritation at the moment since he wants to fly in some form, no matter what. The methods that are tried at hilarious, though they don’t exactly work well for Penguin. Bringing Grizzly in for a bit adds some extra fun but in the end, there’s a real sweetness about the episode as it unfolds and we see everyone working so hard to help him achieve his dream of flying.
In Summary:
Polar Bear Cafe has a pretty good episode here as it again works two very different stories in an engaging and fun way. The first half gives us the view of the world with Panda working out in the business side a bit more, first at a car dealership and then elsewhere, which makes you laugh at the surreal nature of it with how people respond. The second half and its focus on Penguin is spot on as it works the comedy very, very well but also knows you have to have some good heart to it as well. Penguin continues to grow as my favorite character out of the gang as a whole and an episode like this goes pretty far in really making him even better to watch.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
