I'm caught up with the show but behind on these writeups (holy shit episode 9), anyway here's the next one. images in spoiler tags
Sarazanmai #04
despite having the most structured repetition of any ikuhara show so far, sarazanmai has been unusually low on specific character catchphrases compared to penguindrum (
shibireru darou) and maybe even yurikuma. the first character we see that's explicitly tied to a catchphrase is chikai, whose character is defined with "only bad guys survive in this world." sarazanmai so far has also been a very heavily character-driven show compared to the broader societal worldbuilding of his other shows (penguindrum especially), so it seems like chikai will be the catalyst that forces our main trio to deal with societal forces at work beyond their own personal conflicts.
on the flip side, sarazanmai is leaning far more into ikuhara's use of puns and double meanings. #03 had a triple meaning in kiss (the fish/the action/the boyfriend keith), while #04 is building its theme of the week around soba (noodles/being next to). maybe worth noting that yurikuma #05 used the same soba pun, sourced from the tradition of "hikkoshi soba," i.e. soba eaten with neighbors after moving into a new house.
littered throughout these first four episodes are even more food-related puns - #02 has "zanmai" cat food, #03 has "sanmai" fillet, the text crawl in the SARAtto report in #03 has a bizarre recipe for cucumber sesame chicken, etc. at some point the layers of punnage are likely nothing more than fun wordplay, but it's worth noting how much of this show's themes are built on food and dishes - food is a central role in many fables about desire and temptation, and sarazanmai is nothing if not a story about desire and temptation to connect. a particularly interesting food story to note is the forbidden fruit of adam & eve, since this is a story ikuhara has already drawn on in his discussions throughout penguindrum of tempting/challenging fate and sharing the forbidden apple as a representation of connection being inherent in humans. there's also the idea of food as a communal experience - most of the scenes we've seen with kazuki and enta's families have involved eating food together, and toi's lack of family is clearly represented by the lifeless noodle shop he lives in.
in significant contrast to the warm, intimate locations in the rest of asakusa, toi's home is empty, devoid of any of the personal items that litter the walls of enta and kazuki's houses. takeuchi draws further attention to this with the stacks of boxes in the foreground, supporting an interpretation of boxes as containers to lock away treasured items but never enjoy them for what they are (yurikuma primarily uses this interpretation for a lot of its box content). takeuchi's framing of toi's relatives is also purposefully obscure, taking an angle that not makes both them and the restaurant itself feel distant and unfamiliar.
if we say that sarazanmai is ikuhara's response to penguindrum, then this statement seems to be his response to the child broiler. as in penguindrum, survival is defined in terms of the connections we make, and existence is defined by the memories that others have of us. without these, we're reduced to the facelessness of the anonymous background characters, instantly replaceable and unremarkable as the buildings in the city. this also ties into ikuhara's discussion of capitalism as a system that commodifies its workers, making them as uniform and anonymous as the countless identical kappazon boxes in the series.