DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  Kaiko

  99/100
  Oyasumi Punpun is the one of the most groundbreaking visual novels, and is deserving of the highest recognition.

  Oyasumi Punpun is an ineffable manga. To fully describe how psychologically impactful this manga was is extremely difficult, as it was not only a series that evoked emotion, but it also felt very personal and relatable. The story revolves around protagonist Onodera Punpun from childhood to adulthood, and every step of the way his innocence slowly degrades as he realizes how cruel the world can be. His simplistic depiction as a sketchy bird (along with the rest of his relatives) emphasizes the effects of the story itself, rather than connections to their physical appearance. A senseless reality, the depressing storyline puts the reader into a trance that makes them reflect on their own lives, on their own relationships, and on their individuality. I cannot even begin to convey the strong emotional connection I have to these books, and immediately after I had reread the series for the second time, I purchased the entire collection. To have these books in my possession is like carrying my own autobiography. Anyone who has experienced pain or depression throughout their lives can find themselves in the little bird Punpun, and what I loved most about Oyasumi Punpun apart from any other generic sad story is the life lessons it teaches. As little Punpun travels through heartbreak, distance, and isolation, the characters around him are valuable (even if they hurt him) in teaching what it means to let go and teaching that it's ok if you can't forgive someone. Although admittedly Punpun did not have his fairytale happy ending, the rest of his life became open and forgiving, because along the journey of his life he discovered the importance of being happy with yourself amidst the pressures of everyday life. Asano Inio is godlike in being able to pull such strong feelings from the reader, as he tackles realistic examples of daily causes of depression, from abuse, heartbreak, perversion, peer pressure, sexuality, and broken friendships. Not only that, but Punpun's way of dealing with these issues is not what normal manga characters do, as usually they face the problem head on and eventually solve the problem. Punpun absorbs all the pain within himself and rarely tells anyone about it, other than the occasional violent outbusts as a result of his bottled up feelings. Many individuals in reality do this as well. Even when Punpun had found his love, their relationship consisted of mutual abuse and the wish to kill each other to relieve the pain. Oyasumi Punpun, though showing all this in the most relatable human way, is still a very uplifting series as it still ends on a pleasant note, showing that life goes on after all. Art wise, I thought it extremely creative and strategic to use a simplistic bird to represent the main character. Why? Because by doing so the protagonist is not liked for aesthetics. And he does not talk. The reader can easily relate themselves to Punpun because he has no specific characteristics that sets him largely apart from any other person that may read it, other than the fact that he has gone through pain and despondency. Also, he is a very obvious character as the rest of the book is drawn extremely realistically, which goes on to show Asano Inio's amazing and expressive talent. And even aside from the art, the dialogue is amazingly developed. It deals with varying personalities and is descriptive in representing each character in their spiritual and emotional beliefs. The only existing problem that docked one point in the rating is that the dialogue can be very long. It conveys the message to the best of its ability, but like Death Note, sometimes the paragraphs of conversation can zone the reader out. Nevertheless, every character input is equally important and never superfluous, so the negative connotations is quite minimal.

  The series should be read by mature (not necessarily older) individuals. Not only due to the fact that the depressing examples and allusions to God and suicide should never be read by one who has not yet understood these dangerous emotions, but because the reader is learning alongside a growing boy. Many scenes are suggestive or blatantly innapropriate, but in the end are important in contributing to the realistic atmosphere of the manga, so should not be shown to younger individuals.

  Other than that disclaimer, Oyasumi Punpun is hands down the most amazing series I have ever read, and I cannot recommend it enough.

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• 

  Zazzy

  95/100
  When a title can be liked that much by somebody that usually doesn't like its genre is a testimony of its quality.

  OYASUMI PUNPUN
  BY ASANO INIO

  
  
  Asano Inio is a renowned author for his dramatic and psychological works, and Oyasumi Punpun is a perfect example of what his style is. Despite its starting, unappealing first quick look, Oyasumi Punpun shows of that, often, assumptions based on single images and covers can be quite misleading.
  
  Many other works that have has their main focus a dramatic story-telling try to make the reader empathize with the main characters by usually making them “pitiably likable”, but Oyasumi Punpun throws that trope out of the windows by doing exact opposite.
  
  It all starts with a black humorish style of writing narrating the elementary schools years of the protagonist, Punpun Puniyama, following his life up to his maturity. The story is narrated by empathizing the psychological aspect of its characters, showing Punpun, and his family as tall birds wearing a white cape, this is done for letting us see emotions not usually describable with normal drawing and for not let us impersonate as Punpun. We, the readers , are an outside element in reading the story, that is so more accentuated by the fact that Punpun actions and dialogues are narrated in third person. But is important to remember that each those “birds” are actually normal persons in the eyes of other characters.
  
  The life of Punpun take a drastic change when, a new girl named Aiko Tanaka, comes in his class and the young boy experience his first crush. Guided by his love and his coming puberty Punpun approaches Aiko and the two become friends, but soon Punpun finds that Aiko is a rather strange and mature girl, showing things that make him realize his “life objective”, a quite new point of view in life in respect of what his friends of the “Porn search club” had ever shown him before. The elementary school years are only the first arc of the manga, but they are also the foundation of all the characters and what is to come.
  The characters themselves are the most developed part of the story, each and everyone of them goes through several changes during the course of their lives, and they all feel “real”. With that “real” approach to the character they ends to be, for the most part, relatively simple, not as complicated as other characters in similar works, but thanks to that the characters in Oyasumi Punpun feels pretty solid, and the author manages to actually make very hard for the reader to feel any empathy towards them.
  The most well developed character is of course the protagonist, Punpun. He goes  
  through his life experiencing a number of dramatic problems, each of them represented with a different aesthetic design for his physical body, which is only show to us, the readers. Like I said before, we, are the only one that sees the strange representation of Punpun’s body, the people he meets sees only a normal person.
  Another very important part in Punpun’s development is constituted by the other characters he meets, especially women, they all play an important part in putting together the story, with the influence that they have both on Punpun and on themselves.
  For the artistic side of the work, Oyasumi Punpun does an amazing job. The art style in the beginning can throw off some people, but once the first impact is braced the drawing shows an amazing artistic side, well representing each character with their own uniqueness and well detailed persona, showing a rather mature and realistic style.
  The realistic design of the characters is well accompanied by very beautiful backgrounds, all with a variegated and rock solid style, that well fits the dramatics of each and every situations that they are used for.
  
  ____
  
  Oyasumi Punpun started as a black sheep for me, I don’t like its genre, and the art style really put me off in the beginning, but once I started reading I simply could not stop. The art style quickly grow up on me, and seeking out the development of each and every character glued me on the manga.
  When a title can be liked that much by somebody that usually doesn't like its genre is a testimony of its quality, putting Oyasumi Punpun in my list of absolute classics.

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• 

  Athsuran

  42/100
  It's not necessarily bad. It's just too underwhelming for me to want to pick it up again, with so much more in my list.

  Punpun

  [This is a summary of notes I took while reading it,
  and the reason why, try as I might, I could not find the
  will to read a single more chapter and had to drop it.]

  SPOILERS up to Chapter 30

  The environment is always depicted realistically, which means it’s always just the very unremarkable city, and there is little to no show of emotion in a relatable way from PunPun.
  I can’t look at some panels from Oda without crying, for example, because he draws human emotion in such powerful ways that deeply connect to the most instinctive and primal parts of my brain. It’s like he has a direct line to my heart.
  While in Punpun I get the exact opposite feeling, his lack of human features makes it extremely hard for me to relate and feel in that instinctive level… and he is so very boring in general.

  Punpun to me feels like he is a leaf ?floating on the ocean, being swayed here and there with no interesting will, purpose, or assertiveness. He doesn’t go after the future he wants, and that makes the story very passive.
  And a passive story isn’t necessarily bad. But everything else seems so shitty all the time and people so dystopically crazy, that instead of having a “positive counterpoint” to the passivity, I get a negative counterpoint.
  It’s a downer without counterpoint and without deep philosophical thoughts, and without drama impactful enough to make me cry.
  I tried very hard to keep reading, hoping I would get more interested, but even the most exciting “cliffhanger” from chapter 30, is just another unremarkable event that’s even less remarkable than the boring lives of average people.

  The high point for me was chapter 6:

  

  When he was fantasizing about the Nobel Prize it made me smile ?. But even on all those genuine moments where the impact would be the greatest, I am underwhelmed by how Punpun doesn’t have human facial expressions for my brain to relate to. My mirror-neurons are not activated. He is cute, but that’s usually it — no matter whether he is sad or happy, he always looks just like a cute doodle.

  

  ~
  ~

  Then there are parts, like this page, which I think are really good:

  

  The whole scene, the simple 2 panel page, the close up in the first followed by the panorama shot from above in the second page. It’s really well done. And the artist does these perspective shots again several times. They’re very good.
  If Punpun had an actual face this could be such a strong moment, or cute, or something else, but I don’t even get to know what, because in my mind the mood is broken by Punpun being a doodle before any deeper emotions can form.

  I think this panel from chapter 16 highlights best why I’m gonna drop PunPun:

  

  This represents his whole life. This life represents the mood of the Manga. And that life is just not interesting enough.
  It was a bit funny at parts, some interesting things were said, some panels were beautiful, and some characters made me a bit curious about their minds.
  But not enough, not enough of any of that. It’s just overall below the threshold of interestingness to keep me reading while I have wonderful masterpieces in my reading list that take me in journeys which are so much deeper in every single one of the reasons I could have to come back to PunPun.

  It didn’t have any end goal I was interested in, and provided no big reward along the way either.

  I’m mildly curious about how this could develop further 100 chapters down the line, so maybe someday the Punpun mood will strike and I’ll pick it up again (although it’s extremely unlikely). Until then, if these first 30 chapters were any indication, I just cannot see myself using my time to read 30 more chapters of Punpun while I could be reading 30 chapters of Dr. Stone, or Promised Neverland, or Berserk, or One Piece, or so many romance manga I wanna get into.

  I wish I could read it all, but life is limited,
  and if I read a book per week I’d still only be able to read 3360 books in 70 years. Compared to the 44,507,623 books in the New York Public Library alone, and over 3 million wonderful works of art in the Hermitage Museum alone, and all the movies, and anime, and all the rest of life too.
  With a whole universe competing for my limited attention in my short life, it is no insult to a work’s value and distinctiveness when I drop it. It’s just testament to the fact that I have a hundred million books competing for only a few thousand spots in my lifetime, so cuts have to be made along the way. And I gotta pick only the ones that resonate personally with me the strongest.

  So at least for now,
  I have to say,
  Oyasumi,
  Punpun.

  

  Conclusion: It's not necessarily “bad." It's just too underwhelming for me to want to pick it up again, when if I look up from the manga my own daily life 100 times more interesting, exciting, inspiring and insightful. And while there are so many other manga in my list which give me better personal positive value for my limited time.

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