Puni Puni Poemy

Introduction

If you're looking for a little notoriety in your purchases, then Puni Puni Poemy should be right up your street. After all, it has been banned in New Zealand. Even in the UK, it gets rated an 18, for frequent sex and nudity, violence, and moderate language. And it's an anime. Call the Daily Mail, ring your MP, throw a tantrum. I'm left wondering what all the fuss is about, as it's no closer to the edge than your average episode of South Park, albeit an episode that's at hyperspeed, on amphetamines, wired on coffee, and with an intensity of gags that makes your ears bleed. That Shinichi Watanabe creates it is just a bonus. Watanabe was the manic energy behind the sublime anime parody Excel Saga, and Puni Puni Poemy is its spin-off OVA. The thing about Excel Saga is that it was a show made for television, subject to all the broadcast rules and regulations that come with it, and believe it or not, the madcap energy and ribald humour was restrained. An inkling of what the creators truly intended came with the final direct to video episode, Going Too Far, which put in all the blood, guts, nudity, sex and general fan service that those stupid rules and regulations prohibited. Puni Puni Poemy takes that admirable ethos, the lunatic energy and all the smut, and multiplies it by ten, with a proper OVA budget, meaning no pesky censors getting too prohibitive.


If you're familiar with Excel Saga, you won't be surprised to hear that PPP is a parody, although in this case, it's just the sole parody. This week we will be taking off the Magical Girl genre, and be prepared to see some familiar faces from Excel Saga, as well as a whole host of new characters. When you think of Magical Girl, Sailor Moon instantly springs to mind, a show where a group of superhero teen girls live secret lives on Earth, and are called on regularly to save the world against alien menaces. Said girls will be tremendously cute, suffer the usual problems with boyfriends and lack thereof, but when called to action, will undergo a transformation sequence that offers just a hint of fan service, just enough for the audience demographics to be skewed towards middle-aged businessman as opposed to pre-teen schoolgirl. PPP forgets the hints and just serves it all up on a plate, albeit discreetly framed, or strategically pixellated, or hidden by a tree, or a passing rubber duck…


At the end of Excel Saga, Shinichi Watanabe's animated alter ego Nabeshin got hitched to Kumi Kumi, and as the OVA begins, we learn that they have adopted a daughter, Poemy Watanabe, and are living together as a family in a hut by the beach. Poemy's goal in life is to become an anime voice actress, and her hyperactive personality, go get 'em attitude, and irrepressible motormouth are going to steamroller her on her way. Except that aliens invade, kill her parents and set forth their plans to take over the Earth. You can't keep a motormouth down for long, and soon Poemy's moving in with the seven Aasu sisters. She goes to school with Futaba, and they're good friends, very good friends, very very good friends, ahem… Futaba's happy to share her bed, um home with Poemy, although her sisters need a little convincing. Poemy's still burning a candle for a boy at school named K, but he doesn't know she exists, and everyone is hiding a secret identity. When the aliens step up their invasion plans, and land a giant mecha in the city, the Aasu sisters have to fulfil their destinies as Earth's protectors. It's just that their powers aren't very useful. Then Poemy meets a ripe man playing a shamisen. He gives to her a magic fish that becomes a wand, and when the wand is invoked, Poemy becomes the Earth's true protector, Puni Puni Poemy.


Two OVA episodes were made, running to half an hour each. They're available of course in the UK on a disc from ADV, but out of sheer contrariness, I'm reviewing the Region 1 disc.

Picture

A 4:3 regular transfer, that is clear, sharp and perfectly acceptable to watch. This is a lively anime, with lots of bright colours and manic action, and all of that comes across with the minimum of compression artefacts and transfer flaws.

Yes, that's the same paragraph I used in my Excel Saga Review, although I ought to add that it's an NTSC transfer.

Sound

There is a DD 5.1 track on this disc. Unfortunately it's the commentary track. Puni Puni Poemy gets a choice of DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with optional translated English subtitles or signs, and there is another option of a 'weird' subtitle track, which gives you the show in pig Latin. That's funny for about ten seconds.

The English dub makes the same mistake as the Excel Saga dub, that loud and screechy equates somehow to funny. It doesn't. In fact, for once I wished an anime disc actually had dubtitles, because I could barely make out a word of what the dub cast were saying. The Japanese track is the way to go, simply because they actually moderate their performances and entertain, rather than damage hearing.

Extras

The disc autoplays with adverts for the Anime Network and the now defunct Newtype magazine. On the disc you'll find trailers for Excel Saga, Azumanga Daioh, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Cosplay Complex, Super Gals, and Wedding Peach.

The 5.1 cast commentary, supposedly the world's first gathers actors Monica Rial, Kira Vincent Davies, Tiffany Grant, Cynthia Martinez, Brett Weaver and Chris Patton alongside ADR director Matt Greenfield. You'd be correct in assuming that this quickly degenerates into an incoherent rabble. You may be able to make out something useful of the utter free for all, I wasn't. There is one thing useful about this track. They decide to pull out some of the background dialogue that usually gets buried in the mix, and some of it is quite funny, when the actors don't talk over it.

There is a 13-minute Behind the Scenes featurette… of the commentary? You have to be kidding me!

You also get the Clean Credits and a couple of slideshow galleries showing production and character art.

Y'know, all the decent Puni Puni Poemy extras are actually on the Excel Saga discs.

Conclusion

Lightning never strikes twice, but it does occasionally hit the same ballpark. I found Puni Puni Poemy to lack the charm of Excel Saga, but it's still downright hilarious. Although I think the 18 rating is a little excessive. It's ribald, close to the edge, raunchy and perverted, but you don't actually see much of anything, it's all left to the imagination. It sets up the scenario, and then lets the viewers' filthy little minds take them down the wrong road. For instance, an early scene sees Nabeshin and wife under the covers, limbs splayed at odd angles and much writhing and rolling under the sheets. Then the sheets are removed to reveal the fully clothed couple sticking fake limbs out from underneath. Sex happens off screen, discretely concealed, or replaced by visual metaphor, although no steam trains go into tunnels. Besides, let's face it, this is comedy smut, and remember back in the sixties and seventies, while porn was a no-no in British cinema, if it was in fast forward and ludicrous and had Confessions Of in the title, then it was acceptable for public consumption. I think whoever rated this was having a bad day. The Canadian advisory is a far more sensible 14A, which pretty much matches up with the show's ideal target audience.


Although I must admit that the aliens hit my 'Yick' button on more than one occasion. One has a single grey ball, hanging pendulously from his crotch by a string, the other has two of them, and they both play with them incessantly. If you've seen Excel Saga, then you will pretty much have a good idea of what Puni Puni Poemy is all about, fast-paced, madcap, utterly random comedy, with just a hint of a subversive edge to it. In fact that may be my one complaint with it, it's just a little too much like Excel Saga, especially in the main character Poemy. Excel was an energetic hyper-motormouth, and so is Poemy. It feels like a character recycled, and while the same jokes slot in just fine with Excel redux, it still feels like a missed opportunity to do something new. The thing is that Excel grew on me after 26 episodes; the character developed and became a little more three-dimensional, and was more likeable as a result. Poemy can't manage the same in the short running time of the OVA, and there were moments when I found even the Japanese dub version just a tad annoying.


Also PPP threatened to get a little too meta at points, with Poemy constantly falling out of character and calling herself Kobayashi (the voice actress' name), and calling her father Nabeshin the Director (voiced by Shinichi Watanabe). Add to that Poemy's desire to be a voice actress and break into anime, and the Moebius strip nature of the premise threatened to give me a nosebleed.


None of that matters of course, as PPP is about the laughs, and this it delivers with a relentless intensity that had me clutching my sides in pain. Every frame is filled with sight gags, so you'll be pressing pause and rewind more than once to see what's going on in the background. The characters are hilarious, especially the Aasu sisters who are all perverted in some way and there is more entertainment packed into its sixty minutes than some series manage in their entire lengthy runs. My only, minor, gripe is that I wish it could have delivered a little more than just a concentrated dose of Excel Saga with added sex, but when I think about it, that isn't such an unpalatable recipe.