Puni Puni Poemy

[Rift120]

Heh, finally got my hand on this two part OAV. What to make of it hmm?

Let me just say that I am 100% sure that illegal drugs were in use during the creation of Puni Puni Poemy.

This is from the creators of Excel Saga, so you should already expect it to be pretty off the wall. But the OAV is insane.

Complete and utter insanity. But fun insanity.

Poemi Watanabi is a 10-year-old girl aspiring to be a voice actress who calls herself Kobayashi (Why? Because her voice actress is really bad at staying in character.)

Anyway, after her father Nabeshin and mother are 'killed' by an alien with a really freaky defense against chibi-Nabeshins, she is taken in by her best friend (who naturally wants to be more than friends) Futuba and her siblings the Aasu sisters, who secretly are the guardians of Earth! Except they are just guardians in that all of their powers are defensive and useless.

Fortunately, Poemi is given a dead fish, which when she debones allows her to transform into Puni Puni Poemy! Defender of Earth and all around terrorist! (No, really, she drops a nuke on a country!)

Plot? Umm, aliens are invading earth, because they've been viewing anime porn and think earth women are easy.  That's about the whole plot. But the plot's not important in this series, the SHEER insanity and wackiness is.

Whether its the opening bit with shadowy Puni Puni Poemy kicking the crap out of shadows of every other magical girl out there (I KNOW at least the sailor senshi were killed in the opening); Futuba's rather blatant attempts to sleep with Poemi (Including a dream sequence where she alternates between both Poemi's secret identity and Puni Puni Poemy); to the destruction of a sidewalk because of the 'red string of fate', it's the side notes that make this an enjoyable watch.

Do be warned that Poemy talks FAST and I mean fast - I had to pause the anime occasionally just to get enough time to read the subtitles fast.  (Ironically this is the 2nd anime I've watched this week where I've had to do that, but Puni Puni Poemy is MUCH better than Elf Princess Rane). Makes me wonder if they had spare oxygen tanks in the filming studio, for when Kobayashi passed out due to lack of air from talking so fast and much!

That doesn't even get into the Aasu sisters family meeting in the first episode, which puts a whole new definition on fast talking.

Overall, this is a good OAV, but goes a bit fast. If you took Excel Saga and compressed it down to 2 episodes you might get something similarly insane.  But the anime makes the speed and insanity work for it by not taking itself to seriously and parodying several OAV trends. As well as a few non-anime trends, too.  (Check out the partially constructed Death Star in the 2nd episode)

I give it a 4 out of 5 (I'd give it a perfect 5, but the speed did put me off a bit.)

[Edward]

Okay, I spellchecked and proofread this.  Hopefully no one minds.  Thanks for posting the review.

[DB]

Actually, the speed really turned me off. It was way too fast, and lessened my enjoyment seriously. Likewise they tried to do too much in too small a space, IMO. It was Excel on speed, and Excel doesn't need to go any faster than it already does. Subsequently, while i was happy buying the Excel DVDs, I was glad I got to see PPP at a con before I wasted the money.

4 out of 10, since it did have a handful of moments. But no rewatchability factor for me.

[Dracos]

I'm with DB entirely here.  It's not worth rewatching, if watching once.  It's entirely too fast and while it's basically them having fun with animation, it isn't a product I'd want to have paid for.  A squished excel saga is a good description as it removed even the smallest sense of pacing to the experience.

Dracos