Punch Line

Punch Line
I started watching this as a guilty pleasure. A guy who’s sexual arousal destroys the world was a hilarious premise. And I enjoyed the show, really. It’s pervy fanservice, without the need of inexplicable beams of light and oh so convenient steam clouds. So why didn’t I enjoy it more? Two things: one is the fact that the comedy has to take a back seat in the final third of the series in order for the story to play out. I really hate that when that happens. The premise is ludicrous and silly, but the series takes a serious turn, because of the serious ... story they present. Like halfway through the original writer hit a wall and had to hire someone else to finish the story. But writer two didn’t know it was a comedy.
Second is more of a personal thing. It comes from being a fan of science and science fiction and is in two parts. First is the time travel paradox. I won’t spoil anything here but let’s just say either time IS absolute therefore no action one takes can affect the outcome; or time ISN’T absolute therefore there cannot be dire consequences for effecting history.and Punch Line tries to have it both ways. Otherwise the show wouldn’t make it to 12 episodes. The other part is according to Dr. Kaku, conservation mass says you’d have to atomize an asteroid to prevent it from causing widespread destruction. Even if you reduced it to golfball sized pieces, there’d be so many of them the would cause destruction over a vast area of the world.
Now I know the seems petty in a comedy, but as I stated earlier, the comedy takes a back seat in the last third, so I have to rate what they give me. Watch it, or don’t; either way you’ll be no better or worse for it.

Punchline really surprised me, it started out with the empression that it was going to be a silly natured anime full of fan service. As the season progresses, so does the seriousness of the plot, and the situation that the MC is in.

Story - So we have our MC Yuta, he finds himself in the middle of a bus hijacking where a pink haired girl named Strange Juice is able to subdue all, but one of the assailants. The leader, an unnamed white haired guy, of the group who attacked the bus, prepares to shoot Strange Juice. He is stopped by Yuta, who had ... somehow powered up after seeing his neighbours Rabura's panties. Yuta tackles him out of the bus and into the sea below the highway, while falling the white haired guy happily says something to yuta which is quieted out. He wakes up on the shore with Strange Juice, but ends up unconscious again after seeing her panties, suddenly a beam of light comes from the sky and hits Yuta and he is thrown out of his body. Yuta wakes up in his dormitory and finds that he has become a spirit with only a talking cat, Chiranosuke, to guide and help him.

Throughout the season, Yuta learns that an impending disater is going to hit Earth in the future, and the only way he can change that future is by trying to affect current events to ensure that devastating future doesn't happen. He also remembers the events surrounding his childhood, and his two friends at the time Chiyoko and Guriko.

Art & Sound - Overall art is fine, no complaints or anything worth mentioning. The OP is catchy, and ED is decent, and the insert song in EP 12 fits the moment perfectly.

Character - I enjoyed Yuta as a MC, I felt the anime allows the viewer to follow him along with the events as well as learn of his past, and how he has ended up where he is. Yuta has the power to uber-fy, which allows him to push his body further giving him extra strength and speed.

We also have Mikatan, Ito, Meika, and Rabura, these are the 4 neighbours of Yuta.

Mikatan - She is the hero Strange Juice who stopped the gang involved in the bus hijacking, she is a good natured girl and loves to playing with her friends. She has links to Yuta's childhood and just like Yuta has the ability to uber-fy, although her body suffers as a result of using it, this means she has to take medication.

Ito - She is a NEET and prefers to stay in her room playing video games (don't we all?) she has a pet bear name Muhi who seems to be the target of an evil group called the Q-may group who are intent on allowing the disater, that is going to strike earth in the future, to happen.

Meika - She is a robot who is the landlay of the dormitory, she is brilliant at hacking which plays a part latter in the season. She also helps Mikatan with her Strange Juice persona.

Rabura - She is an exorcist although she doesn't believe in spirits. She can be temporarily possessed by Yuta's spirit when there is cinnamon ( Cinnamons hightens spiritual powers) in the area.


Enjoyment - I enjoyed Punchline while it starts out as ok, it does gets better as the season goes on, what really made this good in my opinion, is how light-hearted everything is from the fan service, to the fights, and even the ending was very light given the circumstance. The anime also does well to not go with the most obvious ending.

Alright, let's start this off by saying that this is my first review for an anime. Typically, whether I love, like, dislike, or hate an anime, I just rate it and keep it in mind for future use, (as recommendations or warnings). This anime is so bad that I COULDN'T ignore this when I saw the high rating this bucket of fish scraps proposing to be a work of art has.

So, good things first. The art is pretty good, and the designs of characters is pretty decent. These elements aren't the absolute best I've ever seen, but they're nowhere near the worst. I never noticed ... any issues with the sound design and choices within, but that's possibly due to the fact that those elements are the least of my worries.

Now, onto the real purpose for this review...

Oh. My. Goodness. How can you even screw up a story so hard? How can you simultaneously be so incredibly boring and yet make absolutely no sense whatsoever? How can a piece of art feel like nothing more than a dead fish trapped in the body of a super model? How can you possibly inspire frustration when almost every single element dulls one's experience so far that staring at twenty minutes of a featureless gray circle for twelve episodes would somehow be more enjoyable?

Another review I happened to notice compared this piece to the standard modern art piece. Sure, there's pretty colors. Yes, it's compared to masterpieces by certain people. There's definitely many people that consider it to be refreshing, powerful, and expressive.

In reality, it's a canvas that's been covered in twenty flavors of gray paint the artist bought at discount price when he tripped and spilled his watercolors. You can talk about the deep meanings and bold choices all you want, but haphazardly throwing random things of the same low quality without any true thought will never be worth the elements individually. That's what this anime is. It an astonishingly thoughtless waste of potential.

Art's nice, though. Would recommend if you're deaf, can't read subtitles, and aren't intuitive enough piece more than a single bit of the story together. Trust me, those two pieces will not fit together, so it's better to not have more than one. I just hope it's one of the decent ones.

This anime is a strange one, it is about a guy getting immense power from looking at panties, yet I can confidently say this is the best written anime I have ever watched and the best anime I have ever watched in general, I'm suprised at the score cos an anime of this quality should be in the top 10 best, the story starts of decently at best but episode 4 is when it really kicks off, it is a action packed emotional and unique story, animation is great and fight scenes are near perfectly coreographed and art is really detailed, vo's play there characters ... really well and this is the best engrish I have seen in any anime, op, Ed and osts are the best I have seen out of any anime, it is extremely enjoyable and overral this anime is a masterpiece, please watch it

This anime is genuinely one of the biggest 'pleb filters' in recent memory. The premise is ridiculous (read: dumb) and it genuinely tricks the absolute HECK outta you with the first few episodes. However, they don't stop sprinkling in bits and pieces to give you a hint that there's something far more sinister going on.

If you're a pleb, (and we all know you're not, RIGHT?) then you'd watch one or two episodes and scoff, then be on your way to continue to watch whatever current seasonal show is the """GOAT""" until you find something 'better' the next season...

But you're not, and you didn't, of ... course!

The first four episodes stick pretty close to the base premise of the show. Cute friends doin' cute stuff with ecchi. With some bits and pieces mixed in to remind you of the main objective. The art is just shy of beautiful. It's bright, vibrant and easy on the eyes. One of the most important aspects is the characters; Rest assured, they look great in and out of motion and you'll come to love 'em all.

But then the show pulls a serious Steins;Gate on you (though maybe not a surprise with MAGES. involved?). To avoid spoilers, I won't be TOO specific. But let's just say that this is sorta like a mimic. It mimics a cutesy lighthearted show to reel you in, and just as you're leaning back in your chair, fist full of your favorite snack, laughing at the MC and his goofy antics, it bares its fangs and gnaws your face off.

This isn't the kinda show I expected to be crying while watching, but here I am! Loses some points because the OP song sucks, but other then that, it's a great show i'd be comfortable recommending to all 3 of the people that will ever read this.

Punchline is a really great example of lots of seemingly disparate elements coming together perfectly. It's premise, at least based on much of what happens in episode 1, might seem like a bizarre (and perhaps to some, unappealing) combination of ideas, but is not only able to play with those ideas in a fun and interesting way, but continue to up the ante.
While the art and sound are great, the real reason to watch the show are the characters and story. The characters are enjoyable and for the most part complex, and do a great job of making you really root for them. The ... story itself is a grand mystery that weaves itself together over the course of the show, with many twists that are very satisfying. Amid those mysteries is great character development and other plot elements which, without spoilers, will compound on each other that is immensely satisfying at the end.

Story: 7
Art: 7
Sound: 6
Characters: 7
Enjoyment: 10

Clearly the best part of the anime, it starts as a mystery and all the loose points get tied up in the end like a magic adorable ribbon. It goes too much into absurd at times, which is in contrast with the storyline, which is really linear in the end. Anyway, seeing how it ends it's really satisfying, almost every episode ends in a plot twist.
Decent. The colors are pretty and the rooms of the house are pretty detailed. One thing i don't like is the character design, but that is just personal taste. Animation is not very fluid.
The opening ... is catchy af, the rest passes by.
I loved them by the end, they were all my little cuties friendies patooties pretty cuties. At the beginning they almost had 0 character traits and you knew nothing about them, BUT. As the plot progresses the characters progress with it. Very interesting thing that I haven't seen in othe animes.
The difference between this anime and the others is one: it takes you by surprise. The peculiarity of it makes it original, and because of that i can't help but rate it 10.

Overall: 10

subscribe on youtube: talkshh

ugh what a tedious ending, i hate when characters have to sacrifice themselves on the altar of humanity, regardless of all the effort up till then

seriously whats with the sudden unjustified character changes, change of hearts, instant ability to pilot advanced technology because "vidya gayms", etc talk about poor establishment

and the inadequate english voice acting doesn't help either

nothing has been resolved, this simple victory doesn't mean anything to the meta narrative

all i am now is jaded by the whole story, feels like a total waste of time

and it doesn't matter how many premises you have as long as you tie it together, i liked all ... the premises here, but the narrative just didn't cut it

the only thing i really got out of this was the enjoyment of the opening music

Punch line es un anime que se merece mejor calificación que la actual (6.8), es verdad que al inicio no se presenta como algo interesante y puede parecer que sólo se trata de fan service pero una vez que el anime da por sentadas las bases de la historia comienza a mejorar de manera exponencial. Poco a poco el anime va explicando el porqué pasan algunas cosas ilógicas y te darás cuenta tu mismo el tipo de problema que se debe resolver.

Si estas buscando un buen anime con comedia, distinto de los típicos escolares y con una buena historia, sin duda Punch Line cumplirá ... tus espectativas.

Wow what a nonsensical anime.

It starts off kinda funny. It distracts you with fanservice.
It drags on quit a bit, i kept waiting for the anime to just get to the point.
But it just devolves more and more into idiotic convoluted nonsense.
With a bunch of stupid characters acting in stupid ways.

A bunch of elements tossed and mashed together. Ghosts, time travel, military, robots,..yeah that sounds good on paper but you still have to write a good story around it with good characters.

This is full of a bunch of lame twists and lame characters.
With an annoying tonal shift.

Story (8/10):
The show was supper weird (but is a good way) it starts off confusing as fuck as you get hammered with a ton of information that makes no sense whatsoever (i had no idea what the fuck was going on 3 episodes in) but after a few episodes you get hit with the truth and everything starts to make sense. This method of presenting the story was definitely not new but it was really well executed in this anime.
The ecchi present in the show was well used to serve the purpose of the story with just the right amount and placement of the ecchi ... moments to not make it feel annoying so i think that even people who don't like ecchi won't mind this show
The show also provided some really good action scenes (last two episodes were extreme)

Characters (8/10):
I loved the way the show connected it's characters together in a way that served the plot without being forced. characters stories and histories were well written.
Character development was kind of tricky because of the nature of the show (can't explain this without spoilers) but at the same time the show presented different growth results of characters who had different upbringings which was nice.

Art and Animation (9/10):
The show had limited environment but what was shown was well drawn and colored. Characters designs were beautiful and colorful and animations were top notch (those action scenes i mentioned really benefited from the great animations) all around the show was good to look at.

Music & VA (8/10):
OP and ED were fine and general soundtrack was not half bad
The voice acting was really good with voices carrying emotions well and now weird sounding characters

Effectiveness (9/10):
The balancing it's genres well was probably the reason why I enjoyed it so much as in there was not "So much" or "So little" everything was provided in just the right amount to give a satisfying result
It was an extremely entertaining show in a really weird way.
I actually was surprised by how much i have enjoyed it

Overall (8.4/10)

It's one of those story lines that really confuse you at the beginning, you don't know why Stalin is in Australia, having tea with Hitler's newborn's wife. Then you realise that all those small details have actual meanings, like Hitler's newborn's wife actually being acquaintances with Stalin's father. For me, discovering more and more of this really complex story line was super fun. I don't think there's a scene that was boring. Every single interaction with the characters was useful for their development. The ending could've done a bit better, but that's what you have with these 12 episode anime that will never have ... a second season, and are there to promote the selling of manga / LN. Nevertheless, the plot twists were really fun, for me at least, and I really liked the fact this feels like watching a marvel movie (Spoilers for end game) like Tony seeing the future where 2014 Thanos comes to earth via time travel and captain america's shield is broken and the apocalypse is near, actually being related to the ending of End Game. So If you're at like episode 4 or 5 and you're still around, please keep watching because it will get even more fun! (also idk why but I think we would've been better of with a drama tag on the anime)

Spoiler-free should-you-watch review:

This review will be short and sweet, just like the Anime. It's an absurd ecchi parody with plenty of funny moments and not a ton of depth, but Punch Line has a passable plot sprinkled with just enough mystery to keep it from feeling like disconnected nonsense.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy for Punch Line to have more depth, but it isn't exactly promising much in that department. It's an anime with a strong male gaze that revolves around a character both accidentally and intentionally catching glimpses of women's underwear. It's 12 episodes with a good fast pace, it's animated really well ... with some great character designs reminiscent of Studio Trigger, and the OP is a bop minus like 10 dead seconds in the middle. It doesn't take itself very seriously and gets away with being really silly 80% of the time, with 10% left for dramatic moments and 10% for some light introductions into potentially interesting ideas.

If you want something mostly light-hearted with some mildly compelling ideas, check it out. It's a fun palate cleanser.

The reason I started watching this was because of a clip of the protagonist Yuta iridatsu's reaction to some panties, I'm sure that's the same reason some of yall start watching this too. But there's a lot more than the panties and cute women. There's quite an original and well-developed story with lots of small details which all add up at the end. I was a bit lost at some points throughout but it made sense as the story went on. The only thing I can really think is similar to this story would be the movie, Tenet. I really liked the characters and I ... thought they were funny and well done with the art style making them look extra badass and cute. However, in some parts, I thought they were just a bit TOO clumsy with tripping over in very convenient times to show off their undergarments to the poor bugger who just happened to be there. I didn't think the music was anything too special and the op and ending music wasn't really to my taste, but one thing I'd like to see in general in all animes is when there's just been an intense or emotional scene to maybe change the ending music because I felt after watching someone get killed we don't want happy music. I did enjoy this quite a lot and would recommend it to people who like funny characters and badass fight scenes.

What the hell did I just watch?

Punch Line is an original anime, not based on anything, so they could have gone any direction with it. And they chose this. It's like watching just the ending of a bunch JRPG's with no context. So many ideas are introduced each episode that I wouldn't blame you for not knowing what's going on or even who some of the characters are at any given moment. None of the concepts do much to enhance the story and they move on to something new before they give anything else time to breath.

I watched the whole thing and it was a ... chore. I'm going to list just some of the things this show tries to do all it's it's 12 episode run-time just to show you how bonkers it gets. It's got time travel, it's got body swapping, it's got ghosts and possession which somehow exists independently as a concept from the body swapping, it's got super powers that are powered by looking at panties except for when they aren't, it's got the ill girl, it's got a girl who turns out to be a robot the whole time, there's a bear cub that's inexplicably important to the plot, it's got a meteor about to crash into the world, it's got childhood friend turning out to be the bad guy, and it barely has any panties. It's like they only remembered sometimes to do the panty joke that I was sold into this show on. I'm honestly surprised it didn't end with them all jumping in a giant mecha and fighting in space. It did have a giant mecha, though.

You may think that all those wacky concepts sound like they would make for a fun adventure, and it might have had it been a even a little self-aware. Shows like Gintama juggle tons of off-the wall concepts all the time and manage to still be fun to watch because they remember to also be funny. This show tries to play it completely straight and takes its ludicrous plot way too seriously. Like the ending felt like it was trying so hard to make me feel some sort of emotion, but all I had was more questions like who are these characters again and why should I care?

Awful experience overall, I give it a 5/10 for the part where the ghost cat is looking at naughty cat videos.

Had a great time trying to explain the plot to other people. Couldn't stop talking about it for a week. Well, considering that I'm here writing a review several years later that says a lot about its memorability to say the least. Would recommend it to anyone if they're already pretty far into anime and have someone that will hear you out afterwards or watch it with you.

That's it. That's my review/quick comment. Apparently my word count isn't enough so just ignore everything below this sentence.

Jugemu jugemu go you no surikire kaijari suigyou no suigyoumatsu unraimatsu fuuraimatsu kuu neru tokoro ni sumu tokoro yaburakouji no ... burakouji piano piano piano no shuuringan shuuringan no gurindai gurindai no pompokopino pompokopano chokyumei no chousuke.

*THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS*
The only good thing I can say about this anime is that the art and sounds aren't half bad. The story is all over the place, and can't decide what it wants to be. We start off with what looks like a Shounen action anime, but then in the next few episodes becomes a slice of life comedy. Don't get me wrong, I think those two can work well together if done right; however, this anime does it anything but right.
Not to mention that in only the first few episodes we are introduced to many plotholes and random plot conveniences. For ... example: why does cinnamon increase spiritual power? Who knows. How could the MC turn back time the first time if he didn't have enough spiritual power? Who knows. Those are just a few of many.
Episode 6 is when I finally decided that this show was just dreadful to watch, and a complete waste of my time. In episode 6, there is no explanation of why or how, but the meteor changes course and comes towards Earth. We also learn of probably the most obvious plot twist of all time, the dude in the superhero outfit is actually our MC's real body. We also learn that the MC is a girl, which I thought was pretty strange and was just pulled out of their asses to cater to the LGBT community. This also goes directly against one of the main plot points, because why would a biological girl get so flustered seeing panties, even if they identify as a male.
After episode 6 I skipped to episode 12, just to see what happens, and I couldn't even finish the episode before becoming bored. I don't understand how in the 6 episodes I skipped they managed to attract the attention of a small army, all able to use the same power they could. It also made no sense how they still managed to defeat said army, despite being outnumbered like 100-1.
In the end, I would not wish the pain of watching through the entirety of this anime on my worst enemy. I felt so disappointed and upset that I wasted 2 hours of my day watching this pile of shit.