Puni Puni☆Poemii

Ahhh.... the insanity that can sprout from Watanabe's head. Puni Puni Poemi is quite a lot of the usual insanity that you can expect from him, especially if you've seen the last episode of Excel Saga.

This OVA binds together a truelly atrocious story, shallow characters with no character development, random fan service and an overdose of humour.
And guess what, it balances out. PPP proves that you really don't need a best-selling story with deep characters and all that to bring across some great comedy. In fact, most of that stuff can stands in the way of comedy, and Watanabe carefully steers around all of the ... depth that you can put into an anime, clearly avoids any sort of explanation to anything and refuses to put any form of character development into this anime. And you really won't miss any of it.
The maniacal comedy, the hyperactive main character, the clearly shallow and senseless supporting characters, all of that works for the comedy factor in this anime and is there for nothing else but the comedy.

Alright, let's run through the scores.

Story: 3
Well, the story is horrible, just to be honest. It's a magical girl story with the objective to make as little sense as possible. The entire set-up of how Poemi becomes a magical girl is about as ridiculous as you can find, and the why's, how's and what's aren't touched in any way.
However the comedy that the stupidity of the story creates is a different matter all together. The idiotic situations that Poemi blunders into, one after the other, create some great comedy.

Art: 7
The art is fairly decent and works really great with the story. The characters are well presented and the sudden shifts in styles are also very good and well placed.

Sound: 8
Really... nothing to say about the sound here. The use of Poemi wanting to be a voice-actor is well expressed and the general feel of the sound in the anime is good.

Character: 3
The character design is really bad to say the least. It lacks practically all forms of depth, character development is non-existent and the supporting characters can sometimes be replaced by cardboard cut-outs (and they might even show more depth then the actual characters).
However just like with the story, those characters are there to serve the comedy factor, and they work perfectly as they are.
They just shouldn't be used for anything other then comedy.

Enjoyment: 9
The anime just works fantastically. The humour is great, the atrocious story and lack of character design just don't matter when those are the things that make the comedy work here.
The only downsides to the anime are that Poemi's hyper activeness can really get on your nerves, the senseless fan service can sometimes work against the story since it's so blatant at times and the fact that it leaves you with a good couple of questions at the end about what happened in the anime doesn't help either. Atleast if it didn't numb down your brain.

Overall: 10
This anime just proves that good comedy doesn't need to involve a ground breaking story, well written characters or even decent dialogue.
It's a comedy from start to finish and everything that is in it just is there to provide the comedy. There is really nothing more to say about it...

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...How to describe Puni Puni Poemi. Well, really, all you need to know is that it's Excel Saga's spinoff/sequel (in that it has Nabeshin in it, and refers constantly to Excel Saga through inside jokes in the script/art/music), centering around Poemi, who likes to be called Kobayashi (basically Excel in a preteen package, which makes her all the more hyper; I pity her seiyuu, and am amazed at how fast she could speak all those lines), and her randomly and absurdly becoming a magical girl.

Basically, they parody the magical girl genre, the voice acting/anime business, and fanservice. They regurarly break the fourth wall, ... which is made of LOVE. It's a bit more crude than Excel Saga was, but as it's an OAV, they can get away with it (they even joke about it).

Like Excel Saga, it has it's moments, but it's not made of brilliance. Still, good for a laugh if you're bored.

This Anime is so stupid. There is no easier way to say that. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS ABOUT? Let me explain what I mean. It’s really hard to talk about this show because it’s just all over the place. At one point, it just feels like they are stalling for time so they can make it run two episodes long.

The show starts out with a bit of an epic concept about someone wanting to take over the world and make it a place of beauty and sweetness. This wouldn’t be so bad except that right after the opening song, we get… stupidity. A ... Hyper, overactive girl screaming at the camera for the whole show is not my idea of a good show. This is just made for people to feel uncomfortable, isn’t it? Because the aliens having large balls knocking around from where their genitals would be, little kids showing off their ass, all the sexual images and jokes, and the very hyper girl messes with me. What else can I say about this show? I really have no idea… From the baby that predicted danger by pooping, to the S&M Dominatrix, there is so many jokes that just seem to fly over my head. I blame Japanese jokes that are culturally sensitive and toilet humor being there for no reason.

The artwork is all over the place. The opening is part anime, part live action with a young Japanese girl looking like she is running around on a beach. What makes it even more unsettling is that they put so many nudity shots in the beginning over this running girl that I just get thrown off faster then you can say Parody. Then when we get into the show finally, we get noodle legs and arms all over the place. Nothing keeps its proportion and things just seem to have a really high cartoon physics that gets on my nerves at times. Sure it works pretty well in Loony Tunes, but then they are not trying to milk it for all its worth. In shows like Loony Tunes, there is a time and place to use those physics and they don’t distract from the overall story. In this case, it really does. Whenever she moves, I feel like any OCD that I have is going to go overboard because I get distracted by her movements and can’t understand the story… if there really is any story to begin with. Still I do have to give them props for the amazing amount of color in this show. And… That might be all that I can give it. Character designs when they are still are pretty bland, little children sexualized way too much (of course, that happens in many more Anime, not just here), and the backgrounds are generic.

The music isn’t all bad. The opening song is kind of fun and playful, much like most songs from Excel Saga (another show I really am not a fan of but has decent music). The English voice acting is really terrible, and that mostly is with Poemi. Her voice is either two high, to energetic, or to out of control that I can barely understand her. Nothing she says seems to be of any importance because they never give you a chance to hear it. The third person speaking that she does also gets on my nerves very fast. I understand, she is trying to get into a rule of a girl named Poemi, I understand that the original voice actor, Yumiko Kobayashi, was trying to portray that she is playing a character playing another character. But does that really mean she has to keep saying her own name? Just saying Poemi did this or Poemi did that would be enough. Flipping through the different names made me miss her real name for a long time, making me think that the magical girl was just named Poemi instead. I give props to Cynthia Martinez who probably never got a chance to breathe trying to read the lines for Poemi though. Its one thing when it’s animated for your original language, it’s completely different when trying to dub a show where the artwork has already been done.

This is not the show for me. Looking at it compared to others like this, this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. From the artwork, the jokes that really do not work outside Japan, and the voice acting adds up to a big mess to me.