Popotan

Overview:

It's nearing midnight on Halloween, and I just finished watching one of the most terrifying horror anime ever made! An anime that will make grown men shit their pants in terror! This is an anime that only REAL men can stomach sitting through! This is the Eldritch Abomination that is...Popo -tan!


Background:

Firstly, the word Popo-tan is not a reference to Mr. Popo and his politically incorrect tan. Popo-tan is a nonsense word that in this series means dandelion, although the actual Japanese word for dandelion is "tanpopo". Basically, it is named that because Popo-tan hates you!

Popo-tan was based on an explicit hentai game of the same ... name. The game had virtually no plot whatsoever and just involved guiding a guy through various romances to unlock heavily pixelated sex scenes. I've never played the game and am just summarizing from the Wikipedia article because firstly, even I have standards, and secondly, the game is actually illegal to own in the US! This is because the main character is an 18 year old, high school graduate and you can have sex with a 12 year old girl!!! In fact, the 12 year old girl has the most sex endings of any character in the game, so that was the choice the game designers clearly wanted the player to make! HOW did this ever get an anime adaptation!!?

The entire reason Popo-tan got an anime adaptation was because the character designs were deemed "very cute" and highly marketable. However, the plot of the game obviously had to go and the anime adaptation has NOTHING to do with the original game in terms of plot or characters besides the characters' designs! So did they create a good plot for the anime? HELL NO!

Plot:

The plot is that there is a mansion that travels through time and dimensions. The mansion is inhabited by 3 obnoxious sisters and their robot maid. Now you would think that if I traveled back to 1992 and spent 1 month there with my current body, then traveled to 1994 and spent one month there, that chronologically my body would be 2 months older. However, the girls are all seemingly immortal and have been hopping back and forth across time and dimensions for hundreds if not thousands of years. They are also telepathic and can communicate with all lifeforms including plants! I guess they're supposed to be Time Lords!? Did I mention their mansion is bigger on the inside? I guess the anime was banking on the British not being as lawsuit happy as Americans are!

In the first episode, a 12 year old boy with a camera decides to just walk into the mysterious mansion in order to try get a picture of a ghost. He ends up bumping into one of the girls coming out of the shower and taking a picture of her naked before she trips and smothers him with her absurdly huge breasts. The sisters befriend the young boy and help him take some fake ghost pictures to impress his friends. However, just as he begins to get close to the 3 sisters, their mansion disappears and leaves him wondering if they really were ghosts after all.

The next episode and each new episode takes place in a different time and place, but the series NEVER tells you what time and what place! Judging by the fashion and technology, they all seem to be a similar time in modern Japan, but perhaps they are alternate dimensions. The series never explains because Popo-tan HATES you! The backstory of the 3 sisters and how they found the mansion is never explained. The story of the mansion and how it got its powers is never explained. Why they have a robot maid is never explained! NOTHING in this fucking series is ever explained!!!

Art:

The art is mediocre to average for the series' release date. Popo-tan is an ecchi series, so of course it tries to show a LOT of nudity, including lots of underage nudity that hopefully creeps the viewers out. However, despite their large amount of screen time, zero attempt is placed into giving Ai's massive boobs any realistic sag or movement or any real detail whatsoever. The fact that they have nipples and not black bars is I guess the best this series has to offer.

Sound:

The anime soundtrack is annoying, but ultimately forgettable. The original hentai on the other hand, has a REALLY famous opening called "Caramelldansen" that became a widespread internet meme after someone posted it to the Japanese website Niconico. That innocent meme that even Disney referenced in one of their cartoons...actually came from an illegal loli game! I think I just died a little inside.


Overall:

I have to agree with one of my favorite anime critics, Bennett the Sage, when he said "Bad should be an acronym for: Boring, Annoying, Dumb." Those 3 words are exactly the right way to sum up Popo-tan. I mentioned previously that Popo-tan hates you, but hate is an emotion that still has a wide spectrum. On this hate spectrum I would place Popo-tan's feelings for the audience as greater than Freeza's hatred of the Saiyans in DBZ, slightly greater than Zbigniew Brzezinski's hatred of Russians, and slightly less than Hitler's hatred of Jews. That's a level of hatred that should keep all but the most batshit insane viewers from sitting through this pile of shit!

Let me just say this: The things I do for you people. SMH, reader, SMH.

Popotan is a 2003 anime series about three magical sisters and their maid, who travel through time and space in their mysterious, enchanted house. Every time their house phases out of the physical realm, it jumps into the future by about five years, finding a new location with an ample supply of dandelions for the girls to extract more magic from. They can communicate with these dandelions, but they also make time to communicate with the people... They live in whatever area the house landed in, ... carrying on normal lives in society until they need to leave again.

Why don’t they wait for Dandelions to die and be replaced by new ones, which should happen in fairly quick succession considering the short life span of a dandelion? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Our main character, at least in the anime, is Mei, the middle child. She’s a tomboy, as well as the emotional center of the story, who is always forming the tightest social connections outside of the family. Her insistence that they should quit their journey and settle down leads us to several revelations throughout the show, and while I’m glad they used this plot device instead of endless exposition dumps, it’s still generally information that they... And we, as well... Should have known from the beginning.

Her older sister, Ai, has giant breasts and glasses. And... She probably has some sort of personality.

Her little sister, Mii, is a hyper little moppet who loves dressing up as a magical girl and is obsessed with poofy-poofies. She likes to snuggle Ai’s poofy-poofies, and makes remarks about Mei’s poofy-poofies being too small.

I’ll give you five seconds to figure out what ‘poofy-poofies’ are, and if it actually takes you that long, you should go bash your head against something.

They’re looked after by their devoted maid, Maya, a long-suffering sarcastic woman who cares deeply about her charges. A lot of people theorize that she’s a robot, but since she’s shown eating take-out on camera, I’d say that’s unlikely.

So, based on what I’ve just told you, you’re probably expecting me to say that Popotan is some dumb, wacky little comedy. I mean, with the Drifting Classroom style house, the dandelion-flavored plot, and the cliched characters, you probably expect this to be full of wacky randomness in the vein of Magical Play. After all, that’s why Magical Play works... It has a quick pace, and the joke-a-minute delivery fits the gleefull randomness to a T.

The truth is, Popotan isn’t like that at all. The pacing is slow, the story is played completely straight, and the tone of the series is more along the lines of sentimental and atmospheric. This is a great choice of execution for a serious coming-of-age story like Beck, but when juxtaposed with Popotan’s ridiculous... Everything... It’s not so much a match made in heaven as it is a match made in Shou Tucker’s basement. When you combine this tone-deaf approach with the constant fan-service, Popotan’s attempts at emotional depth just come off as incompetent, insincere melodrama.

Speaking of which, when I was only half-way through this show, I noticed that MAL listed it as Rated R for ‘mild nudity,’ and I flipped out in the forums. Compared to Popotan, the average Playboy magazine only has ‘mild nudity.’ There is at least one bath scene in every episode, and all four of our main characters... As well as several side characters... Get in on the action. And there’s no convenient fog here, folks, oh no. Every single nipple is meticulously and painstakingly drawn in, even for the little girl Mii. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude... I love Strike Witches, and even have a soft spot for the clunky This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, Gainax pretense be damned. Those shows have more to offer than just nudity, which I can’t honestly say about Popotan.

The nudity really is the only thing this show has to offer, and even taking that into consideration, the characters are so poorly designed and badly drawn that it’s like looking at a horny twelve-year-old’s sketchbook. And that’s saying nothing about how creepy the fan-service is. This show’s pedophile vibe is so intense that it makes UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie look innocent by comparison.

The artwork and animation suck... I won’t go any deeper than that, just trust me... and the stories of the individual episodes aren’t just badly written, but in a way that could actually be considered dangerously irresponsible with the message they try to send. The relationships that our cast form are sophomoric at best and unhealthy at worst.

The strongest relationship that Mii forms... Aside from her metafictional relationship with pedophilic viewers... Is with a little Shinto girl who wants to celebrate Christmas. The idea on it’s own doesn’t sound like anything bad, but the way it’s pursued is bafflingly ignorant. The strongest relationship that Ai forms is with a little boy whom she bathes naked with, and then kisses full on the mouth later on. And the strongest relationship that Mei forms is so deeply wrapped up in contradictory bullshit and disturbingly damaged human behavior that I’d have to spend an entire paragraph of spoilers just to explain what’s wrong with it.

If I had to say some positive things about this show, I can name three off the top of my head.

1: Anna Cummer does a decent job playing the voice of Maya. It’s a subtle and nuanced performance, but if I’m being honest, somebody more talented like Michelle Ruff would have blown her completely out of the water. Then again, compared to the rest of her co-stars, Anna might as well BE Michelle Ruff.

2: There are a handful of ways this show could have been worse.

3: Umm... I think I may have grossly overestimated my capacity for complimenting this show.

All in all, I would rather kill myself with a spoon than recommend this show to anybody. Even if it doesn’t offend the everloving daylights out of you, there’s nothing good about it... At all. In fact, the only reason my friends are currently borrowing my soon-to-be destroyed copy is because they asked for it, to see what kind of series could piss me off this much. Popotan is just so insidiously bad that it may actually be bad FOR you, as a person.

Over the years, i’ve given a handful of 1/10 reviews, with my general reason being that as crappy as they are, there’s something good about them... Maybe there’s a decent voice cast, or a few good characters, or some good action, or maybe it’s just so hilariously bad that it would be fun to watch while drunk. But Popotan is just a dreary, off-putting experience that I can’t imagine any amount of alcohol saving. For the first time in my reviewing career, I’m giving Popotan a 0/10. Yes, I know, I've ranked it as a 1/10, but that's only because MAL doesn't give a 0/10 option. Avoid at all costs, and you’ll thank me later.

I seen this horrible series and I hate it for everything.One the animation is not great on the characters all the the characters seem like they want to kill.The second voice acting is terrible it's like they took people off the street.The characters are awlful one who is ai no i'm not kidding that is her name.She can talk to flowers and doesn't care if she is naked or sexually assault.She say's flowers can talk anyone that says that should be in a insane asylum.The other girl is mii.now I hate hakufu from ikki tousen.But this girl is so god damned annoying I basically.want to ... hit her with a hammer cause she won't shut up.maii is the smart girl but at least she is smart unlike the other two.The only thing is she is a lesiben.The last one is the maid mea.honestlly I don't who did her but she is horrible like a cross from frankenstein and a hobo.The other I like to say is the ferret.It's like a four year old drew the ferret.The music is god awlful want to hit your head on the wall for the worst anime intro and ending intro.They lived in a christmas house during the summerand it disappears for no reason at all.There is no plot at all.No character developement.It has the worst ending.The rest of the characters are worst.It's like geneon wanted to magical series but with no plot it failed not to meanten it has way too much nudity in it.This is why they went down.The only character I like was mai cause she was smart.look at these names ai mii mea and mai.I don't know who came up with those names but the director must be really stupid.I wouldn't recommend this piece of garbage not to buy watch it or rent itanyone that watches is perverted.

Is there anything worse than bad-looking fanservice? If you said bad-looking fanservice padded with 12 episodes of inexplicable story, you'd be right, and this brings us to Popotan, an early 00's vehicle for breasts and panty shots very loosely inspired by an erotic visual novel by the same name.

I had very low expectations and ample warning for this show, expecting only said breasts and panty shots with a modicum of light storytelling to carry them. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed even in these very qualified expectations.

What Popotan is about doesn't matter - the show makes this very clear early on. Yes, there's a larger ... story about connecting with others which is given undue seriousness for such a light piece of entertainment, but what underpins it is a plot so half-baked you're risking salmonella poisoning by watching it. It's not even clear that the characters are time travelers until about halfway in, but by that point you've likely learned to take the show's storytelling in stride (or better yet dropped it). However, things just get more confusing from then on, with dramatic scenes falling laughably alongside gratuitous nudity for some extra tonal dissonance. Where did these characters come from? Who is the person they're looking for? Why do only two of them appear to be able to use magic? Why does Mai try so hard to befriend an anti-social girl when she knows that she's going to disappear and leave this girl alone, repeating the exact thing she now deeply regrets from a previous point in history? None of these and more will be answered.

Sadly, for those who can suffer a terrible story for some decent fanservice, the art of Popotan does its best to disappoint here as well. While the character designs themselves are distinct and cute, in motion here they're mediocre at best and sometimes reduced to blocky geometric shapes. Certainly some of the best animation is reserved for the frequent bath scenes, but even here the show fails to deliver consistently. On a side note - it's somewhat remarkable that for such a brazen work that features all of the characters with detailed upper-body nudity in every episode (often more than once) it's surprisingly skimpy when it comes to Mii.

As for positives? First and foremost is likely the capable voicework of Momoi Haruko as Mii, who is just as nauseatingly (enchantingly?) cute as you'd expect. You also get some nice early 00's atmosphere and a decent soundtrack. The fanservice is also decent when it wants to be, but is probably not worth the price of admission.