Aug 31, 2022
TW: Sexual abuse, gore, general unpleasantries
Oyasumi Punpun is a disgusting, gut wrenching, ugly piece of media -and yet so beautiful all at once. whereas most slice of life manga tend to focus on the positive aspects of life and the joys of youth, Punpun seeks to show the many uncomfortable and borderline horrific realities of life. Some may say that Punpun isn't good because its JUST gross in its depiction of the things it portrays, or that nobody could ever truly resonate with the main character -and you're right, but you're also missing the point. Reading it is like Chemotherapy;
...
you're going to feel like shit when you're on it, but as time goes by, it starts to get better.
Upon my initial encounter with the series, I was at a low point in my life. As to not to bore anybody with the details, I won't go into specifics. I was scrolling through social media, passing some time before going to bed, when I stumbled upon an audio of "My Time" -by Bo En -accompanied by clips from the manga. I'm not typically one to read in my spare time, however something about the cutesy yet graphic art style beckoned me, and I knew then and there I HAD to read this. After figuring out the name of the manga from the always good and never awful comments section, I downloaded the first volume on my phone. So there I laid on the bedroll in the living room of an unfamiliar home, in an unfamiliar country (I was at the time staying with my aunt in Japan), reading a manga that I -in hindsight -should not have been reading at that particular time. I could tell from the beginning that this manga was great because the author was clearly proficient in balancing heavy topics with humour. I knew it was amazing when I had burned through 3 entire volumes without even realising it -But the 4th volume was when I knew I found something truly special to me.
I would like to preface this statement by stating that I'm not usually one to feel much from media. While it could make me laugh, feel happy or occasionally even sad, not a lot of things truly resonated within me and make me think about it for extensive periods of time. With that out of the way, the 4th volume of Punpun broke me. No one piece of media had ever made such a large impact on my mental state, but this did it a quarter of the way in. It taught me things about people I hadn't yet fully grasped such as narcissism, trauma responses, the effects of abuse, and toxic relationships.
Oyasumi Punpun is not for the average manga reader. It's not for the unstable/volatile members of this community, and suffice it to say, it isn't for a younger audience. What it is, is bitter medicine for broken people; to be used as a lens to view their own life from an outsider's perspective and to better ones self in the long run.
Music to pair: goes perfectly with a melancholy instrumental playlist
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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