STORY: 3
Let's not beat around the bush here - it's' vignettes. It has no semblance of a story. There's not really a continuity. There are parts of the episode that are longer than the rest that do have plots, but they're not connected and don't really service each other at all.
ART: 10
Look, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "You're actually giving Art such a high score for a vignette series of shitposts"? And the answer is absolutely yes. The main reason why I respect Pop Team Epic and what it does so much is because of how much it throws things at the wall and does surreal things. Art is absolutely no exception to this rule. Throughout the series, Pop Team Epic does an absolute shitload of different art styles and animation styles. There's 2D animation in several art styles, 3D animation, Stop-Motion Animation, Puppetry, Sand Art, Live-Action Skits, and I think a lot more if I were to give myself more time to think. Hell, the episode "Hellshake Yano" has a long, creatively animated scene where well-cut and layered pages in notebooks are the animation for the segment, and it's unironically incredible to watch due to just how well-executed it is. Similarly to The Amazing World of Gumball, a show airing in the West, I hold it very close to my heart and find it incredibly cool to see so many different forms of animation and art in one show. It shows that the creators are having a lot of fun, and I really like that.
SOUND: 10
Juuuust like my Art section, the main reason why I put this on here is due to just how much they do with sound in this series. Pipimi and Popuko each have at least 10 different Seiyuus in both the male and female voice acting camp. And these aren't just interns looking for their big shot in the world - these are voice acting veterans who have worked on big shows like One Piece or Dragon Ball. It makes me cackle with delight when I recognize a voice actor as they say some stupid shit coming out of the mouth of a schoolgirl. Not to mention, they also throw in things like music videos and even French, spoken by actual French voice actors. Another part of the show I really like is when they throw in flubbed lines or voice actor laughs - You hear it a lot from the male seiyuus in transitions between vignettes. These vignettes can also have different lines, jokes, or comedic delivery depending on the male or female versions, giving them more surprising comedic moments as well. It also has a suuuper good OP and a cute ED, and the great thing is that it also throws in remixes of the Opening, Sound-Versions like a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Opening, even alternate songs for openings like in episodes 1 and 11. There's a lot done on the sound and visual front alike, so I believe they deserve the same score.
CHARACTER: 5
Okay, so there's no real character writing here. Characters are here solely to set up jokes. While Pipimi TENDS to be the more stoic, voice of reason character over the bombastic and crude Popuko, it's not exactly consistent.
ENJOYMENT: 9
While not all the jokes landed, I had an absolute blast watching this series. I was watching one episode with a friend who claimed he had never heard me laugh that loud before after, like, 3 years of friendship or so. (By the way, that was episode 2. Episode 2 is absolutely a riot.) I also do understand a tad bit of Japanese, so maybe I could catch something in a Japanese pun that most people wouldn't get, but not consistently. It's a grab bag of comedy that, in my opinion, hits far more than it misses.
OVERALL: 8
Pop Team Epic is a mixed bag of comedy that has a lot of love poured into it, and you can tell the team behind it is having a ridiculous amount of fun. While its fast-paced, surrealist, vignette-style comedic scenes may not be funny to some people, I had a lot of fun while watching this.
