Poputepipikku turns absurdist comedy up to eleven with its pop culture references and surreal hilarity. With two bonafide high school girl protagonists—the short and exceptionally quick to anger Popuko, and the tall and unshakably calm Pipimi—they throw genres against the wall and don't wait to see what sticks. Parody is interlaced with drama, action, crudeness, and the show's overarching goal—to become a real anime.
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Blood_Diver_A
[Pop Culture References + Meme + Anime = Pop Team Epic] [Alternative Title – Memes, References, and High Quality Shitpost: the anime] *Part 1 of Review* (For those curious about this series, read this review): STORY:Story? Who needs a story. Can’t have a story, if you never had one. It’s just random shit happening on screen because that’s how Pop Team Epic rolls. The series features a variety of humor, ranging from black comedy (i.e. gallows humor – my favorite type of humor) to surreal humor to anti-humor, and to meta-jokes and parodies.
The series features many pop culture references, such as: Earth, Wind & Fire, Pokémon, Hoshiiro Girldrop, Kimi no Na wa, Chrono Trigger, Kemono Friends, My Neighbour Totoro, Metal Gear Solid 3 time paradox, Top Gun, Initial D, Hellshake Yano, YouTube subscribe, Undertale, Donkey Kong, the Shawshank Redemption, etc.
I love how each episode has one long skit, such as sports anime (shogi/racing), science-fiction, murder-mystery, music, haunted house horror, romances, music documentary, etc, and manages to turn it into a parody. Loved every moment of it!
Especially, the entire Hellshake Yano sequence, in Episode 7; it was amazing and outstanding, considering everything was told through art sketches and the actors actually performing it on live camera. Glorious stuff!
Other original skits include: Bob Epic Team shorts with the main character’s face and body being distorted as hell, Japon Mignon shorts, live action actors and actresses, Pop Team Cooking shorts, POP TEAM 8-BIT, Pop Team Dance, etc. Every single skits was amazing, and well told and executed. I laugh at every single joke, reference, and parody, they displayed on the screen.
Each episode contains two similar-looking 12-minute segments that feature different voice actors and other small changes to the skits. I think this idea is extremely unique and makes the anime stand out more compared to other anime series.
It may be a strange, bizarre, and even crazy, but this series allows numerous animators and content creators to have their creations shown on every medium, such as internet or television. It allows creativity to flow and flourish without any restrictions. And finally, it's not afraid to do what it wants to do. It just does it, and rolls with it!
ANIMATION:
Solid animations. Some of the skits come from the original comic strips, however the majority of them are original animations. The animators make use of a variety types of animations, such as fully 3D animations, CGI, 2D animations, live-action, stop-motion, and idiosyncratic animation from the AC-bu.
For example, Kamikaze Douga is the primary animation studio that does 3D animation as well as the Hoshiiro Girldrop shorts; Space Neko Company does the 2D animations and “Pop Team Story" shorts, i.e. the shorts that reference from the original comic; AC-bu does the idiosyncratic animations for “Bob Epic Team" short; UchuPeople produces stop-motion animation for “Pop Team Dance” shorts.
The animation may be bizarre, especially the idiosyncratic animations (i.e. distorted characters, background objects, and even strange fast-paced animations), it may be realistic (i.e. live-action, or the stop motion animations), or it may be crazy, but who cares, this is Pop Team Epic, where the crazy becomes even crazier.
Excellent character models. Seeing Popuko and Pipimi being drawn in a variety of styles is interesting and dynamic.
SOUND:
Excellent voice acting. The anime incorporates many voice actors and actresses to voice both Popuko and Pipimi. The voice actors for Popuko includes: Masashi Ebara, Yūji Mitsuya, Aoi Yūki, Toshio Furukawa, Yōko Hikasa, Tesshō Genda, Nana Mizuki, Hozumi Gōda, etc. The voice actors/actresses for Pipimi includes Hōchū Ōtsuka, Noriko Hidaka, Ayana Taketatsu, Shigeru Chiba, Mamiko Noto, Banjō Ginga, etc. Then, we have french actor/actress, such as Fanny Bloc and Christine Bellier. I believe having many voice actors/actress changes thing up and makes it exciting, fun, and enjoyable.
Every voice actor/actresses fits their roles and makes everything funnier. The male voice actors make everything twice as funny, especially when they sing songs and create exaggerated sound effects.
Excellent opening song (i.e. “Pop Team Epic”) by Sumire Uesaka, so good you get to hear it twice. Also, the first episode’s opening song, titled “Twinkling Star” by Yui Ogura, Inori Minase, and Sumire Uesaka was also really good. The kick-ass opening sets the tone for the rest of the series. Excellent background music sets the mood, atmosphere, and tone for the characters and reactions to specific situations, whether it’s comedy, mystery, drama, etc. The song, “Let’s Pop Together” is an excellent parody of “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
CHARACTER:
Excellent characters that are funny and entertaining to watch. Background stories, character development, and even goals and motivations be damned; you know why you are watching this, and it’s not for “great character development or background stories”. It’s to watch two characters, Popuko and Pipimi, do crazy skits and perform hilarious jokes. I just love how Popuko and Pipimi are able to bounce jokes after jokes off each other.
ENJOYMENT:
I smiled and laughed during every single episode. It doesn’t matter what other people say, just watch for shits and giggles.
Pop Team Epic is one of greatest show I ever watched in 2018.
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Change my mind.
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*Part 2 of Review*
(For those on-the-fence about this show, please enjoy these lovely lyrics):
"Let's Pop Together" by Pop Team Epic (Episode 4)
[A parody of "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind & Fire]
We are pop team dance dance go
For the fans and for the haters alike
Dance dance go dance dance go
For the fans and for the haters alike
You haters will become fans eventually
Let’s pop together, oh oh
Let’s all live in harmony
Let’s pop together, all night
We love our fans
Because they put food on our table
We don’t care about haters
They’re ridiculous, pathetic, not worth it at all
The new manga volume is on sale now, you can buy it online
What a waste of money!
You won’t buy it?
Are you insane?
We don’t care, piss off
Yay, the anime version is airing!
Don’t bother me, I won’t watch it
What, you’re not watching it?
Are you stupid?
How can you say this?
How long are you going to fight this hater battle?
You haters will become fans eventually
Let’s pop together, oh oh
Let’s all live in harmony
Let’s pop together, all night
Plasmatize
*This review will mention a number of jokes from the series, mostly in vague terms to minimize spoilers while still offering a point of reference to those who have already seen it* As soon as I committed to watching Poputepipikku (Pop Team Epic), I knew immediately that I wanted to talk about it, whether by discussing it with others or, as I have now done, writing a full review of this strange beast. It was clear that my opinion on it was different from the prevailing thoughts of the community. Of course that’s not a bad thing; differences of opinion or perspective make such discussions farmore interesting, as opposed to a circle of like-minded cult members all chanting “Yes, man! Yes, man!” in rhythmic turn.
Of course, in the case of Pop Team Epic, the scenario looks more as if half the members in the circle suddenly turned to demons, the song of the ring an increasingly loud and aggressive “No, idiot!” with both sides on the verge of slaughtering each other. Pop Team Epic is an unbelievably, viciously polarizing show, with outcries of love and hatred struggling for dominance. What could possibly make something so divisive? It's hard to say for sure, outside of the old saying that comedy is subjective, but it may have something to do with the show’s unorthodox nature and format. Put simply, there’s little else quite like Pop Team Epic, for better or worse. The closest reference point I can imagine would be parody sketch comedies like Robot Chicken, but even this fails to truly capture the format-stretching, meme-generating, self-aware surrealism on display here.
So, with little comparison to go on, and a product which in many ways defies traditional metrics, it’s easy to become dismissive - to take your first, most basic impression of a title like Pop Team Epic and jump to conclusions about the work as a whole, whether positive or negative. I'll openly admit I did exactly this when I first saw the premiere episode, believing it to exist primarily to troll its audience (which it certainly does at times, but I'd hardly call it the show's sole purpose). Other stances span the full range from "hilarious collection of memes about pop culture" to "insufferable unfunny barrage of nonsensical randomness to amuse the bottom-feeders of the internet" among others - and to be clear, I'm not saying these specific stances are invalid or necessarily arise from quick dismissal. But if we're not careful, there's the risk of getting swept up in our immediate reactions and forgetting about the craft behind them - of losing perspective of the elements that go into the work as a whole to make it what it is. Pop Team Epic may come off as strange at times, but I believe like all media, it still deserves acknowledgement as an art piece, regardless of one's overall experience with it or eventual stance reached regarding its quality.
So here we are, as I make a serious attempt at understanding this show’s vision and the tools it uses to pursue it, and then deciding whether or not I liked what I saw and why. All this, because I don't think a work like this should see its weird, experimental nature become an excuse to immediately write off its craft before at least giving an honest and open look at the content on display.
With that in mind, there IS still the question of whether I personally liked it, so without further ado, I present my honest thoughts on this little oddity:
Pop Team Epic is an absurdist sketch comedy starring Popuko and Pipimi, two recurring avatars who go around making all variety of over-the-top events happen, all while screwing with as many characters as possible, including the viewer watching it. It sets itself apart from other such comedies by embracing the concept of meta-humour, but in ways that are far more creative and interesting than the often-seen approach of simply breaking the fourth wall and calling attention to its tropes (some may know this as “lampshading”). It also consistently gets creative with its formatting, whether subverting the standard 4-panel setup in various ways to enhance the element of surprise in its jokes, or making use of many alternative formats and styles to keep the variety up. Perhaps most critically, while wildly inconsistent in terms of quality, it shows an ability to tell its jokes without falling into common pitfalls of non sequitur and referential comedies… most of the time.
That last point is one I’d like to emphasize. Personally, I see more in this show's sense of humour than just arbitrary references for arbitrary references’ sake, and this is coming from someone who typically isn’t fond of non sequitur comedies. To explain why I feel this way, I feel it is helpful to try and break down why exactly I find randomness played for laughs to be ineffectual, as well as a bit about “humour” in general - hopefully, without coming off as conceited; it’s no secret that comedy is a highly subjective affair, so take everything I'm about to say not as any sorts of "rules" for comedy, but rather, as an elaboration for why I find Pop Team Epic to work where so many others fail, leveraging my understanding of my personal sense of humour while still respecting the skill displayed by the content at hand.
There are many theories out there which attempt to explain what makes something funny, but one that generally seems to align with my own sense of humour, and a useful starting point here, is Peter McGraw’s Benign Violation Theory. Those interested in the study of humour are free to explore this and other theories, but to avoid needlessly padding this review, I’ll stick to what’s relevant here: it suggests that something will be funny if it simultaneously a) acts as a violation of what a person believes an aspect of the world “ought to be”, and b) be presented in a benign (safe/non-threatening) manner. That's rather abstract, so to make a somewhat more concrete extension of this in the context of anime, one could theoretically achieve this by in some way surprising a viewer - such as by setting up expectations for the show or its universe and then defy them with some kind of “punchline”, joke, whatever - but in a way such that the result is something the viewer won’t find offensive, annoying, upsetting and so forth. Of course, this will vary from viewer to viewer. This is only one approach and not a perfect explanation by any stretch, nor are these anything close the only variables which may be involved. But it's a helpful springboard for diving into this show's content.
Applying this idea to non sequitur humour, if something incredibly out of place suddenly shows up in a show’s universe, then you’ve defied the viewer’s expectations for that universe, so you might get a laugh once or twice. But by repeating this joke, once it’s been established that weird or arbitrary things can and will happen in this universe, you lose that element of surprise for any future irregular occurrences, and the effect is lost. Worse still, if everything is completely random, without some thread of logic or flow to latch onto, viewers may stop expecting anything aside from this randomness. And, if you keep showing non sequitur after non sequitur, and the viewer interprets that as the joke, it could get incredibly obnoxious.
One could also say similar things for referential humour; the first reference is an unexpected intrusion on the show’s universe originating from another, but if you keep throwing out bare references, then the viewer begins to expect them.
Given this predicament, how exactly does Pop Team Epic seem to avoid this pitfall? The answer, I believe, is that Pop Team Epic is not truly random; it would be more accurate to say that the specific subject matter of any one of its mini-skits is seemingly random. By this, I mean that any given skit can have literally any topic of focus, regardless of what the previous one focused on, but on the other hand, most of the individual skits themselves do have their own sense of continuity and strange yet self-consistent logic. What this means is that so long as Pop Team Epic is able to set up and deliver actual punchlines through these self-consistent skits, it can function as an effective comedy despite its apparent randomness of subject matter and the prevalence of pop culture references. Does Pop Team Epic do any of this, with any degree of success?
Yes, it definitely does!
Starting with the basics, Pop Team Epic makes use of many commonly-cited forms of humour in amongst all its madness. These include, among many others, comedic shifts in tone (certain “Hoshiiro Girldrop” interjections), ironic character actions (the cigarette joke in an idol skit), situations being taken 4 steps further than expected to the point of absurdity (the same idol skit’s conclusion), escalatory repetition (episode 2’s manga speech bubble skit), some puns and wordplay I’m not qualified to evaluate, and, alas, a few instances of seemingly barebones references that don’t seem to have any strings attached. However, those latter types are thankfully a much smaller minority than one might expect. In most cases, there’s a concerted effort to at least add something of substance the the reference in question, even if it’s not always immediately apparent.
Of course, simply having punchlines present isn’t enough on its own. The fact that most of these “traditional” styles of jokes are condensed into extremely short skits (setting aside some longer-form exceptions with multiple punchlines like the aforementioned idol skit) does pose a challenge for the show in terms of having the time to instill expectations or ideas in a viewer, and then deliver a joke that isn’t completely obvious from the brief setup given. However, I personally found Pop Team Epic’s success rate to be higher than anticipated, perhaps because its variety of material and approaches gave it plenty of options for what direction to take any given skit in, while still maintaining that critical sense of flow to avoid a nosedive into true randomness. It’s a precarious approach - a constant balancing act which didn’t hold every single time - but as far as I’m concerned, it worked well enough.
So yes, this show does make use of some tried and true approaches to telling jokes, and frequently succeeds at maintaining the elements of surprise, buildup and payoff. However, Pop Team Epic is no ordinary comedy, and in addition to these more conventional approaches, it also carries a number of less-common tricks in its grab bag.
For instance, Pop Team Epic will often subvert the standard 4-panel format in order to further enhance its element of surprise, or add even more variety to how its jokes are delivered. 4-panel comedy strips will often spend three panels setting the stage, and then deliver their punchline on the fourth panel. This, of course, also applies to their adaptations, whether or not the boundaries between skits, sections or scenarios remain clear after the transition. In the case of Pop Team Epic, this transition is marked clear as polished glass by voiced-over title cards.
Pop Team Epic, however, often defies this conventional setup by placing an unexpected punchline near the beginning of the skit - what would be equivalent to the first or second panel in its original form - with the remaining panels adding onto it in some way, such as by taking the joke to further extremes or making humorous comments. This further adds to the element of surprise by varying the timing at which a punchline can hit.
In other cases, Pop Team Epic will flip the idea of the non sequitur card on its head, taking its normally-unrelated skits which the viewer expects to be unrelated in subject matter, and adds unexpected continuity between them to catch the viewer off guard. A good example of this (***brief spoiler for episode 3) is in a skit about Pipimi trying out a car, another person making disclaimers about its red colour and quietness, and Pipimi being satisfied, commenting that they can “kill in silence” and hide the blood on the car’s crimson hue. The skit ends, and the viewer expects the joke to end with it. Then the next skit is about Popuko looking for a job, and Pipimi handing her a suitcase full of cash, a gun, and a hitlist for assassination.
(***end of spoiler)
At another point, a skit makes reference to a certain piece of media, and then the next skit starts exactly the same way as the first, because the circumstances the first skit ended on would trigger a time reset in the universe being referenced. As a brief aside, this displays what I look for in referential humour. There should be some kind of punchline to go with the reference, and if the reference is necessary to understand the joke, its source should be something fairly recognizable to whatever audience is viewing it. In this instance, these conditions were met, showing that, at least some of the time, Pop Team Epic seems to understand that its frequent references cannot carry the comedy on its own.
On a more straightforward level, Pop Team Epic will change up the styles and even mediums in which it presents a given skit. Later episodes in particular got especially creative with exploring new formats, including alternate animation styles, various live-action/animation mixtures, and an enthralling segment involving two live-action performers manipulating pages of a sketchbook. This variety alone added a certain degree of entertainment value simply in seeing what the show would come up with next, even setting aside some of the jokes that were told by leveraging these new formats.
But that’s enough about formatting. It’s time to graduate to talking about the show’s attempts at full-on meta-humour that I’ve been building up.
To be honest, I’m usually not the biggest fan of meta-humour, but this has less to do with the concept than it does with the execution. As I mentioned before, I very often see attempts at meta-humour amount to little more than breaking the fourth wall, or a show plainly pointing out what tvtropes.org entry it’s using at that particular moment. My gripes with this type of humour are similar to those of the non sequitur and referencial varieties: in isolation, as a one-off joke or small aside, it can work. However, doing it repeatedly ceases to surprise and can become increasingly annoying when overused. Furthermore, it simply lacks creativity; it takes next to no effort to do it and is far too common an approach. In short: it’s a lazy, done-to-death gimmick.
But once again, Pop Team Epic steps beyond these trappings! It doesn’t stop at trivial self-awareness or fourth wall breaks. Instead, the fourth wall ceases to exist here, and the show makes use of the viewer's acceptance of its self-aware nature to tell jokes that simply wouldn’t have been the same otherwise.
A character proclaims an action they'll perform in 30 minutes; the show shows them standing there waiting in real time as the ending sequence plays in the background. Viewer comments complaining about an animation quirk in certain segments are read; the show fixes this quirk and lets you witness the humorous results for yourself. Later episodes make sudden, unexpected yet seemingly obvious additions to the opening theme to comedic effect. Even the necessary censorship of copyrighted words leads to a pun that translated shockingly well into English, with the incredibly stupid yet earnest results leaving me rolling! These are just a few of many examples of Pop Team Epic reaching beyond usual approaches to meta-humour. These gags are novel, creative, and often surprisingly witty, leading to arguably some of the show’s best and most unique material.
What I’m saying, in essence, is that for all this show's madness, I do see a method behind it. It has far more tricks to offer than simply throwing snot, superglue, tree sap, maple syrup, sticky notes and other trinkets at the viewer in hopes that something will stick. Furthermore, these tricks are often interesting and creative in their own right, and the show displays a clear ability to make use of them for uniquely comedic effect. Well, most of the time, anyway.
And on that note, here is where I must address my main gripe with the series: its inconsistency.
While I found many of Pop Team Epic’s skits to be a hit, and for others could at the very least see what the joke was, there were also quite a few segments which I simply didn’t understand. Whether it was because I didn’t know a reference, the joke was poorly presented, or because there simply wasn’t a joke at all, I can’t say for sure. Regardless, many of them just seemed to truly be random, have no point, or in rarer cases, simply exist as a reference with no apparent joke attached. Of course, some such segments turned out to simply be setting up for punchlines in later skits (“Are you upset?”, though this one arguably had a punchline to begin with), while others could be seen as planting expectations for a later variation with something in common (the first knitted musical number), continuing the trend of playing with the 4-panel format. Others, however, seemed to lack even this purpose.
For some of these segments, one could make a case for anti-humour - intentionally skipping the expectation of a punchline as a punchline in and of itself, or perhaps having the punchline be that what’s happening should, in fact, be taken at face value. However, I found that these segments seemingly devoid of a punchline happened a bit too frequently for this to work. As such, they had little impact and forced me to simply give up on trying to figure them out. Congratulations, Pop Team Epic, you've stumped me!
I’ll say this, though: I’d much rather a joke fly over my head completely than have it bashed into my head and get brain damage. But a quick smack to the face is perfectly okay!
In other words, I’m fine with blunt and over-the-top presentation (which can be found aplenty here), but I tend to dislike it when such presentation is combined with repeating or over-explaining trivial and obvious punchlines in a way that feels unnatural or forced. It comes across as the show being afraid the viewer might be too stupid to get it otherwise, or as some desperate attempt to draw additional laughs from something that’s clearly run dry of them. Thankfully, Pop Team Epic definitively avoids this particular pet peeve of mine. I can think of very few instances of a joke lingering beyond its allotted laugh-span - maybe some of the “Hoshiiro Girldrop” material overstayed its welcome. But even in those cases, it didn’t feel like it was forcibly dragged out, but rather, it simply went on as long as one might expect - which happened to be a bit longer than I found it funny - so this generally didn’t bother me much.
In all other cases, Pop Team Epic, leveraging its 4-panel format, moves at a quick pace, with quick setup, quick delivery of its jokes, and quickly moving on from it, whether you “got it” or not. This sense of pacing also means that even though many jokes or skits may fail to hit their target, their rate of fire is high enough to minimize long stretches of barren content. There are still some weaker episodes, mainly early on, but I found the series as a whole to fare quite well in holding my interest and keeping me amused.
And with that, I’ve just about covered my reasons for enjoying this show for what it is. For those brave or curious enough to give it a shot, a few things are worth noting in deciding how to watch it. First, if using official subtitles, I recommend going for Hidive’s over Crunchyroll’s. Many of the jokes contain nuances present in the former but lost in the latter. Funimation's English dub may also be a worthy alternative, but I can't speak on this personally. Secondly, Pop Team Epic has an unusual albeit suitable quirk in which every 12-minute episode is broadcast twice in a row, with the second adding extra context or substance to many of the jokes while giving Popuko and Pipimi different voice actors (usually a gruff male set for the second, adding to the surrealism). I myself usually preferred to skip to the 11:50 mark of each episode and just watch the more detailed second version, but how one chooses to respond to this quirk is up to them.
Of course, most of us watch comedies primarily for laughter, and no matter how many types or theories of humour we may discuss to explain our enjoyment or lack thereof, in the end, laughter is personal, which all but guarantees that titles with wildly diverging opinions like this one will show up from time to time. So for those who enjoy the show as a collection of memes for forum boards, or simply as “Shitpost: The Anime”, that’s fine; keep doing so. Likewise, if you find the show insufferable to watch, there’s no need to force yourself into thinking otherwise. But by the same token, whether watching it casually or going for further analysis, love or hate it, appreciate or despise it, let's not sit here and pretend that our own viewpoint or experience is the only legitimate one, that everyone in the circle who disagrees must be idiots, or that the work sitting in the middle is somehow beneath us.
As for my opinion, I enjoyed Pop Team Epic, both as a novelty act and as its own standalone product. Despite being more than a bit inconsistent, it still has its share of funny and memorable moments thanks to its straight-to-the-point attitude, creative use of meta-humour and blunt delivery of surreal gags, while mostly avoiding potential pitfalls of abusing non sequitur and referential humour. While it certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, the show is also wholly committed to its unusual vision and shows a degree of skill in using its varied material, structuring and formatting to sell its unique brand of absurdity, For that, I respect it.
NextUniverse
(Why the hell would you need a TLDR review?) It has come to my attention that Pop Team Epic is excruciatingly misunderstood. ----- Pop Team Epic In this review, I coded it so that I have to speedrun my Pop Team Epic review before MAL has a 504 Error. Can I finish my review before MAL goes down? Also, according to MyAnimeList statistics, only a small percentage of people reading this review have actually given this a helpful vote. So if you end up enjoying this review. Consider giving a helpful vote. It's free, you can always undo the vote later. Enjoy the review.Does Pop Team Epic actually try to be comedy 🤣 god 🙏 ? Well yes, but actually yes. However, one could look at Pop team Epic as more than just some gag anime. It is a way of life. The a(pog)ee (who tf makes these words) of being the most based anime known to man. I really can't explain with words of the centre of everything Pop Team Epic tries to convey to the viewer. But I will try to do so with this review, not only with words alone, I will try to deliver the feeling you get via this review. The ascendance of Pop Team Epic knows no limits. Look at today's mainstream anime, shitty isekai here, overhyped shounen anime there, bruh Crunchyroll Originals moment, other things no one asked for. But Pop Team Epic is more than that. It is on a platform of its own. Imagine the first episode of NGNL, you know, that one time Sora and Shiro were 2gud4dez nubz that they rekt them in like 2 seconds lmao. That is where Pop Team Epic stands in the animanga culture. And honestly, I have quite never seen anything as supreme as Pop Team Epic. Apart from my simping on Madoka Magica. Pop Team Epic is hands down the best thing this ｂ ｒ ｕ ｈ medium has to give.
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ɔıdƎ ɯɐǝ⊥ doԀ
Narrative:
Story? Lmao. There is none. It is just shits and giggles here, there, everywhere. What I will say is that the larger segments, the ones by Space Cat Company, does provide for some top quality shorts. A wide variety of just random, though creative things slapped together to make for some interesting shorts. And you can probably tell that I am running out of things to say, because it mostly comes under enjoyment lmao.
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Bobunemimimmi !!1!
Ōdiōbizūaruzu:
bruh de vizual lukin lit, very variety all around and vry good. dey uze rl and animu. very creativity honestly, anime nowadays sticking to unbased and 🤢🤢. But Pop Team Epic no hold back, they will use everything from drawings that looked like they came out of The Amazing World of Gumball fanfics, to the beautiful comsic-like humans that bring a fallacious vision of one looking into one of Leonardo da Vinci's works.
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𝓟𝓸𝓹 𝓣𝒆𝓪𝓶 𝓔𝓹𝓲𝓬
Ears side of things, ngl, didn't remember any sound lmao, that is in terms of OST, if there was one to begin with, I have no clue. The main sounds did not disappoint, oh no siree, the super catchy OP and parody of Hoshiiro Girldrop sounds. Not to mention the based song that is "Let's Pop Together", literally has some of the best lyrics I have heard seen since just when I watched it. Bruh, why isn't all anime like this, smh.
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JAPON MiGNON
Jouissance:
Une petite chose que je voulais ajouter, c’est que l’anime permet à une variété vide de personnes d’en profiter, de Français personnes, aux mêmes, aux fans d’anime. Pourquoi c’est en Français. Je n’en ai aucune idée. Je ne peux que demander la déité derrière Pop Team Epic que de chercher une telle réponse. Merci à Collins traducteur pour cette tranlastion.
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🅿🅾🅿 🆃🅴🅰🅼 🅴🅿🅸🅲
In addition to the multiple languages that the anime uses. It also has some very clever ways to bring out enjoyment. The first thing being parody. Undertale, Super Mario Kart, using Wikipedia as a source, Jojo references, and YouTubers when they tell you to SMASH THE LIKE BUTTON FOR MORE, and reaction videos. Pop Team Epic never seems to run out of this to, well, things to take the piss out of, kinda like South Park but maybe not as outrageous. And it does it so casually as well. It again enforces how much the anime literally does not give one about the internet opinions of someone who happens to pass by the show. It just what it needs to do, and no one will stop it.
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ᴾᵒᵖ ᵀᵉᵃᵐ ᴱᵖⁱᶜ
Another thing to say about the enjoyment is that the anime already knows its position in life. So many times has it referred to itself as the "shitty manga" saying things like "why did this get an anime". Using my reddit r/funny knowledge it is clear that they are just parodying the unepic haters so much so that it just makes for more good content to add onto the gags the show already had going from the start. Who would have thought that the juxtaposition of using the haters mindset made for a good piece of farming jokes out of.
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𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘱𝘪𝘬𝘬𝘶
And well, the last pillar of enjoyment I have to go on about with Pop Team Epic is just the sheer amount of absurd moments that literally don't add anything to the plot that doesn't even exist. Kinda like Family Guy's cutaways but it does it better. Way better. One moment they are taking the piss out of haters, the next is just some surreal humour that breaks all sense of logic. As well as this, there is the greatness of parodying the romance genre. Not sure why they chose romance but they did. And it goes a little like
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Pop Team Epic, Cooking!
Recipe to make a good romance parody!
1. Idol girl wants to be an idol
2. Male MC suddenly comes across idol wannabe
3. Dumb encounters!
4. Getting to know each other
5. This review got unfunny long ago, but I don't care!
6. Love!
7. The End (and repeat for more money)
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ₚₒₚᵤₜₑₚᵢₚᵢₖₖᵤ
But fr. The nonsense moments are just some of the most bizarre but well put together shitposts I have seen in a long while. More anime needs to take a page from Pop Team Epic's book. All in all. It is clear that everything was focused around the enjoyment part rather than trying to make very deep psychological story is very deep. Outstanding move.
Overall - 💯
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I don't know why it suddenly came to mind to write a review like this but it did. Straying away from the general MAL format of writing a review is just kinda what Pop Team Epic acts like within the anime medium as an anime, just felt that this was the best way to bring that around with words and layout. It goes to limits no one is willing to take, even if very serious people will watch this. Everything I said is actually my opinion. No cap. This is unironically one of the best things I have seen. Being that eccentric person isn't always a bad thing. 10/10.
For anyone wondering, it took 1h 42m 7s to write this from after the first sentence to the overall score. And I have no intention to properly proofread this review.
Fall in love next week!
Karhu
Pop Team Epic is the name. Offering jokes that make no sense its game. Like it or not, it's all the same. Your sense of humor is to blame. Philosophers, fools and shitposters all around the globe have been asking this question recently, but also since the dawn of tragicomedy: What makes a joke funny? Is there a single factor that answers to this question? Everything can be funny as long as it is presented in the preferred way. Much like with anime series, it is all about the execution. But this is still all about personal preferences, perspective and knowledge. How can a popculturereference deliver if one does not know what is is referring to? The original question has been answered already hundreds of times: The funny was inside you all along. #deep #derp
Pop Team Epic is a series thats target audience is the whole internet culture. Its jokes varie greatly from parodies to live action interviews. From original content to ridiculously bad coaxed into a snafu-tier memes. It's even familiar with taiwanese puppet shows, obscurities of all sort, and awkward elevator music. The series has a bit of everything, and for this reason its writing is full of quality differences. It's nearly impossible for every joke appeal to all viewers. Almost every joke in it can be understood in different ways and found to be funny/not funny for different reasons. This is quite original for comedy series and part of the reason why I found the series to be worth of my time so much that I watched it twice. There has been quite a few obscure comedies in the past, such as Masuda Kousuke Gekijou, Gag Manga Biyori and Tensai Senshi, but none of them successful.
The actual idea behind the series production is fairly interesting. It shows us how much voice actors can change the tone of the series and the aspects of jokes. Every episode is approximately 24 minutes long, but in practice it is just 12 minutes of either identical or highly similar content. The main difference are the voice actors. Other half is presented with male seiyuus and the another with female seiyuus. The male version typically also comes with extras such as quest analysis, voice-over live action reaction to the joke, and whatever else.
I enjoyed this series for its uniqueness, different approach, and scenes such as flip-cover live action music show presented by 2 members of the production team. There is simply no other anime in existence that would even try to do content like this. It alone is worth of something: worth of giving Pop Team Epic a go.
BreakingBlaze
ポプテピピック (Pop Team Epic) is far more phenomenal than most anime ever produced and released would ever be. It is a cultural celebration of anime as a whole from the adapted works of Bkub Okawa into many reaches of genre, style and presentation, and it's pretty shitty! There's absolutely no need to dawn any thinking caps, judgemental barometers or even acquired tastes to appreciate everything Pop Team Epic has to offer, from the prospective yet tastefully dated memes and references, to the plethora of genres it covers from comedy to action, horror to romance, sci-fi to thriller etc., to the gunbelt array of studios and producersof each segment all representative of the vast styles of anime such as olden, CGI, modern, experimental, and everything in between, leads like Kamikaze Douga (haha snuck in some JoJo), Space Cat Company, Thibault Tresca, the immensely talented Makoto Yamashita and of course, the awe inspiring AC Department, all who've each handed well respected and unforgettable adaptations and original content.
Following suite to the meat of this review, Pop Team Epic is graded under the usual criteria but under the circumstances of its genre and meaning:
Story -/10
Each encounter is completely unaffected by the last and helps portray the randomness and non-linear coherse plot that this anime obviously does not have. A simple story regarding the ominous shadow lords does encapsulate itself in the beginning, but you have to watch the show to find out what happens afterwards though~ ♥
Art 10/10
Whether spot on manga recreations, free liberty of Bob Epic Team, or the wonderful CGI portrayal, each representation is beautifully done to their own accord and some background art even having more right than needed be to look as good as they do for a show such as this. Only the best here.
Sound and Music 10/10
All effects are mastered well, both sides of repeating episodes featuring male and female voice overs were spectacular, (another bonus point, what show can you name off the top of your head that does this revolutionary thing) nobody is inaudible unless needed to be and the music is absolutely glorious, from OP to ED, in different styles and singers, and especially the OST capturing moods perfectly. Eisaaai! Haramasukoi!
Characters 10/10
Everyone and thing is just so cute ohmigoooooooo-
No doubts here, all main and supporting cast are destinctive, expressive, and most importantly, memorable.
Overall, Pop Team Epic is fantastically enjoyable to nearly everyone who's finna woke at any time or situation, barring short term dated memes. Make no mistake, it is a shitty anime, everyone thinks so too, but it's undeniably a show that will withstand time and harbour memories of reliving the golden ages of anime as a whole, while bringing whole communities together, old and new. 10/10.
Thank you very much for reading!
Parvaati
Pop Team Epic is not art. It may be anime, if only in the most literal of definitions, but it is not art. It cannot be art. Art is a creative process, and there is nothing creative about Pop Team Epic. It is an amalgam of references strewn about in the most banal of ways. Skyrim exists. Totoro exists. Pokémon exists. That is all Pop Team Epic has to say. It just reminds you that better media exists, but in ways that are disrespectful and offensive to the time of the unfortunate viewer. Pop Team Epic is a dreadful product. It is anti-art. It is anti-comedy.It is a middle finger to those who produce art because Pop Team Epic is devoid of creativity, vision, and passion; or to put it simply, something that is not art but wishes it was, and so instead it has to violently lash out towards.
The artwork and animation quality is awful. It is a poor adaptation of the source material, as the production staff was so obviously unaware of the differences between print and animated mediums. The sound is exceptionally poor. Normally a production like this would not be given the OK, but in the case of Pop Team Epic, it was allowed to pass because it was not a serious artistic product, but a way to sell merchandise to easily manipulated consumers through viral 24 minute commercials under the guise of of art.
RPWPA
Not every manga or a novel can be turned into an anime and Poputepipikku is one of those anime that shouldn't have been adapted. Most of the people who watched Poputepipikku did that because it was very popular as a shitposting manga rather than a normal one, it never had a story and was always random with stuff sometimes being funny, wholesome or annoying depending on how you personally feel, it was like a meme machine and it should have stayed like that, the anime was disappointing because of a lot of reasons. The random jokes which could be a hit or miss, the references butthe people making the anime never realized that making a reference wasn't the funny part, it was how it was presented and used which makes it funny, take Gintama for example, that anime has a lots of references but that wasn't why it is funny, it's funny because of how it used those reference in the episodic or even arc episodes after the reference, I was watching the episodes and starting to hope for the IDOL love stuff at the preview to become the actual anime rather than this one specially at the start, the anime.
Also bob epic team was garbage.
The worst thing is probably the cringy stuff that was made during the last 12 weeks that the producers/publishers were doing, for example making the same episode twice because it's a troll XD, broadcasting the same episode 8 times in a row just to make a reference and other cringy stuff that made feel sorry for them for wasting all that money unnecessary.
The best thing about the anime is the Opening, it's so good from the song to the animation, well the animation in the whole anime was amazing tbh.
There were some jokes that made me laugh and references that were used fittingly but they were rare which is why the anime wasn't enjoyable for me.
Overall I would give it a generous 4/10.
I wouldn't recommend it tbh reading it would be better.
Ali_Fuat
Poputepipikku is just shitposting . Nothing more than that . Do you believe that some shitposting will going to save the whole anime endustry ? I think the answer must be no but Poputepipikku showed out of nowhere and everyone liked it . Do I think liking somehing is wrong? Of course I don't everyone has his own personal taste . I just don't like Poputepipikku . The reson is the jokes are occasionaly hard to understand . Everything feels like it's repetitive and after a whole lot of shitposting (That's what i do at every social network) it gets boring . It doesn't ruinit's potential I mean a lot of shitpost lovers will going to like this because they have no life and all they do is shitposting everyday (that's sad) . Poputepipikku's main problem is after a while weirdness starts to be boring . Every episode is just only weird nothing more than that . Memes , references and jokes are not good because you can't understand any of them (maybe a lot of Japanese culture will help) . Poputepipikku gets boring after a while and their whole thing becomes pathetic . Basically if you watch 1 episode of Poputepipikku you could count yourself that you watch the whole series . Because that is the only thing there , nothing more . That's why I don't like it . Overall 1/10
simonstrash
I’ll preface this by saying comedy is subjective and you can like whatever you like. Maybe I’m just a low iq idiot who can’t understand the deep themes in pop team epic. Who knows? This show was fun for about 1 episode, 2 at max. In the beggining it was kind of like ”haha this is funny because it’s shitposting and that’s not common for anime. Anime of the year amirite LUL.” But then you realize you’re a fucking retard. In my mind, this show is built upon three things. Cool gamer references, random=funny humour and 4th wall breaking. The easiest thing to throw shit atis the random=funny aspect so I’ll start with that. Unless you’re still in the 4th grade you won’t find this funny. That’s just how it is. After you’ve experienced it one time it’s purely annoying.
And the cool gamer references are just that. Gamer references. They don’t do anything with it they just put popuko and pipimi in a videogame. Ansolutely hysterical.
I’ll admit though, I did enjoy some of the references but that’s mostly because they were unexpected. And in general, I really like references to other things in media. Just not when it is used in the same way over and over again while also not doing much with it.
And the fourth wall breaking (apart from hellshake yano) wasn’t good at all either. It was pretty much also just ”random=funny”. I found the reoccuring french thing especially annoying as every single one of those segments were deadass boring.
Art for the show was alright and I did like the bob epic team segments quite a bit cause I’m a fan of wonky artstyles.
Sound was also pretty alright I guess. There are 2 different dubs which give of different vibes so maybe some people will like that. And if you don’t like it you can just skip one.
And I would be negative towards how the episodes are so short or whatever but it is a 4 panel manga and it really doesn’t need to be longer.
Overall, this show sucks, don’t watch it unless you’re, as I said, in the 4th grade or lower. Or if you want to hurt yourself idk.
LegendAqua
Ok let's first get the shitposting out of the wayPipimi all voiced by countless voice actors from Mamiko Noto to Mikako Komatsu to Tomokazu Sugita to Hiro Shimono many of the pairings on both the male and female versions having anime references (and reunions) to them as well, another words, the voice cast is bloody AMAZING. So for an anime short that doesn't give a shit, well for LA, LA might as well go with the crowd with it and LA enjoyed immensely or sometimes just utterly baffled in some skits with how this anime short just didn't give a shit with almost no sign of low quality baiting (Bob Team Epic is bloody taking the piss out of it you realize?) thus doing it well for the most part from the aforementioned pop culture references to the out of animation skits...though there are some flaws with that mainly the weirdness of Bob Team Epic series and those French segments which is...just WTF for LA but still it's Pop Team Epic.
Ok ok so the obvious is that if you don't like dank memes like these then you can unsubscribe to this anime short because that's really is what Pop Team Epic is, you wanna change whatever Pop Team Epic is from a trolling anime short into....into what?...then it's no Pop Team Epic either way. It's shitposting in the form of anime at it's finest. WHY do you think Pop Team Epic had a 22 minute run time but had only the first 10 minutes REPEATED TWICE just with different voice actors and some small changes here and there?, because Pop Team Epic being a full fledged anime series was a jab at those people who didn't think it would be possible and Pop Team Epic banked on it and WORKED.
In terms of animation, well the "animation" is the say the least as even though the animation done by Kamikaze Douga is there in it's varieties of 2D to 3D animation, from the intentionally poor quality work of Bob Team Epic series to the live action French segments and Hellshake Yano and the Live Voice acting skit, HELL Pop Team Epic by definition blends both 2D and LIVE ACTION together at times and showing the diverse range of "animation" used for an anime short such as this but nonetheless Pop Team Epic's skit based formula was used especially in the animation department is by overall.....diverse and rather great at that, even the OP is amazing!.
Hoshiiro Girl Drops needs an fully fleshed out anime!!! wait it's getting a second season REJOICE MOTHERFUCKERS!!...yes the anime short short that had little coverage only at the end of the credits halfway the anime short...Hi Yui Ogura!!!
Pop Team Epic is shitposting at it's finest, surreal and WTFery is it's bread and butter with diverse and by the looks of it, high budget for such an anime short ABOUT dank memes it's amazing Pop Team Epic even GOT an anime to begin with, so don't be cynical and watch what is by a definition of the finest quality shitposting in anime form you've seen...that will be dated in no time, thanks Internet!.
Fishb0i
I always like to start my reviews off with a brief personal tangent, in order to give a bit of extra context for why I feel a certain way about a series. And this one...this one's got some baggage. In fact, despite not having watched a single second of the show until just yesterday, it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that this anime ruined the past few years of my life. Yes, really. Back in ~2019, I was browsing TV Tropes and managed to stumble upon the page for this show. Seeing the cover for the first volume of the manga, andseeing the two main characters flip me off, caught me off-guard and I closed out of the tab immediately. For the next few weeks, that was all I could think of, those two adorable anime girls telling me to eff off. Eventually, it was too much. I opened the page up again...and that's how a fetish was born. A damned TV Tropes article on a gag anime set in motion the downward spiral that would eventually get me addicted to hentai.
And yet, despite having the cover, and plenty of fanart, saved on every device I have, I never actually watched the show until now. So, how was the show that destroyed me? What did I dedicate four years of my life to?
Well, to put it simply, this show is WarioWare. A bunch of bite-sized skits played one after another, with barely enough time in between them for the humor to settle in. And when it does that, it works wonders. That's when the show is at its peak. Problem is, each episode has to be twenty-four minutes long, and you can only do so much with five-second skits. Something has to be done to fill the runtime. How do you do that?
Bloat.
For starters, after the opening, every episode has a little story thing that lasts five minutes and, more often than not, well outstays its welcome. The show's off-the-wall humor only works in the first place because everything's over with so fast that you don't get to comprehend it. Bogging the pace down with five minutes of shogi or sledding just reveals the cracks in the show's armor, the biggest one being its insistence that "random = funny." These story segments would be more than fine if there was some sort of overarching plot to all of them, but many of them couldn't even fit in the same universe, seeing as so many of them end with either Pipimi being a robot or Popuko taking over the world in some way.
Another thing the show does to pad out the runtime is by repeating jokes. I'm not talking about the elephant in the room - we'll get to that. I'm instead talking about Bob Team Epic, the worst and most nauseating part of the show. Basically, a few times each episode, they'll take a random skit from any episode in general, or in some cases, just pull a new one straight out of their asses, and run it through the meat grinder a couple hundred times until it looks like a Newgrounds flash animation mixed with Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff and topped with a bit of that Johnny Johnny video that Chadtronic reacted to. They're obviously meant to be as horrendous as possible, but they ended up flying too close to the sun and burning their wings. These segments alone knocked the show down from a high 8 to what would have been a low 6 if it weren't for things like the opening theme and Japon Mignon.
And I feel like I have to mention at least a few positives if I'm gonna give this show a good rating, so yeah, let's just go ahead and talk about that. Japon Mignon is a legitimately adorable little series of skits added into the show, where Popuko and Pipimi take a trip to France and make fun of it. These skits were actually animated by a real Frenchman, and the characters were presumably voiced by two French girls, in French. I assume those segments were done in response to the ridiculous success that Miraculous Ladybug was receiving back then. (Seriously, it was a show that was airing on Disney XD and nobody could shut up about it.) Overall, I think those segments were better than most of the rest of the show, at least the second time around.
Oh, yes, their final ploy to stretch this show to a full cour was to play every episode twice. With very little differentiating the versions beyond the Pop Team's voice actors. I will say that it's funny to hear them speak with male voices during the second run, but it still feels like pointless filler, or in some cases, like with what they decided to do with the Japon Mignon segments, it feels scummy. See, during the first version of each episode, the Japon Mignon segments have no subtitles. The second version adds the subtitles. Okay, but why? Wouldn't it make sense to do it the other way around? 'Cuz those segments are nowhere near bizarre enough to stand on their own as foreign art pieces devoid of context. There's one where, without the subtitles, they just...take a picture and get on a bus. Funniest thing I've ever seen.
Now, sometimes, there are big enough differences between the two versions of each episode. Case in point, episode 11, where the first version has a five-minute horror skit, and the second version has some random guy in a closet reacting to said five-minute horror skit. If there was more stuff like that, the I'd say the whole concept was justified, but either I didn't pay enough attention during the second version of most episodes, or there wasn't much there.
Everything else was great, though. Whether I like it or not, I'm a GenZ-er, and I fell prey to "random = funny," just like the rest of us. I enjoyed it, outside of the stuff I mentioned above, and I'll probably watch the recent second season soon enough, too.
Now, do I recommend it? Well, that depends on who you are. For starters, if you're like me...yeah, no, you're not, but assuming you were, you'll get a kick out of all the middle fingers being thrown around, and a lot of the jokes will click with you as you remember, "oh, yeah, that thing from DeviantArt/Pixiv/Danbooru." If you like the modern, post-ironic "random = funny" type of humor that's been popular throughout the 2010s and 2020s, then I'll also recommend this show to you.
Here's a good test to see whether or not you'll like the show. It's a joke that I saw a lot of fanart surrounding, but I don't remember it being in the show. Ask yourself this, does the following make you laugh?:
"One hambaga, please."
"No, no, HAM-BUR-GER."
＂Ａｈ． Ｙｏｕ ａｒｅ ｍｏｔｈｅｒｆ＊ｃｋｅｒ？＂
If you laughed at that, even a chuckle, go watch this show. If it didn't, it's probably not for you.
Now, let's run down its qualities and give it a grade based on my personal opinion.
Story: None. 0/10
Art: This is an unique show, in that its artstyle changes between nearly every skit. You've got regular anime-styled segments, you've got felt, sketches, sand, actual real-life people, and of course, the revolting Bob Team Epic. As a result, the quality of the art tends to fluctuate between a nine and a one. I'll just throw it at the midpoint. 5/5
Characters: Yet another mixed bag. Popuko and Pipimi are essentially the center of the universe, with everyone around them being their for little more than their own amusement, and that of the viewer. In that regard, they serve their purpose extravagantly, and the duo themselves are undoubtedly great barrels of heroin. Except, I don't think you store heroin in barrels. 7/3
Sound: Men voicing women, instant 10/10. As for the music, the opening just needs to be blared into my ears at all times, seriously. It's that good. The other songs, on the other hand...eh, a lot of them sound like either the most generic anime music, or stuff you'd hear on the radio here in America. And I am not a fan of radio music. 3/-13
Enjoyment: Yes, I freaking did. 6/3/1
Final verdict: 🖕/🌲
Conclusion: This is a show that defies professional critique. Every concept that a normal person would use to judge any other form of media is thrown out the window because this whole thing was just made to have a good laugh. And that's what you'll get. Don't expect anything groundbreaking. Gather your friends, get five hours of free time, load up on booze, and just have fun. I wasn't able to do those first three things (no friends, watched it over the course of two days, not old enough to drink), but dammit if I didn't enjoy myself. This anime tormented me for four years, and it's great to finally check it off the bucket list. I may not be free, but now I know what I was jacking off to all these years. It feels nice.
Personal rating: 7/10
NYC_Stigma
"To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Poputepipkku / Pop Team Epic...." Who am I kidding? At first I didn't feel the need to write a review for a short series such as this. But as I completed the last episode I began to realize not only did I sit through and watched the series to the end, but I was reaching for aspirin in a first aid kit near by. Pop Team Epic is a show that revolves around Popuko and Pipimi. A show that constantly applies pop culture references and random bits of humor in attempt to create an identityfor itself. What actually is produced is....I'm not sure.
Try to picture explaining what internet memes are to a blind man who also happens to be deaf using nothing but a flashlight to stimulate morse code. What you get is this poorly put together project that attempts to call itself an "anime". The segments and humor that is put together displays little to no thought behind them. The combinations of all these thrown together ideas are just appalling. I don't believe I even laughed or smiled during any episodes.
In the show's own right it can be considered a masterpiece. It provokes thought and questions the very definition of art. One of the segments that reoccurs in every episode is called "Bob Team Epic", a parody of traditional anime and tropes in the genre. Distorted animated Popuko and Pipimi do what they do best, not much. The animation is unsettling on purpose during these parts, however every other segment aside from this the quality of animation is somewhat great. The animators place a charm and style that is unique to this show, something that Pop Team Epic can really strike an appeal to.
However, personally I felt as that was the only thing that kept me watching. The characters, are dull. Music and sound are forgettable. Humor is repetitive, after the first 2 episodes you can see how Pop Team Epic decides to carry itself. The show itself is a parody, so you can never take it seriously, but the creators are so out of touch what a parody is. This attempt of senseless shit posting comedy can only take you so far before the joke gets worn out and the characters become nothing more than names.
Remember when my review was about the focus and enjoyment of this show? Neither do I. Because I lost focus. A simple review can not explain this show.
In the end this is one of the few anime I have watched that has actually caused me physical pain. The joy I felt after the last episode ended was more enjoyment during any moment watching it. I have gained nothing. Felt insulted. And brought dishonor to my family for having sat through this. Overall this is among the worst experiences I have ever witness. No joke.
I heard there is a 2nd season in the works. I don't want to be around when that happens.
Dualsaga184
Overall - 5: This anime has many flaws and one of the biggest ones is the way they split every episode into two parts. For the first couple of episodes I watched both parts and felt like I was wasting my time. There are only a few minor changes aside from the voice actors being swapped out, and it's just enough to feel like I probably missed a couple good jokes, but not enough to justify watching the whole thing. Story - 5: I'm also putting humor in this section since that's basically all this show is. There were times where this show legitimately had me laughing, butmost of the time stuff was happening and it wasn't particularly engaging. I particularly disliked bob epic team.
Art - 8:
They did a really good job at keeping the style of the comics, and there were times where the effects were also really well done, and then there was bob epic team. I didn't like those skits and the art in them was bad, yes it was intentional, but it was still bad.
Sound - 6:
The soundtrack is alright, some of the songs are good, most are just alright. There were times in the show where the sound effects were on point.
Character - 4:
The characters did what they did for the sake of doing it. I have no particular fondness for either one, but I do like their designs.
Enjoyment - 5:
There were times I was laughing, but most of the time I was just uninterested.
Shahar_Ben_Noun
This anime cannot be described by a score. its either a complete 10 or a straight 0. watch the first 2 min of the first episode, if you loved it youll love the whole series. if not, you should consider dropping it right now! nothing more should be said On the other hand I find the idol group story a bit lacking. what is it with Daichi not giving a f*** about sosogu and then the other episode he proposes and wants to go abroad with her!?!?! and what are they like 13?? overall I greatly enjoyed this anime and recommend to watch it with friends.regards,
shaharfranky
tenshibeat
This anime is a work of satirical genius. From episode one, we have all these amazing references and jabs to other popular animes, and in episode twelve, we have jabs to the people who made the series themselves. The series uses a wide variety of animation styles, from the usual ones by Kamikaze Douga to the amazingly bad Bobunemimimmi ones, which I say is amazingly bad because it literally satirises itself. The ending theme halfway through the series changes from the normal ending to Popuko and Pipimi dissing the series before going on and singing. That's another key in this satirical genius. The voice acting changes from thestandard female voices to male character voices, which again, is amazingly great at satirising the series. And not only that, the voices actors are also connected, so the voices you hear come from another series, which is amazing.
It's kinda amazing how that King Records hasn't been sued over this yet, especially since there are so many jabs at other series.
Chapterhouse
Sometimes you come across a show that's so bad it's funny. A great example would be the dub of Ghost Stories, which has become (in)famous for its ridiculous voice acting antics. Or you could point to something like Garzey's Wing, which accidentally became a cult classic thanks to its nonsensical story and people that never know how to use their inside voices. Pop Team Epic is in neither of these categories. Pop Team purposefully tries to be funny by being bad, and fails miserably at it. It throws out random jokes and overdone faces and scribbled animation that I would have found funny about 10 yearsago, and find downright painful to watch now. I can't blame anyone for their own sense of humor, but for me the "lolrandom" humor of the internet stopped being funny when I was about 13. This show actually had me with my head in my hands several times because I wanted to just shut it off. I forced myself through it because I hate leaving things unfinished, but it was like Chinese water torture, like the Iron Maiden, like the Skyrim intro over and over and over again.
This show wanted to be so-bad-it's-good, but almost every joke, every reference, every visual had me cringing as if it was written by a board of directors somewhere that were browsing through the internet and said: "Hey, people like this random shit don't they? People will laugh at this right?" To be fair I laughed 3, maybe 4 times throughout (you got boost power!), but a total of 20 seconds enjoyment does nothing to make me hate this show less when I suffered through 98% of it.
An unironically unfunny dumpster fire. Bury it and never dig it out again.
Gundroog
Are you mad? If you dislike absurdist humour that’s often bashed for being “random” then your experience with Pop Team Epic will probably be a negative one. But I still urge you to try at least one episode before writing it off. With shows like this it’s important to go in with an open mindset and perhaps it will be the key to enjoyment. It’s important to keep in mind that PTE is an extremely eccentric project. While the manga is made entirely by one person the anime strays from the original to allow many different people the creative freedom to create whatever the hellthey felt like. There’s no pretence or any other form of trying too hard, just genuine expressions from people who love anime and other forms of media and want to show it through creations of their own. Sometimes it leads to hilarious parodies other times references that warp original through the distinct lens of Pop Team Epic. When there’s so much sincerity shining through every seam and frame I couldn’t gather the effort to be annoyed at it even when it wasn’t good.
You might rightfully point out that I haven’t been talking much about anime itself and more about the approach to it and intention behind it. That’s because I find it impossible to review such a unique project on it’s technical merits. I can describe you the jokes and styles of humour that you will be experiencing throughout the run but that will only serve to ruin the magic of the show.
When it comes to technical aspects all I can say is that the show is practically flawless. When PTE looks ugly it’s supposed to look ugly. When it looks cheap it’s cause if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be nearly as funny and when it drastically switches the art styles it only serves to remind you that you’re watching a new segment from a fresh team. There’s nothing in it that I could categorize as a flaw cause I wouldn’t be able to prove that it can be improved upon.
Sorry for something so pointless but I wanted to get out my personal feelings on PTE and if it convinces anyone to give a shot all the better.
Mementio
*Beware of minor spoilers ahead* “Remeb'r this nay lodging, F'r an addl’d sod Ent'r nought but a sir, Fain to taketh troll” Dear god, I’d like to confess something before getting into this. At the point of writing this review, I have watched over 200 anime and read countless manga and novels in hopes of filling the hole left by said shows. Frankly, I believed nothing could really faze me. Boy was I wrong. In terms of what it offers, Pop Team Epic is like 4chan. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes annoying, and almost always trolling. You get to see pop culture references pulled for reasons you couldn’t find withthe Hubble Telescope. You get to see crassly drawn high school girls with literal UwUs on their faces threaten haters of the show with spike-studded baseball bats. You get to see an entire segment poking fun at the sophistication of France that exists only because they had a French animator who knew absolutely no Japanese, and the higher-ups thought it’d be funny to let him do whatever he wanted and record it.
There’s outrageously absurd situations. There's self-referential humor. There are countless meta-jokes, and there are weird 4th wall breaks. In a nutshell, I believe Bo Burnham’s “Welcome to the Internet” aptly describes the bizarre enjoyment I got from this work of art.
A couple of episodes in, I had an epiphany-Writing a sincere review was going to be a really tall order. Not because of silly reasons like the show not being good.But because I feel Pop Team Killer is incredibly hard to judge seriously(and that has no relation to the fact that I am still an amateur in the art of critical appraisal) . There is no overall narrative goal, and even when there appears to be some kind of logic in a sketch - it’s purely for subverting a trope you’d find the industry full of. So there is no actual story to judge the show on. The art itself is ever inconsistent, albeit deliberately. Sometimes, it’s extremely pretty, and at other times, it looks like it’s drawn in MS Paint by a 12-year-old. And considering what the show tries to be, that’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t appear to sell itself as something else. It remains true to what it is- A Series of elaborate Shitposts that doesn’t need to make any grand sense.
Personally, I felt that the later parts of the show were much more hilarious and ingenious. The way different mediums and styles were used for different parts was wonderful. The artbook story of Hellshake Yanko was plain beautiful. The subsequent degradation of quality in ‘Bob Epic Team’ and Vilification of the Producers would’ve sold me on the show alone.
The soundtrack is quite diverse and supplements the humor well. The sequence at the start and end of the opening aptly depicts the segmented nature of the show. The animation is vibrant, goofy, and bizarre, and the music itself is upbeat and catchy. So, it encapsulates the essence of Pop Team Killer pretty well.
Though this is the anime equivalent of a YouTube poop or a dank meme, there is dedication and care put into Pop Team Killer. How, you might ask. Because my sweet summer child, you don’t get a 12-minute show broadcasted twice to fit the usual 24-minute slot, with each version having minor differences in-jokes, the latter part sometimes poking fun at the prior ones, and a switch from female to male voice actors if you intend to half-ass something. Not to say, by the end of the season, Popuko and Pipimi had been voiced by more than 24 people, each of whom did a rather exemplary job. See? This just does not happen if you aren’t passionate about a project.
While there are tonnes to say, I do agree this anime can be quite polarising. And that’s because it is jam-packed with references and inside jokes. Moreover, there’s trivia about the show itself that you can only learn about on Google. Take the fact that the entire marketing of Pop Team Epic was done under a fake title called Hoshiiro Girldrop. They actually made an entire website and opening under the name of it to troll everyone. Hoshiiro Girldrop is then used throughout the show to mock idol-based romance clichés. Knowing such behind-the-scene stories certainly enriches the overall experience. The amount of references and jokes you know and can connect to, plays a part in determining whether you’ll just bull doze through a section or actually laugh at it. That is the reason I believe the show can be somewhat of a hit or miss for people.
Pop Team Epic is a rabbit hole. There’s an endless amount of stories and references pulled out throughout the show. You might get some of them during the show or you might get them after completing it. But every time you do get a joke, you chuckle to yourself: ‘Ah, So that’s what they were making fun of.’ Stirring such a sense of amusement and entertainment is why I feel Pop Team Epic deserves a chance. After all, it’s just 12 minutes an episode, and even if you don’t like it, there’s always Reddit and 4chan to fulfill your daily need for shitposts :P.
angelsreview
Pardon what I’m about to say… but what the hell did I just watch? No, seriously, what the hell did I just watch? It started out like a typical anime romantic comedy and then suddenly went into these strange chibi style mini segments with the school girls voiced by men. That was about 5 minutes of the first episode so what am I getting myself into? The premise of this show (from what I gathered) was that it was going to try and parry as many shows as they could fit in a 12 minute episode as possible. They don’t really hold any punches. The originalstory was a For panel surreal comedy webcomic created by Bkub Okawa and I sort of feel like I am really missing the comedy part of the anime. This might be because of the gap between my culture and the culture of Japan. It just felt like it was absurd more then it was comical. Not all people are going to like the same exact comedy as another person as well. The only thing I could place with them was that the two characters had a base line for their personalities. The purple haired girl was more straight forward with her comedy while the yellow haired was a little more energetic. I didn’t care enough to learn there names. (After looking them up, the yellow haired girl is Popuko and the Purple haired is Pipimi. Seriously didn’t care while watching the show as there was no point.) I just found that I wanted the ending preview anime more then this odd mix of scenes as it just seemed more interesting.
With all the problems I had with this anime’s comedy, I do have to give it some props. The show is very innovative from the use of different styles to the change in the ending song and sequences once in a while. It dared to break some of the boundaries that were normally seen within the genre… at least the normal things I do see. Just because a show is not for everyone does not mean that it’s a really bad show.
The art style is… well its odd. There seems to be a main base and then what I could probably think of as guest animations in some of the portions. Again, hard to explain here. The main design seems to be a little chibi yellow haired girl and a … tall high school girl with purple hair. This is not a style I typically see in animation and I give them props for doing this very different form but it is really not a style I like. I’m fine with getting out of the normal Chibi style or Cute wide eyed High school girls, but it has to be an interesting story to help me get over some of those designs and this did not have that for me. We have segments that look good in a very clean artistic way and segments that look like a little kid drew them, even some rather creative segments that go into the 3D aspects. I give them props on being innovated like I said before.
The voices were really inconsistent. Sometimes they had male voices, sometimes female, sometimes non gender voices and it just felt strange. The opening song was pretty catchy and nice to listen to while the ending song was a typical ending song you would get for a slice of life. Neither of them felt like they fit the craziness that was this series. To be fair, I only watched the Japanese version of this so what might have been throwing me off was that even the Japanese actors were being changed around so much and there was no consistency although I don’t know if the English dub would of made it even better. I would of probably understood some of the stuff better if it was at least in my native language.
So here is the big question, is this worth the watch? Well, it really depends on what your type of anime sits well with you. While I do normally like some surreal comedy shows, most of them have an overall plot or characters that have a deep charm to them. I didn’t find anything like that with this series. This may be because I have never seen the manga before or because of the very random art styles that show up in this. Heck, it could even be because they kept changing the characters voice actors throughout the whole show. The show just didn’t have anything to help me get into the show. It just felt too random for my tastes though I will say that I’m sure it will find its small group of fans. I’m just not one of them.
