He is an average boy who is sad because his crush is transferring. He makes a new crush on the same day, he learns that the planet is dying, he wants to migrate humans to another planet in future, he wishes dad and mom would stop fighting. Then he sleeps preparing for another average day in his life. Goodnight Punpun.
Punpun is a manga that I have heard about for a while now. Everyone talks about how depressing it is so I wanted to read it when I felt like the mood was right. And I can safely say, this is one of the best manga I have read in my life.
The story goes from Punpun's childhood to adulthood. We can see how while still kinda depressing, his life was simple as a child. He hung out with his friends, watching porn with them, etc etc. Every adult faces and the way they act is kinda freaky because as a kid, Punpun saw them that way. He was completely oblivious. Many bad things happened in his childhood. His parents get divorced, he almost dies in a fire but the worst thing that happened to Punpun in his perspective was breaking the promise and leaving Aiko behind.
Middle school comes by, he still hasn’t talked to Aiko after the incident. And it even seems that she has a boyfriend now. Which makes Punpun sad since he still thinks he loves her. Things go by and her boyfriend challenges him to a game. If Punpun wins, he gets Aiko but if he wins he keeps her. Which is a kid’s view on things since even if Punpun loses that doesn’t mean that Aiko will stay with him. While playing the game, Aiko holds Punpun's hand and he feels great happiness. He even wins so everything should work out from here on right? But Punpun starts feeling regret, he feels as if he has betrayed and stole her from him. He even goes straight home, ignoring Aiko who he wanted to talk to for the last 2 years. Punpun isolates himself. He feels… guilt.
There is also his uncle who serves as a parallel to punpun. His story is his regret about not helping a girl who was abused. He is later rescued by a girl who gives him a little hope.
High school is difficult. Punpun spent all his time studying. He is alone and as he says in the first chapter of high school, he wants to have sex. And… he gets his wish later on. As his aunt basically rapes him because the uncle was away for a long time. So, Punpun got his wish fulfilled in the most fucked up way possible. He just leaves without saying a word. He is even mistreated by his mother all the time. He feels betrayed by everyone. Even when his mother dies. He can’t feel sad because of all the things she has done to him. So Punpun now chooses to live alone.
The reason the uncle was away was because he cheated on his girlfriend. He cheated on the person that showed him hope. He feels regret, he feels guilty. But after some time talking with the driver. He chooses to return back and live.. with guilt.
Punpun now isolated, alone and lonely has only one thing to live for. He sees Aiko again. He searches for her day after day after day. But still… he can’t find Aiko. The same cycle passes day after day after day. Nothing in his life changes. An experience I think most of us can relate with. He almost goes insane. We see him turning into a triangle with almost no expression or anything. Showing how uninteresting his life is. Until he meets Sachi who rescues him out and shows him a little hope.
But atlast it runs dry after a while too. Punpun then tries to reject who he is and tries to be more like his neighbour taka which seems to actually work out for him. Until… he meets Aiko again.
He tries to lie at first but then tells her the truth later on. Punpun has finally found his love. Everyone should work out now since they love each other for who they actually are. Or do they? Aiko asks for Punpun help just like the highschool girl asked for his uncle’s help but this time instead of rejecting like his uncle did, he accepts to help her. Repeating the same mistake he did as a kid but this time leaving Sachi behind.
This scene also shows parallel to when the uncle ran away from the person who gave him hope. Punpun does the same to Sachi. But hey! Punpun and Aiko are running away now so everything should just work out fine. It will just work out-
Punpun breaks after having to kill a person. He isn’t the Punpun we used to know now. He turned into this mess of a person. He is running away with the person he thinks he loves the most but as we can clearly see, they both just love the person they project onto each other to escape their depression and loneliness. That’s why their relationship turns so toxic. We can clearly see how messed up Punpun's life has become when we see his dad talk about how he was sad over a person getting hurt because of him in the past, in contrast to him beating someone in the present. Things just start to go from bad to worse, the breaking point is when Aiko kills herself. Now with nothing to lose. Punpun stabs himself and closes his eyes. Goodnight Pun-
Aiko's final wish was for Punpun to never forget her. But as we can see at the end, Punpun is forgetting even what she looks like. Punpun slowly moves on and continues to live… with guilt.
