SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES AHEAD

First of all, I’ll get the positives out of the way. I liked the unique presentation style for this. The artwork combined with the style made for a solid visual experience. Other than that though, it was complete ass.

Characters
The cast comprises of Punpun and his family, who are depicted as birds, and some side characters. Nearly all of them are unlikeable assholes, and the characterization and backstories they get makes it even worse. You will have a hard time trying to think of them as realistic in any manner, which sucks because this work was supposed to be realistic, and it utterly fails at doing that. None of the characters act like regular human beings. They are all weirdos that will leave you confused at the actions they partake in.

Taking Punpun’s uncle, Yuichi Onodera, as an example. He is portrayed as a tragic character who’s helpless in his situation of loneliness and trauma from past events. While yes, I can understand some of the events like the incident at the ceramics class he taught at, most of it will make you question whether this guy actually deserves any sympathy. The major thing that really annoyed me was how he is already aware that he’s unfaithful, has a history of cheating on his partners, but still wants to be in a relationship anyways. It borderlines on sociopathic behavior. Not to mention he’s a pedo and almost had sex with a 16 year old girl.

Midori, Yuichi’s wife after some time passes in the story. She basically raped Punpun, when he was 16. (further elaborated) More or less, she doesn’t have any defining moments other than a sad backstory of sorts.

Mama Onodera, Punpun’s mother, who has a distant relationship with him. This is portrayed somewhat well enough, but of course, the writing ruins it.

Punpun Onodera, the protagonist of this story, is straight up insufferable. Probably the worst MC I have seen in all of manga. He is unrealistically bad at dealing with his problems. I get that depressed people have a tendency to make bad decisions, but with this guy, he doesn’t do anything to fix anything that gets thrown at him. He entered highschool, and still can’t get over his elementary school crush. Like come on…

Most of his monologues come off as laughable, a thing prominent with Asano works because of the poor dialogue writing.

His weirdly horny antics kind of suck too, which I will expand upon further in the plot section.
All in all, the worst part about the Onodera family is that most of them are either rapists or pedos. Half the time, their backstories feel like a sorry excuse to justify their actions. Part of the reason why I couldn’t relate or understand whatever they went through.

(random side character, but the point is to show just how much of it is present)

Plot
Apparently, this was a story I wasn’t supposed to enjoy. That I was to feel bad about whatever went and be heartbroken at the so-called sad events. There was an attempt at doing this, but this is Inio Asano we are talking about. Like I mentioned in the characters section, this doesn’t work cause of the unrealism.

Whatever sad circumstances Punpun goes through, is immediately killed by some stupid sexual joke right after. This isn’t the case every single time, but is more common than acceptable.

The plot moves forward with Punpun getting a progressively increasing amount of shit thrown at him. I will admit, I liked the descriptions of how he felt in some of the situations. Most of the time however, its conveyed through badly written monologues which can even make you laugh. Its actually hard to take them seriously. Which brings me to-

The dialogue- Easily some of the worst I have seen in this medium. It does a terrible job at conveying what the characters feel, most of it feels wasted and the conversations taking place hardly matter. This is a problem common in most Asano manga. The ridiculous banter about bullshit philosophy, ranting in the air, and at times just acting as mouthpieces for Asano’s own beliefs about the world. Its feels like all of it was written by a guy on twitter obsessed with philosophy, and shoehorns it in as much as possible, whether or not they even make sense or have any actual meaning to it. The fact that Punpun doesn’t actively speak, makes half the conversations look one sided, which gets old real quick. (Prevalent with almost every conversation with Mimura, which look like filler to fill chapter pages)

You know your manga sucks when even Rent-a-Girlfriend can come up with more cohesive dialogue.

The story begins with Punpun in his childhood, and how he meets Aiko Tanaka. He develops a crush on her (which lasts the entire fucking series cause this guy sucks ass at moving on). He promises to take her to Kagoshima. After a misadventure with his friends and her in a mystery subplot that goes absolutely nowhere, he fails to take her to Kagoshima for whatever reason.

He enters middle school, still depressed over that ordeal, with Aiko ignoring him. A love triangle of sorts happens between him and Yaguichi, the boy currently dating Aiko. Yaguichi wagers his relationship with AIko on a bet about whether or not he wins the upcoming match with Punpun’s friend Komatsu. He loses, and Aiko asks him again if he’ll go with her to Kagoshima. Punpun refuses.

We get to see Yuichi’s past around this time. I would say, it was done somewhat well enough. The problems I mentioned about Yuichi’s character in general however, make it hard to feel bad about it.

The next big event that occurs is Midori raping Punpun. This scene was depicted poorly. The whole thing felt fetishized cause of how it was drawn like a regular sex scene, and Punpun’s dumbass dickface wasn’t helping matters any. As in, they literally drew Punpun's face on his dick, making the whole thing unintentionally funny and hard to take seriously.

It seems to be a recurring problem with Asano manga. The sex scenes are all done so awkwardly, I get second hand embarrassment reading them. A Girl on the shore was plagued with this issue, and its almost as bad here.

Punpun’s afterthoughts was just another one of his narrative monologues. You would think an event this major would dramatically change the story, but this rape scene is mentioned only once afterwards, where Yuichi finds out and while not confronting him about it, says it as if it was Punpun’s fault. All this boiled down to the fact that it was merely another event in this sad circlejerk of a manga, to try to make you sympathize.

The next one is even more infuriating. Kanie, a girl Punpun met at a karaoke and asked out to a date, doesn’t form a connection with him at the end of it. Annoyed that his attempts to get her to like him were in vain, This fucking guy tries to rape her, and then gets slapped. Having the MC be a rape victim, then have him attempt doing the same thing right after, seems to be in really poor taste if you ask me.

The relationship between Punpun and his mother is explored. They are distant, and his mother quite literally hates him. Why? No reason at all. She just does. Eventually she passes away, and he moves in with Yuichi and Midori.

Punpun spots Aiko on a train ride home, and he looks for her in vain. He rents an apartment near the area, and continues to look for Aiko every day. Eventually, he gives up and stops going outside. His landlord, Shishido, who is worried about him, tries to offer him help. He takes him to a bar, where Punpun meets Sachi, who he had met at an art gallery on his date with Kanie.

The upcoming parts, where they both create a manga together, was something I initially enjoyed. They had a cool dynamic, and seeing them try hard to create it was fun to see. Of course, this gets ruined after they show it to the publisher, who rejects it because it was needlessly depressing. (Ironic, isn’t it?)

Around here, the Pegasus cult sub plot starts. Easily one of the worst things about this series, it literally does nothing but stretch the manga longer than it needed to. Every chapter, or hell, every panel about this cult is insufferable. Pegasus’s dialogues feel like bullshit, and there are entire CHAPTERS dedicated to it. Some of the events happening in them don’t even make sense, like him falling as if he had gotten shot by something, out of nowhere. The cult members themselves are all useless. This crap lasts till the end of the series, much to my misery.

Sachi and Punpun start to grow distant, and he runs into Aiko again.

Punpun had taken on an identity of a guy having sex near his home, and stays that way for a while. He uses it at his college, and gets a girl. (What the fuck was this plot point even supposed to be?)

Aiko and him run away after killing Aiko’s abusive mother, who had stabbed Aiko after they came to tell her that she is leaving to live alone. They hide it at a forest nearby. They grow hostile and resentful toward each other and become more depressed. She gets this weird idea that Punpun only needs 1 eye to see her and asks him to allow her to gouge one out. Punpun being the dumbfuck that he is, agrees. She didn’t even do it properly and only gives him a minor injury, cause she loves him too much. Bitch, this whole thing was your idea…

Punpun almost beats a stranger to death, simply because he didn’t put a can in the trashcan. He even agreed to do it, but Punpun went through it with anyway cause he was pissed.

They are both happy about how they fell in love with each other, despite their depressed and suicidal mental states. To no one’s surprise, Aiko hangs and kills herself the next day. To fuck all with that promise of remembering each other on tanabata day…

Pegasus and his cult commits mass suicide. Punpun gets rescued by Sachi after he returns to Tokyo and attempts to kill himself. Harumi, an old friend of Punpun from elementary school, meets him by chance in a street, and after a short, unremarkable discussion, the two part ways.

The final few pages, At the school where Harumi teaches, a girl transfers into his class, and a young student falls in love with her at first sight, just like Punpun did with Aiko eleven years before. (wow, loop much?)

As Punpun, surrounded by the friends he made through those last years, tearfully waves him goodbye, Harumi waves back, knowing that they will likely never meet again. I guess this wasn’t a terrible ending, but its meh nonetheless. It just concludes without any significant message. One might argue that its supposed to portray how “life moves on and so do you”, but it never exactly did a good job at showing that, at any point in the series, let alone the ending.

Enjoyment
This was nothing but torture. It took all I had to force myself to finish this thing. None of it was enjoyable. I hated every fucking chapter of this.

Overall
Goodnight Punpun is an extremely flawed manga. Being a fan of dark and tragic stories, I really wanted to like this. It sounded like totally my kind of thing on the surface. But it never gave me a chance to appreciate it.

If you read all of this, I hope you spend your time reading a better manga. This isn’t the depressing masterpiece you think it is. Its laughably bad if anything.

Only good thing I got out of this was now that I have experienced the worst thing this medium has to offer, my reading experience can only go up from here.