Goodnight Punpun Omnibus Vol.1 by Inio Asano
Series: Goodnight Punpun #1-2
First published March 15, 2016
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Genres: Slice of Life, Manga
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

Meet Punpun Punyama. He’s an average kid in an average town.

He wants to win a Nobel Prize and save the world.
He wants to go far away with his true love.
He wants to find some porn.

But Punpun’s life is about to unravel…

This book is about Punpun Punyama, it’s a description of his life, beliefs, hard times, school, love and just all the coming of age problems you can imagine.

Punpun is in middle school and he has some friends with who he is starting to experience adult things, or trying to anyway. Like sex, masturbation and so on. He is also experiencing his first love. But while the good parts are unraveling, at home is not so pleasant. Punpun has the advantage that he is still too young to understand certain things but kids grow up way faster than we think.

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This has some of the weirdest art I’ve come to see. Even the story has some completely wacky moments – I guess some things are made to be seen by the point of view of a child, but it was weird!! What’s with the adults looking creepy as all hell?? It was hard to get used to this, and especially with the religious imaginations of two of the characters. But maybe this way was more impactful? I don’t know, my brain is really confused…

But one things is for sure, this, apart from Punpun and his family looking like that, is extremely realistic and raw. Punpun’s life at home was not good, and he only saw it has sad, but for me, I saw it as outrageous, and problem is it happens way too often. This is the first time I see a manga depicting drunkenness with domestic abuse AND a parent that couldn’t care less about a child unless it’s to her benefit. It was way more realistic than I was expecting and it surprised me. Adults should also be more careful with how they talk and what they say because children don’t know any better to do it differently in the future.

On better terms, I really liked to see Punpun and his friends getting up to no good. I found happiness in seeing he had good friends. Also, doesn’t anyone notice he is a freaking bird (or bird-like rather)??? Is it just normal in this world? Because it’s just him… I was kind of expecting some bullying story or something but we don’t have anything of the sort in here, which I was happy about because although weird as all hell, Punpun is unique and everyone should be respected as they are. But, again… a BIRD?

Like I said, he is also experiencing love for the first time and things are not easy. He knows he loves her, but he doesn’t know how to deal with it. And after a major error on his part (clearly we have phones here so, why not use one when needed??? It would solve so much) life does not go according to plan. I did like how it was portrayed tho, I felt it was really realistic and well shown.

There was a lot of raw emotions, a lot of discoveries and just raw life scenes. I had no idea of what this was about when I started it, but it looked super interesting in the store (also, it was wrapped in plastic as it should be, because there is some more mature content in here) but that also gave me the push I needed to buy it because I’m pretty sure if I saw the art before I bought it I would say it wasn’t going to be for me. And well, I liked it. Do I love it? No. Do I expect good things from it? Yes. I think this story is going to evolve really interestingly and if the first one is like this, pretty realistically. For me it’s just a like, but I can not say I’m not excited to see where Punpun’s life goes! I also heard it’s supposed to be quite emotional and sad, so… I’m just going to buy the rest asap…

What did you think of it? Have you read it? Let’s discuss it in the comments below!