Review of Pop Team Epic

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