Review of Pop Team Epic

*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.