Goodnight Punpun Manga Review

Goodnight Punpun/Oyasumi Punpun Review

Overview:
Goodnight Punpun is a coming-of-age manga about a boy named Punpun. The manga is 147 chapters long and is compiled into 11 separate volumes. It covers Punpun's life from childhood (elementary school) up until his early 20's. Various other characters are introduced, with many of them becoming important characters that affect the story as a whole. Some characters even get their own subplots that are woven into the main story, and I'll explain how I feel about these subplots later in the review. That's about it for the overview, let's get into the actual meat of the review (it took me a while to actually start writing this review because I wanted to fully digest everything that I read instead of jumping in with only my feelings on the story).

Main Character (10/10):
Punpun is a selfish, idealistic, and disgusting person. He is depicted in the manga as a little ghost bird thing with legs and arms, and his form changes shape throughout the story (the only character to be depicted as such). He is someone who never learns from his mistakes. He is someone that is living in the past while constantly worrying about the future, despite never doing anything to positively change his life. He despises everyone that he deems is "better off" than him, and only wishes pain on them. The only people he sees as good in his life are those that provide something for him. He constantly makes decisions that will negatively impact those who care for him in an attempt to put himself in an advantage. He does this because he sees everyone else as people that deserve to receive the same "suffering" he has gone through, and believes that the world owes him for making him go through such trauma. He is someone who will admit all of his flaws in a heartbeat, yet will do his best to never change himself for the better. He lives off of the pity of others, and can only communicate well with others when they share the same hatred for the world. He has people that deeply care about him, but will betray them in a heartbeat if it means he gets to fulfill his dreams born out of childlike idealism. Finally, he justifies his wrongdoings against the people around him as means of revenge for them living better lives than he has. It is no secret that I despise this character, but I absolutely love the way he is written.

Side Characters/Subplots (6/10):
There are some side characters that I enjoy, but most of them are kind of wacky. A lot of characters are introduced, then set aside, then introduced again. I kind of like that part of the story because it really makes it feel like it takes place in a small town where people can find old friends walking around on the street. There's this whole subplot about the end of the world and a cult or something but honestly I didn't find it all that interesting. There is one subplot that follows the life of Punpun's uncle, Yuuichi, that I really enjoy. To better understand all the side characters (because I most definitely am not writing about all of them), I recommend you just read the manga. It's fairly short, which is something I will discuss...

Length/Pacing (8/10):
here. The manga is only 147 chapters long, and took me about 2 weeks to read, with some days being off and on. People that binge read manga could probably finish this in 2 to 4 days if they tried. Fairly short, but it still has a lot of content. The pacing is also very good. Sometimes, when it would hit a subplot chapter, I would get pretty worn out from reading. Also, there might be a lot of text on the screen at some points, so it would also wear me out. Those 2 reasons are why I didn't give this section a 9/10.

Story (8/10):
I don't want to spoil much, meaning this section is probably only going to be a couple of sentences long. Overall, I really enjoy Punpun's interactions with the other characters that help the main story progress. Punpun has a very good character arc, and is truly representative of somebody with self-destructive tendencies and depression. I do feel that later on the story gets a bit taken over by one of the subplots (the weird cult one I mentioned earlier), so that's why I give it an 8/10 instead of a 9/10. It's a coming-of-age story, so it doesn't have much I could say without spoiling everything.

Overall Score (9/10):
I really enjoyed reading this manga. I don't want to repeat too much of what I said earlier in this review, so all I can do is recommend you read it. I will say again that it is a coming-of-age story, so it's no surprise that the biggest part of it would be the changes that the main character goes through (hence why it is the biggest section in my review). It is fairly short and would only take a couple of weeks at most to read. Now, I have to leave to go to a dentist appointment, so I have to wrap this up fairly quickly. Apologies for the rough conclusion!