Ten year old Poemy Watanabe is an aspiring voice actress named Kobayashi. Her father is the director of the anime and her mother is the woman who once chased him around the world trying to feed him soup. One day while shes at school throwing herself at the octopus boy she loves and ignoring the sapphic advances of her best friend her parents and robot dog are slain by a purple alien pimp with one dangling spikeball between his legs. She winds up staying with her friends family consisting of seven sisters with useless superpowers and when the aliens attack Earth again she finds out shes secretly Puni Puni Poemy... The magical girl whos destined to protect the world With the Aasu sisters a dead fish and a mute musician by her side shell have to strive against the impossible to become a voice actress Puni Puni Poemy was produced by JC Staff a studio thats had a long and prosperous history in the anime industry. Ive talked about them before and while theyve used a number of different styles over the decades I have reviewed a few of their titles that bore a similar style to Poemy. Theres a line of titles in JC Staffs library that use a bright vibrantly colored aesthetic as the backdrop for characters that are realistically proportioned but still cartoony in their movements and expressions and Poemy is one of the titles in that line that take those cartoony properties to an extreme. At any given time the characters are either still frames with flapping mouths or flailing noodles with no recognizable bone structure or sometimes both in the same shot. This is when theyre not taking on a more serious aesthetic purely for the purpose of making fun of dramatic anime tropes of course. This gives the animators unlimited freedom in how to make them move and with just how fast and random the humor is they put it to good use. I cant say I like this kind of style in general but its used really well here and it was clearly the right choice for the material. As for the music well most of it was lifted straight from Excel Saga so check out that review for more details. Hilariously enough the voice actress for Poemy who is playing herself half the time sings her own opening and closing themes and its pretty clear she was told to do so deliberately like it was awkward karaoke... Im basing that assumption on the fact that Ive heard her sing in other anime before and shes way better than what we get here. Still it works. The English dub is from early ADV Films and what more do I need to say about that? ADV ate this kind of material for breakfast in its heyday. Puni Puni Poemy is an example of what I like to call a Screwball Dub the kind of effort that results from source material that allows dub writers to do whatever the hell they want with it either because the property owners just wanted to turn a profitlike with Ghost Stories or because the source material already didnt have any fucks to givelike Excel Saga. As such the dubbers of Poemy threw everything at the wall sticking mostly to the already kooky material but also adlibbing to their hearts content and adding their own cheeky jokes wherever possible. I was a huge fan of ADV films when I first started to get into anime and to my limitless joy the cast of this dub is a whos who of ADV talent. Cynthia Martinez an actress who was at one point a staple of the company before disappearing from the industry almost entirely after ADV went under plays the title character Poemy. She has a voice so unique that I havent heard anything like it until I found out about Veibae from Vshojo. She does an admirable job keeping up with the motormouthing Poemy screaming with raspy enthusiasm but... Remember in my Excel Saga review how I said that Jessica Calvello and Larissa Wolcott both had the hardcore vocal abilities to play Excel but only Calvello had the acting chops to do it perfectly? Martinez unfortunately errs closer to Wolcott. I actually found myself enjoying the original Japanese portrayal even more just because Kobayashis delivery was so much funnier. The rest of the cast is solid but much like with Poemy I find the original seiyuu had enough subtlety in their performances to make the jokes in their dialogue way more effective. Its to be expected since the original product featured a perfect balance between the straightforward and absurd whereas ADV took every opportunity to add their own jokes to the existing jokes resulting in a kind of sensory overload thats not there in the sub. Thats not to say anyone did a bad job... They were clearly having a blast with this title a few of the adlibs genuinely elevated the material and hearing Brent Weaver play the recurring character Nabeshin as a white Richard Roundtreehis words not mine is always a treat. The only exception is Mark X Laskowski who plays Poemys primary love interest Kei and Ive just never liked this actor. They would have been better off giving the part to Chris Patton who had a few small roles in the show already. I honestly enjoy this show in both languages and Ill heartily recommend either one but I still think the sub is slightly better. Speaking of subtitles I should also mention that if you have the official DVD theres a subtitle track thats literally just piglatin. Do with that information as you will. In order to talk bout Puni Puni Poemy we have to take a few steps back as its history predates its very conception by a considerable amount. Director Shinichi Watanabe who should not EVER be confused with Shinichiro Watanabe is someone Ive discussed before in my previous reviews. His MO for a good long while was to take popular manga shit all over them and fill them with lazy sight gags and obvious genre parodies. To this day I stand by my assertion that the only reason he caught more of a backlash for Hayate the Combat Butler than Excel Saga or Nerima Daikon Brothers is because Hayate had a larger and more defensive fanbase. Also remember the recurring character I mentioned earlier? Thats his self insert avatar the afrobearing Nabeshin. Anyway Puni Puni Poemys existence can be traced back to a series of three jokes in Excel Saga. The first but arguably least important is Nabeshin. The second was that at a certain point in the series the actresses who sung the opening theme called Excel3Girls at the time started to get acknowledged in the story itself. For the third two fictitious inuniverse anime were improvised an action parody called Samurai M and a magical girl parody named Puni Puni Poemy a joke that was probably related to the fact that their dating sim parody was called Love Puni. Puni Puni Poemy came back later in a post apocalyptic Fist of the North Star parody where Excels punches would turn her enemies not into blood geysers but into tiny magical girls. Good God they did that manga dirty. Anyway Puni Puni Poemy would soon be fully realized as a full fledged two episode OVA spinoff of Excel Saga and while Im not a fan of Nabeshin at all this is easily my favorite title hes ever been attached to. To start there are two glaring issues I have with Nabeshins work and the genre in general that Poemy managed to avoid. First off its short. Ive mentioned before that at least in my opinion random nonsense anime has a very short shelf life and the longer it goes on the more the method behind the madness gets exposed making it more pass and predictable. I know there are people who would argue this DIDNT happen to Excel Saga and while I disagree I do respect your stance. A better example is probably Hare+Guu a show that plays so many of its cards up front that it becomes dull before the halfway point. My other issue and this is the one thats more relevant to Nabeshin himself is when hes adapting a manga. I cant say Ive never liked an adaptation that totally reimagined the source material... Some pieces of media are either too difficult to adapt faithfully or they need serious changes to even become viable in other forms of media at all... But I cant stand when its done disrespectfully. There are several names in the English dubbing scene whom Ive never liked because they have a history of rewriting the material theyre given in order to better suit their own styles and Nabeshins approach to adapting manga is no different. He keeps the barest outline of the original mangas plot setup and then just loads it with wacky gags manufactured insanity and genre parodies. Puni Puni Poemy is only two episodes which is coincidentally the perfect amount of time me to watch random bullshit and it was an entirely new IP meaning Nabeshin didnt have to waste any time pretending to be loyal to an existing fanbase. Poemy was the perfect blank slate for everything people love about his work... The fast paced humor the adult jokes that just barely skirt Japanese censors inexplicable WTF jokes sight gags that range from subtle to over the top and of course more anime references than you can possibly count. Hell the cold open of the first episode features Poemy in her magical girl form beating the shit out of nearly a dozen caricatures of previous magical girl characters to confront a Leiji Matsumoto character design whos preaching over and over about how easy it would be to conquer the world. And then the credits roll and shes just a wastefully energetic genki girl going through what we assume is an average school day while every variety of joke is thrown at your face. Its difficult to review pure comedy as at some point youre basically just spoiling all the jokes but if I could tell you just some of the anime conventions Poemy makes fun of I would list useless villain masks classic alien design fanservice bath scenes transformation sequences anachronistic accents lovesick best friends and gimmicky side characters. In the same vein a list of all the different anime it parodies would be pages long on its own so I think Ill just call out the two titles that get it the worst. Jojos Bizarre Adventure takes a massive spotlight when the aliens first attack Poemys home with a lot of the action that youd expect from Jojo being ruthlessly parodied and the characters at one point even calling upon heir stands. The other highlight is Cardcaptor Sakura as its the magical girl show Poemy borrowed most of its aesthetic from and her friend Futaba is an equally ruthless parody of Tomoyo Daidouji. There are so many jokes flying at you all at once in this show that youll probably discover something new every time you watch it. I saw it for the first time somewhere around fifteen years ago and I didnt notice until just today that in one shot in episode 2 for half a second we see a table lamp whose on/off switch is a brass dickandballs hanging from a chain. Some of the jokes have aged more poorly than its aspect ratio like this show came out in 2001 and I swear to God theres a Y2K reference but its damn near timeless compared to the Ghost Stories dub. I know Im not giving you a whole lot to go off of here but its a two episode gag anime give me a break. Its junk food but unlike a lot of titles in its genre its junk food in a responsible portion. Puni Puni Poemy was originally available from ADV Films but Im pretty sure it went out of print way before that company went under. It was not sold to Funimation in the ensuing years and as far as Im aware the rebranded Sentai Filmworks has no plans to rerelease it. That kind of doesnt really matter since its really easy to find the entire OVA on but if youre an old school ADV fan or just a voice acting nerd in general then I would highly recommend tracking down a copy of the DVD on Ebay as it contains an oncamera commentary track featuring over half a dozen ADV veterans joking around with each other and playing with stuffed fish. Much like the Super Milk Chan DVDs this is a gem for voice chasers. I cant guarantee youll like Puni Puni Poemy. Humor is subjective and different kinds of comedy appeal to different people. Maybe youre not like me and you actually like your random gag comedies to have a pretend plot behind it for the sake of structure. Maybe you hate random gag humor in general and just find something as loud fast and nonsensical as this to be annoying. These are both solid takes. Id be lying if I said there was anything deep or meaningful about it but if youre looking at what an auteur director can make when he has no restrictions to work under or if youre looking for a bite size chunk of zaniness that doesnt overstay its welcome or if youre just looking for a bizarre WTF anime to pull out when you have your drinking buddies over its an hour well spent. I give Puni Puni Poemy a 6/10.