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Anime / Puni Puni☆Poemi
aka: Puni Puni Poemy

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/puni.jpg
Actually, it's nowhere near as serious as this looks. Note the Super-Deformed Poemi in the bottom-left corner.

"The Heavens call, the Earth calls, the Fans call!
And heads will roll if this video doesn't sell!
By accepting the power of magic,
Puni Puni Poemi makes her big debut!"

Beautiful girls! Naughty aliens! Dead fish! If this anime doesn't offend you somehow, we haven't done our job! It's the weirdest, wildest, rudest and out and out most demented anime ever made. (Oh, and it was banned in New Zealand until 2021).

Puni Puni☆Poemi is a Spiritual Successor/Non-Linear Sequel OVA to Excel♡Saga made by the same production team. It manages to cram even more off-the-wall surreality and self-reference than its predecessor into just two episodes, thus creating a black hole that absorbs all reason around it.

Poemi Watanabe is the adopted child of Nabeshin (the Author Avatar of director Watanabe Shinichi) and Kumikumi, a mountain girl who married Nabeshin at the end of Excel Saga. Poemi has simple ambitions in life; she wants the attention of her cool classmate K, and she wants to be a voice actress. Unfortunately, K doesn't even acknowledge her existence (given Poemi's Motor Mouth and Genki Girl personality, that's saying something) and she has trouble staying in character, as she constantly refers to herself as "Kobayashi" (the name of her real-life voice actress) and calls Nabeshin "Director".

One day, a mysterious alien with creepy dangling inappropriate parts fatally attacks Poemi's adoptive parents. After taking advantage of this fine opportunity for dramatic voice acting, Poemi moves in with classmate Futaba Aasu, who has a not-at-all-secret crush on her, and her six sisters, the hereditary Defenders of the Earth. With great responsibility does not come great power, however, since the sisters possess talents like the ability to land safely from any fall and summoning a whirlwind of flower petals. Therefore, when an alien robot begins rampaging around the city it falls to Poemi to save the day by using a magical dead fish to transform into Puni Puni Poemi! With her newfound powers, Poemi tries to balance her dreams against the burden of being Earth's representative.

One thinks that the Earth's standards for its representative could use some reviewing.

For a large part, the show is a merciless parody of Magical Girl anime, possibly up to and including the nonsensical plot (or lack thereof). Along the way, however, it also makes fun of the concept of Fanservice and takes care to self-reference as much as possible. All this is tied together by nonstop gags. Those not put off in the first few minutes will enjoy it tremendously and will take in happily all other Gag Series.


This show provides examples of:

  • A-Cup Angst: Mutsumi reveals that she would use Poemi's magic to make her bust much bigger.
  • Animated Actors
  • All Periods Are PMS: When one of the Aasu sisters hears an explosion in another part of the house, she assumes that her younger sister either is having her period or has missed her period.
  • Author Avatar: Nabeshin.
  • Big-Breast Pride: Shii enjoys teasing her sisters about the size of their breasts. Inverted in the D-Cup Distress entry below.
  • Biting the Handkerchief
  • Blush Sticker: Poemi gains them when she transforms.
  • Breast Expansion: Puni Puni Poemi's chest is noticeably far larger than her normal form's. Justified since she's... well... 10.
  • Clark Kenting: Spoofed when the sisters fail to realize that Poemi and Puni Puni Poemi are the same person. Then when they finally do realize it, they wonder why they didn't figure it out sooner.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: Parodied in the scene in which Poemi knocks down the cross in which her father (and mother. And robot dog) is crucified, leading her to repeat the scene with the usual uber-dramatic sound effects. Plus, this takes place Against the Setting Sun.
  • D-Cup Distress: The main reason Shii wanted Poemi to live with the Aasu? Because she needed a place to rest her enormous knockers (Poemi's head). It is later revealed that she would use Poemi's magic to make her boobs much smaller.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Parodied with Futaba's ability is to make whatever she wishes upon gentle. The other sisters treat this as a technique that will kill her but never say so outright ("If you use that power, you will...). In the final episode, her sisters note that it's the final episode, so she might as well use it anyway. This technique helps end the story coupled with an Outside-the-Box Tactic without any negative effects to her by the way.
  • Death Is Cheap: Nabeshin and Kumi-Kumi come back to life thanks to Kumi-Kumi's acupuncture skills.
  • Deconstructive Parody: The whole thing is practically a mirror opposite of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which was a Darker and Edgier Deconstructor Fleet for the Magical Girl genre. By contrast, Puni Puni is moreso an irreverent roast, mocking the powersets, the fanservice costumes, the amusing conventions and especially the hammy voice acting. Of course, it makes fun of itself quite often as well.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Parodied; Poemi is obviously the protagonist, but Nabeshin claims at the end that it was actually Futaba, who then achieves Poemi's dreams in her place in The Stinger.
  • The Determinator: Parodied: Poemi notes that she is "too stupid to know when to give up."
  • The Ditz: Poemi's stupidity is a constant source of jokes and Lampshade Hangings.
  • "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Yumiko Kobayashi sings both the opening and ending themes.
  • Drives Like Crazy: Poemi does this with a foot-propelled scooter.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Excel♡Saga Episode 17 features Sandora sketching Puni Puni Poemi, followed by a trailer.
  • Enjo Kosai: Poemi used her usual subtlety to deal with a Gyaru on a subsidized date
  • Expy: Shii Aasu, of Hyatt from Excel♡Saga, and probably Futaba as well, who looks and acts a lot like an exaggerated version of Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura.
    • Poemi is a younger Excel, obviously.
    • Mutsumi Aasu DOES look like Ropponmatsu, doesn't she?
  • Everybody Cries: Parodied. When all the girls cry in the living room during the first episode, one of them suddenly dons a scantly-clad outfit and wielding a whip around telling everyone to knock it off.
  • Faceless Masses
  • Fanservice: Played with extensively, the characters are usually aware of when it occurs and point it out. Comes to a head when the Big Bad ends up having a shameless obsession with anime fanservice tropes and directly talks to the viewer about how he's giving them what they want.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In Episode 2, Menchi can be briefly seen on the aliens' dinner table.
  • Funny Background Event: Constantly.
  • Furo Scene: Group one at that. It's apparently family tradition.
  • Gag Penis: The two aliens have very strange and prominent dangly bits.
  • Gainax Opening: The deathly serious intro to Episode 1 (see article picture above).
  • Gainax Ending: The two aliens were Nabeshin and Kumi-Kumi the whole time! You know, despite the fact that the aliens were the ones who killed them in the first place! K lampshades the ending by screaming "What kind of corner cutting is this?!" Also, Nabeshin tells Poemi that Futaba was the main character of the series, not Poemi. Despite her name being the title and the focus of the whole show. Also contains a shout-out to Ideon's.
  • Genki Girl: Poemi makes Excel seem calm and rational by comparison.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Puni Puni Poemi
  • Gratuitous English Parodied in a scene where a bunch of soldiers are supposed to be speaking English, but instead are just yelling out random food names.
    Soldier 1: * runs towards a fallen Soldier 2* : Banana! Banana!
    Soldier 2: Cucumber...eggplant!
    *cut to strategy meeting*
    Soldier 3: Caviar!
    Soldier 4: Papaya!
    Soldier 5: *pounds the table* GIANT ASPARAGUS!
  • Hentai and Eroge: Both get mercilessly parodied in the second episode, which includes a number of related tropes:
  • Homoerotic Subtext: Poemi and Futaba, especially during the ending. ...Wait. Subtext?!
  • The Idiot from Osaka: One of the Aasu sisters inexplicably speaks in Kansai dialect, translated as a Brooklyn accent in the English version. She lampshades it, wondering where the accent came from.
  • Idiot Hero: Poemi, with an emphasis on the "idiot."
  • Insistent Terminology: Even while transformed, Poemi still prefers to answer to "Kobayashi".
  • It's A Small Net After All: Subverted, when the aliens trying to use the Net to learn about Earth they find nothing but porn. And they are absolutely fascinated by it.
  • Japanese Politeness: Parodied when Poemi meets the sisters and bows so enthusiastically that she cracks her head on the coffee table.
    Mitsuki: Oh, you don't have to bleed over everything just to be polite.
    Poemi: It's just the Japanese etiquette!
  • Kappa: One stole Poemi's scooter and is seen outside the Aasu house riding it.
  • Large Ham: Poemi is the main one, although there's plenty of ham throughout the cast.
    • This might be the hammiest of all the hammy anime.
  • Late for School: Played straight in one instance, but inverted in another where Poemi leaves at four o'clock in the morning and still hurries toward school. She arrives so early she falls asleep in class the next day.
  • Loudspeaker Truck: Rather than a truck going by, three guys with Faceless Masses-type detail bounce by on oversized rubber balls, each one singing a line about their ball.
  • Lucky Charms Title: The Japanese title has a heart in one of the Japanese characters. Both versions have a star after Puni Puni.
  • Magical Girl: Parodied mercilessly
  • Mars Needs Women: K's reason for why the aliens are invading Earth.
  • Marshmallow Hell: Shii Aasu introduces herself by resting her large breasts on top of Poemi’s head.
  • Meaningful Name: The Aasu sisters are named after the Japanese pronunciation for the English word "Earth"... oh, and "arse".
  • Mentor Mascot: Parodied in the form of Poemi's dead fish advisor/magical token. Not mentioning that she has to gut him open for him to work.
  • Modesty Bedsheet
  • Motor Mouth: Poemi may beat even Excel at this category.
  • Negative Continuity: Please ignore This show and Excel♡Saga's official in-universe connection to each other when noticing that we get a continuation of Nabeshin's adventures in latter. It'll only create a bigger blackhole of logic than this show ALREADY has.
  • No Fourth Wall: Not so much a case of breaking the fourth wall as a case of never even considering building one. Considering Poemi's tendency to refer to herself with the name of her real-life voice actress and to Nabeshin as the director, she seems to be having trouble with other walls besides the fourth.
  • No Indoor Voice: Poemi. Between that and the Motor Mouth, Poemi's English V.A. remarked that she blew out her voice on the first day of recording.
  • Oblivious to Love: Parodied: K is oblivious to Poemi's crush on him, despite the fact that she's about as easy to ignore as a stampeding rhino, and Poemi is in turn oblivious to Futaba's crush on her, despite the fact that Futaba makes no attempt to hide her feelings and even gets Poemi naked and into bed with her at one point.
  • Ocular Gushers: "This is making me cry waterfalls!"
  • Older Alter Ego
  • Oracular Urchin: Spoofed by Hitomi, who has accurate but completely useless visions of the future.
  • OVA: A two-episode microseries, but it's designed to look like two episodes from the middle of a full-length season.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: Futaba's ability allows her to end ALL worldwide conflict. How? She uses her ability to make anything gentle on Poemy. Since Poemy is an avatar of the Earth, it ends everything quite quickly.
  • Petal Power: Parodied with Nanase's ability, since the only "power" of her "Earth Dance of Flowers" is that they look pretty
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Used for some of the faceless background characters and for K's parents.
  • Previously on…: For non-existent previous episodes at the beginning of the first episode
  • Red String of Fate: Treated as a corporeal string that forcibly drags Poemi around the city
  • Refuge in Audacity: The show pulls very few punches. The first episode opens with the main character nearly leaving the house with nothing on below the waist. Then it introduces aliens who use their junk as weapons. Shii, having the largest breasts out of any character, frequently plops them on Poemi and Futaba's heads to relieve her back pain. She also quite frequently moans and gasps since they're extremely sensitive. And finally, the Aasu sisters get kidnapped by the aliens and put through erotic torture as a means to lure Poemy out, but none of them are too worried about being saved.
  • Relax-o-Vision: Mercilessly used to cover up the various "tortures" in Episode 2.
  • Serial Escalation: The entire point. Condensed and distilled to boot. All the insanity of a full season of Excel♡Saga, now available in two episodes.
  • Say It with Hearts: When Futaba tells Poemi she wants to see her transformation.
  • Say My Name: Futaba and Poemi get a really long series of these towards the end of the second episode.
  • Shout-Out: Obviously Excel Saga, also Sailor Moon and several other shows:

    • A Stand shows up that looks more than a little bit like Star Platinum.
    • "It's a stand-off!"
    • There's also the Death Star. and Poemi collecting Dragon Balls at one point to try and bring Nabeshin back to life.
    • The opening sequence has Poemi beating up numerous other magical girls, including Sailor Moon and Sally the Witch. The sequence is done with black silhouettes on a red background, a recurring visual theme in Revolutionary Girl Utena, who incidentally also seems to be in that scene, although it's hard to tell who's exactly who.
    • And the ending is an homage to Space Runaway Ideon
    • The opening quote of used in this article is a parody of the same one used by Kamen Rider Stronger.
    • The creepy alien has EVA-01's purple and green color scheme, and a red round gem on his ring that can be interpreted as the Angels' core.
    • When Poemi enters the alien ship is similar to Independence Day.
    • At one point Nabeshin says he's "GDW", or "Great Director Watanabe", a nod to GTO.
  • Show Within a Show: Puni Puni Poemi began as Show Within a Show on Excel♡Saga, and Excel Saga is a show in Puni Puni Poemi.
  • Spell My Name With An S: The article page itself is "Puni Puni Poemi". The English title is "Puni Puni Poemy". The subtitles justify this as when she is normal, her name is Poemi Watanabe. When she transforms, she becomes Puni Puni Poemy.
  • Standing in the Hall: Lampshade hung when Poemi complains about the punishment being outdated in modern Japanese schools
  • Stock Footage: Parodied
  • Strange Salute: At one point, the Aasu sisters all do a very peculiar salute which one of the English voice actors described as the "international sign for cameltoe."
  • Stylistic Suck: The opening.
  • Take That!: One sequence involves Poemi beating up a stereotypical kogal girl, a guy partaking in Enjo Kosai, a bunch of Delinquents, a stereotypical Otaku, and a guy playing an Eroge.
  • Theme Naming: Each of the Aasu sisters' given names is derived from a number from one to seven, starting with the youngest one — which means their parents were counting down. What would have happened had they reached zero?
  • Third-Person Person: Poemi. Er, I mean, Kobayashi.
    • Yumiko Kobayashi is one in Real Life, if you've ever seen interviews of her.
  • This Is a Drill: Futaba... brandishes a hand-drill while imagining doing... well... something... to Poemi
  • Tomato in the Mirror: K finds out that he's a tentacle monster alien. Never mind that he lives with his parents, who are obviously tentacle monster aliens. Or that apparently his limbs are all fake and that they pop off easily to reveal tentacles. Or that in one scene he goes to school riding a UFO.
  • Transformation Sequence: Parodied with a transformation involving a dead fish which automatically strips Poemi naked — except for her socks, which she has to remove manually before she can take her magical form.
  • Transformation Trinket: A dead fish.
  • invokedThe Un-Twist: Parodied with the revelation that K is an Octopoid Alien. The show makes absolutely no attempt to hide it, and K's shock and horror over his Tomato in the Mirror realization just ends up making him look dense.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: inverted — out of all the Aasu sisters, only Itsue has a power that proves even vaguely useful. Some of them could be useful, if even one of them had any offensive ability at all.
  • Whip of Dominance: Itsue Aasu, a dominatrix, uses a whip and has the expected bossy and domineering attitude.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Poemi lands a German Suplex on a guy for playing h-games on his computer during the day. Well, playing them in the afternoon, anyway. She also performs a textbook Sharpshooter on totally-not-Sally-the-Witch-honest in the very first scene.
    Puni Puni Poemi (Called Kobayashi): I mean, seriously, these are for nights!

Puni Puni Poemi. When Excel Saga isn't enough.

Alternative Title(s): Puni Puni Poemy

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