This is a character sheet for Pop Team Epic. For characters from Hoshiiro Girldrop, see its character page here.
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Main Characters
Both
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Popuko is short and Pipimi is tall.
- Blood Knight: They both love violence and destruction, though Pipimi tends to be somewhat more subtle about it than Popuko.
- Cute But Psycho: They might be cute, but pissing them off would be the last thing you want to do. Not that it stop their violent nature anyway, with Popuko in particular being more sadistic than Pipimi.
- Double Standard: The typically blunt Pipimi is willing to mince words to keep Popuko's spirits up. Popuko, who usually reacts with violence to the slightest offense, allows Pipimi to get away with inconveniencing or even coercing her.
- Killer Rabbit: They look like adorable schoolgirls, but if they hate something with passion, they will destroy it without mercy while keeping their smile on their face.
- Perpetual Smiler: They always have cat smiles on their faces.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Popuko has a nasty Hair-Trigger Temper, while Pipimi leans closer to The Stoic. Best summarized here
, where they notice someone staring at them:Pipimi: Whatchu looking at?
Popuko: EY! WANT ME TO FUCKING KILL YOU, MOTHER FUCKER?! - Sailor Fuku: Popuko and Pipimi both wear one as their usual outfits, though they aren't often seen actually going to school.
- School Uniforms are the New Black: They usually wear their Sailor Fuku, even in situations where they aren't at school (which is most of the time).
- Teens Are Monsters: They have no qualms about killing people who annoy them or for the sake of a reference.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Drink, smoke, curse like sailors, and occasionally commit varying degrees of brutal violence, they do all that while being 14.
- Vocal Dissonance: Each episode of the anime replays itself after the initial credits, each time with Popuko and Pipimi redubbed with male or female VAs, leading to episodes where the school girls with perpetual cat smiles have deep masculine voices. Popuko has had more male voices than Pipimi.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The duo usually, but not always, tends to leave children alone on their antics or at the very least consider their presence as a factor.
- They take pity on the young daughter of a demon lord Popuko had just taken down by having Shouta Aoi travel back in time to prevent Popuko from doing the act. Not does this only spare his life; but allows him to pull a Heel–Face Turn in the process and renounce being evil to focus on his biker gang. The old man who sent them on the quest is not happy with this decision despite the duo being satisfied.
- What do they do when a mother tells them off for attempting their usual torture methods in front of her child? They just swap out their human victim for a teddy bear and proceed as if nothing happened.
Popuko
Popuko
Voiced by: See below
- Author Avatar: Occasionally acts as a communicator to the reader.
- Ax-Crazy: Popuko is a volcano of rage and bloodlust just waiting to go off at the slightest provocation, and very much a danger to others around her.
- Batter Up!: Her nail bat (which appears for real in the OP!)
- Berserk Button: "Subculture bitches".
- Better to Die than Be Killed: After she hiccups 99 times, Pipimi comments that she's heard that if you hiccup 100 times, you die. Popuko decides to self-destruct.
- Curtains Match the Window: Downplayed, as she has orange hair and yellow eyes. Played straight in the first set of the series' LINE stickers as she also has orange eyes.
- Girlish Pigtails: She wears her hair in short high pigtails.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Her only real consistent personality trait is her tendency to get inordinately angry at relatively innocuous things. She's been thrown into a swearing, violent rage by such things as thunder, being asked her name, seeing a cuckoo clock, and being asked whether she wants beef or chicken for her meal.
- Hidden Depths: If you pay attention, you realize Popuko loves being a performer. She ran two different YouTube channels and tried to make her own music video in the manga alone, while she becomes an idol for the anime's third Pop Team Story.
- Horrifying the Horror: Her rage is so terrifying that she even scared off the Japanese urban legend Mary-san when she tried to come for her.
- Hot-Blooded: Can get very emotional even when she isn't outright pissed.
- The Napoleon: She's the shorter of the two main characters, and also the one who's quicker to anger.
- Series Mascot: More often than not, Popuko will be associated with the series as a whole.
- Signature Headgear: Popuko's pigtails are always held up by little yellow scrunchies.
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Naturally has wide eyes, but when she gets angry (which happens very easily), her irises shrink to the size of periods.
Pipimi
Pipimi
Voiced by: See below
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Has black hair in the the series' Line stickers instead of the dark blue it is in the manga and anime. Her Nendoroid figure also has black hair.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being the nicer of the two, Pipimi's still rather dangerous. While purchasing a car, she considered the various features' applications when it came to assassination and murder (she liked that it was red because it would camouflage the color of blood), and once she gave Popuko an advance payment, a list, a gun, and a stressed command of "Do it."
- Curtains Match the Window: Downplayed, since she has dark blue hair and light blue eyes.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Implied to be the reason why she tends to zone out and think of Hellshake Yano during conversations.
- Fangirl: Of Hellshake Yano, going by certain illustrations. He's the only offshoot character she brings up on a regular basis.
- Hair Color Dissonance: She has dark blue hair in the manga and anime, but the the series' Line stickers instead makes her hair black.
- Hime Cut: Downplayed. She has blunt bangs, armpit length sidelocks, and mid-back length hair, but while she's generally a lot calmer than Popuko, she can still be just as foul-mouthed and violent.
- Huge Schoolgirl: At least in comparison to Popuko, though most of her height seems to come from her neck.
- Inconsistent Coloring: Her hair is usually blue, but sometimes it's black, such as during the Bob Epic Team segments or in certain merchandise.
- Morality Pet: She sometimes restrains Popuko from beating up other people. When Popuko gets mad at a girl for singing over her, Pipimi holds her back so the girl can run away.
- Never Bareheaded: She never takes off her huge red bow.
- Not So Stoic: Occasionally acts stern and direct towards others.
- Signature Headgear: Pipimi will always keep her red hairbow, no matter what else she wears.
- The Stoic: Is generally unaffected by anything that occurs to her.
- The Straight Man: Often plays this role to Popuko's antics, though she frequently proves that she is Not So Above It All.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Rarely reigns in Popuko, and tends to encourage her destructive proclivities.
Others
Bacon Mushamucha-kun
Bacon Mushamusha-kun
- Voiced by: Rie Hikisaka (Part A) / Katsuyuki Konishi (Part B)
- Carnivore Confusion: Bacon Mushamusha-kun's favorite food is bacon.
- One-Shot Character: Bacon Mushamusha-kun only appears in one strip in the manga and one episode of the series.
- Thermal Dissonance: Doesn't want to wait for his bacon to finish cooking.
Cthulhu
Cthulhu
Voiced by: Haruna Ikezawa (Season 2 Part A) / Mitsuo Iwata (TV Special, Season 2 Part B)
High Priest of the Great Old Ones. The Great Dreamer. Occasional cameo.- God Needs Prayer Badly: Parodied. He threatens people at gunpoint to start worshipping him.
- Horrifying the Horror: He's taken aback when he watches Popuko body slam a child at speeds on par with Outer Gods.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: During a Neon Genesis Evangelion parody, his Sachiel costume doesn't bother to cover his face.
Hellshake Yano
Hellshake Yano
- Adaptation Expansion: In his corresponding POP TEAM STORY, he gains an entire backstory; the reason he's even called "Hellshake" Yano and the circumstances launching him into the public eye have much more elaboration here.
- Bishie Sparkle: A lot of official images give him this.
- Chekhov's Skill: Defied in Rising Hell - The Arrow of Hellshake where his noodle shaking techniques from working in a ramen stand wind up being completely useless in relearning how to play the guitar.
- Defictionalization: Hellshake Yano played Animelo Summer Live 2018. By which we mean Shunsuke Itakura and Toru Adachi of AC-bu performed the "Emotional Documentary: Hellshake Yano" sketch to a live concert audience.
- Epic Rocking: To stall until his band got to the concert hall, Yano shreds for a solo, captivating the audience even as his guitar strings break one by one.
- In-Series Nickname: Of course, nobody would expect to name their child "Hellshake". This nickname comes from his manager calling his solo one that "shakes the foundations of Hell itself".
Shouta Aoi
Shouta Aoi
Portrayed by: Shouta Aoi
- As Himself: Shouta Aoi plays Shouta Aoi, a time travelling male idol.
- Character Overlap: Shows up in the live-action portion of Gal and Dino.
- Chroma Key: He's green-screened so he stands out as a real human being among the animated (sometimes) Popuko and Pipimi.
- Henshin Hero: Can transform with his watch to fight against threats.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: He's portrayed in live action while everything else is animated.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: His main role is to travel back in time and fix whatever went wrong at the end of the episode. The second airing of the episode will show the results. In Gal and Dino, he is attempting to prevent the death of Japanese actor Mieharu, only for his attempts to be thwarted by the landlady of Mieharu's apartment. In the Season 1 Remix, he fails to change the future, thwarted by his evil alternate self who we met in the 2nd version of episode 14, only to reveal Pop Team Epic has been renewed for a brand new 2nd season for 2022.
Pervy Farmer
Pervy Farmer
A perverted farmer who appears in the Poputan sketch.
- Dirty Old Man: When Poputan is asking the cow for some milk, the farmer randomly pops up from a bush and says, "Would you like to squeeze out some of my milk?" Later, when Poputan and Pipitan are having a barbecue, he says, "Would you like to try my wiener, too?"
- Eyes Always Shut: His eyes are always closed with a happy "n_n" expression.
- Groin Attack: Poputan and Pipitan tie him to a log and put him on a Conveyor Belt o' Doom moving toward a buzzsaw crotch-first as punishment for sexually harassing them. When he does it again, they do the exact same thing, only he has a bandage on his crotch area from the first time.
- No Name Given: He has no name and is just called oji-san (old man).
- Too Dumb to Live: He continues sexually harassing Poputan and Pipitan even after they castrate him.
- Too Kinky to Torture: He still has a happy expression as his nuts are about to be sawed off.
Voice Actors
Main cast
Because the anime is just as nonsensical as the original yonkoma, there is no regular cast. Instead, new people voice Popuko and Pipimi for each episode and each immediate reairing of that same episode.
The voice actors are paired based on either trending character pairings, their most acknowledged project pairings, personal friendships, and or work history with each other. Season Two further placed at least one major pairing who also fit the criteria of the genre, typecast, and the needs of talents for that episode's main segment.
Click here for TV Special broadcast details
