Raw youth

How do we see the world, when we are children?

Do you remember the worries you had when you were a child? Or do you mostly remember the good times? Were there ever any good times at all growing up? Or were we just oblivious to the trials and tribulations that were surrounding us? Japanese mangaka author Inio Asano makes the reader feel these exact doubts during the first couple chapters of what some would consider to be his magnum opus, Goodnight PunPun. The story of a young boy who goes through all the changes that come with growing up, all the way to his young adult years. Through the series we as the reader are privy to Punpun’s high and lows during his life. The first volume focuses primarily on setting the tone on how the series is going to subvert certain expectations for characters. For example, in the first chapter we see an elementary classroom teacher telling his students to say goodbye to a female classmate that is moving away, a girl who PunPun had a small crush on when he walked in on her bullying a younger boy and she told him to keep quiet. An act he mistook for what he assumed was that she liked him. Many characters in the series don’t behave the way the reader is expecting them to behave, such as the lawyer who just nods his head and says “Yup, Yup!” to the teacher who loses his composure when a student does not hand in an assignment on time and begins to warn them of the impending existential horror that awaits them in the “real world”. Though it may sound like a darkly comedic series, and believe me it is, it’s also a very honest portrayal of how certain people tend to view the world under the circumstances they see themselves in.

Something that most readers will instantly recognize and be entranced by, is the fact that the main character is this little bird dude who just sweats and spurts out random noises in some panels and only in certain panels do we get an idea of how he truly expresses himself. The reasoning or meaning behind this is that the author prefers a certain blank slate so that the reader can in a way see themselves in the story. During Volume1 of the life of PunPun he goes through the divorce of his parents, an uncle who clearly wants the best for him while trying his very best to remain lazy, friends who hunt for porn and even meets a new girl who just might change the entire trajectory of his own future! Then again, this is not a series meant for light reading, the story though silly at first, tackles very serious issues from different aspects of life, such as depression, anxiety and loss. All the while being viewed form the point of view of a child on the cusp of puberty. It’s a raw and visceral look at how life is a chain events that unfold regardless of how one wants them to play out.