AnimeJapan has a form where you can vote for manga you want an anime for (the form’s open only at certain times, so if you try voting and it doesn’t work, don’t say I didn’t warn you!). However, when I saw Goodnight Punpun on that form, my brain went into Revolt Mode.

You’ve probably never heard of Goodnight Punpun unless you read manga (it’s also known as Oyasumi Punpun). So for the uninitiated, it’s about a boy – Punpun Punyama, hence the name – in a dysfunctional family as he tries to do weird and wacky things like get a Nobel Prize and run away with the girl of his dreams, Aiko. However, there’s a twist in that Punpun and his family are represented by cartoon-style birds.

Why was I so opposed to the idea of getting an anime of it, then?

First of all, it’s quite the striking and introspective experience which probably couldn’t be replicated anywhere else. The stylistic choices that make it work as a manga – like the disembodied, realistic head of a man that appears on occasion – would lose their power in colour. The strength of Goodnight Punpun is the uncanny, clearly unrealistic qualities that create an uncomfortable atmosphere, and since people naturally witness things in the real world with colour, adding colours to every frame of the work (as opposed to just magazine covers, which people tend to ignore when a manga makes the move to tankobon format) would only consolidate a set sort of realism and detract from the atmosphere that Goodnight Punpun is renowned for. Without too much intrusion of colour, people are free to guess the colouring of things and thus are able to digest the subject matter in a way that’s more appropriate to them. (It’s a good thing this work is mostly devoid of colour too, because some of the most striking images of this manga are the ones with the bright colours.)

As for what that subject matter is, it tackles tough subjects like puberty, porn magazines and domestic abuse, which are clearly not things most people want in their entertainment. Even in the days where things like extremely gory fights can go straight to Netflix or Amazon instead of just being on late-night Japanese TV, Goodnight Punpun is a coming-of-age story just as much as it is anything else. There’s no point in a coming-of-age story being on a platform where not that many people will discover it, because anything that’s on Netflix or Amazon tends to have a huge barrier to overcome viewers-wise, and the alienating content of Goodnight Punpun will not help matters.

To add to that, the manga has a strange power about it and it probably wouldn’t sell discs in Japan, which would then have a high chance of crippling its chances in the Western world. It’s the sort of thing that’s coated under metaphors and symbols so that only people who like critiquing certain genres (anime, manga and storytelling media in general) will give it a shot. Even with all the manga’s acclaim to back it up, it won’t reach the masses as people will end up finding Punpun and friends as not being like the anime they know (much like how some people dismiss One Piece as being too similar to Western cartoons for their liking). It’s either be too cartoony if they narrow their view to Punpun and family, or too realistic if they concentrate on everything else.

So, if you’ve read Goodnight Punpun, do you think my comments are justified? If not, what do you think about Goodnight Punpun now that I’ve introduced it to you?