Common Name: Pop Team Epic
Alternative Names: Poputepipikku
Score: 3/10, 5/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Comedy
Summary: Originally created as a shitty 4-koma (4-panel) manga, Pop Team Epic is an absurdist comedy that transcends the very nature of anime. It is not a work meant for the standard mortal mind. If you watch it while not mentally prepared, the boundaries of reality itself will begin to break down around you. Fiction will be indistinguishable from reality. Full-grown adults will look no different from children. Worst of all, though, this show's shitty sense of humor will seem like comedic genius.
Review: Hands down, Pop Team Epic has to be the dumbest and most ingenious garbage I have ever had the pleasure to experience. If that statement confuses you, good; that was kinda the point because this show intentionally makes it difficult to label or criticize it as a whole product. As far as I can tell, Pop Team Epic can only really be evaluated once it's been broken into pieces based on how the show can be observed. In my case, I'm able to break it into two, relatively clean, pieces. The first is the show's surface layer aspect as a comedic meme factory. The second is the analysis of why this show exists in the first place and what it does with the airtime it got. So, the best I can really do with this show, as a reviewer, is head-on tackle these two parts respectively.
So, let's start with the worst part of this show--the show itself.
On the surface, Pop Team Epic is basically just an official "Anime Hell" parody series that is built entirely on the backs of other series. Rather than directly copying these shows, however, this one tends to feature skits that are easily identifiable references in of themselves that are then filled to the brim with even more references. Reference comedy for the sake of reference comedy doesn't necessarily make for a good show, though. Things are fun and interesting at the start, to be sure, but as the show drags on and on, the absurd and unpredictable fun of the show become commonplace and trite to the point of boredom. Without any interesting characters or subplot to follow, Pop Team Epic is reduced to being a ramshackle and inconsistent mess of a show that did nothing to adapt it's 4-koma nature for a television audience. Quite frankly, the best this show could really offer in this form are quick, funny clips that would have likely seen a lot more success on platforms like YouTube.
Too bad it nixed that market early in the game.
To be clear, though, it's not like this show isn't funny. It's hilarious when it isn't fumbling with the delivery of its own jokes but the percentage of comedic hits is minuscule of the show's in comparison to the show's total runtime. Here's the thing, though: I'm pretty sure this show's comedic failures were just as intentional as its few successes. I say this because, beneath that shoddy surface layer, there's a bizarre kind of craftsmanship to this show that makes up for the fact that there really are no characters, plot, pacing, story, or any of the other makers of success that come standard in this industry that is content to consume and regurgitate original ideas until the product becomes indistinguishable from actual garbage, so long as that idea keeps selling.
I'm pretty much convinced these birds are meant to be representative of most anime fans.
Underneath all the shoddy workmanship, inconsistent style, incoherent tone, and just plain terrible execution, this show is a masterpiece. I mean, it's just too bad not to be, right? People talk all the time about parody and self-aware humor, but this show is actually full to bursting with industry-aware humor. Pop Team Epic is a dumpster fire that was methodically built from the scraps of terrible ideas, terrible management, and forgotten history of the anime industry. It's not all that impressive when you look at it from a distance, but when you get up close and really start to consider why this show exists in the first place the artistry starts to make itself clear. Just singing this show's accolades likely won't convince you of that fact, though, so let me draw some examples from this unfiltered celebration of anime as a medium to prove my point.
First and foremost, there is the manner in which this show was built. Over the span of the standard 24 minutes, Pop Team Epic tells the same jokes twice, once using male voice actors in one segment and once with female VAs. Throughout the show's run, each episode brings in 4 unique voice actors, old an new, to voice the characters of Popuko and Pipimi, on top of many more who voice the show's collection of side characters. This might seem like a strange design choice at first, but the longer you watch the show and subject yourself to both segments, the more you begin to get that this strange choice serves two, distinct purposes. Firstly, as you begin to recognize voices you've likely heard before as the show goes on, you see that this design choice is meant to celebrate of VAs, giving a large portion of this industry's premier talent an equal shot at yucking it up as a couple of adorable shit lords. Secondly, as you begin to notice the differences between each segment, you see how this choice ends up being a pretty heavy-handed criticism of the stereotypes, sexism, and absurd expectations that practically define the VA industry. Whether it's through a moment of improv that can be seen in one segment that is, for some reason, absent in the other or the differences in tone, pace, and dialect that is gotten out of each VA, this show masterfully roasts an industry that anime couldn't live without.
Second, this show has a few weird segments where distinctly non-anime practices are used to tell the anime's jokes. The most notable of these segments are the moments where Popuko and Pipimi, rendered as puppets created by Uchupeople (a group that is known specifically for making stop-motion animation videos with felt puppets), form an idol unit. While these segments simultaneously lambast idol culture and the insane culture that surrounds platforms like NikoNikoDouga, these segments are also direct bait for those who would cry that this stop-motion format isn't really anime anymore. I say this is "bait" because most people who would make that claim are ignorant of the history of Japanese animation, aka anime. I am, of course, referring to the fact anime was initially born from melding the traditions of puppetry and classic theater into a format that would appeal to a new age of children. Referencing the past isn't the show's only means of driving home this point though. During a segment called JaponMignon, created by French animator Thibault Tresca, 3DCG is worked into the show without ever really skipping a beat.
Last but not least, there's the fact that Pop Team Epic goes whole ham in acknowledging that the show itself is utter garbage. With the help of the off-the-wall crazy talents of the group known as AC Department, this show features a number of segments that are, by all appearances, shitty knock-offs of the original anime, titled Bob Epic Team. Awful as these segments look though, they end up becoming a kind of bizarre conversation about fan creations, rip-offs. and appropriation. Toward the beginning of the show, Bob Epic Team starts off as an uncomfortably weird series that uses the characters of Popuko and Pipimi from Pop Team Epic in their own skits that occasionally reference the main anime. As time goes on though, these segments become more and more original until the main show ends stealing original jokes from this "rip-off," "fan-made" series.
There are, of course, a number of other topics that this show addresses along the way but each and every one speaks to that singular, greater purpose--the celebration of anime in all its glory and infamy. Does this necessarily make this a good show? I'd argue not, but it is a sight to behold in spite of that. So, I say give it a chance. You might just catch some deeper meaning in a bad joke that I managed to miss.