Mixed Feelings
*This review will mention a number of jokes from the series, mostly in vague terms to minimize spoilers while still offering a point of reference to those who have already seen it* As soon as I committed to watching Poputepipikku (Pop Team Epic), I knew immediately that I wanted to talk about it, whether by discussing it with others or, as I have now done, writing a full review of this strange beast. It was clear that my opinion on it was different from the prevailing thoughts of the community. Of course that’s not a bad thing; differences of opinion or perspective make such discussions farmore interesting, as opposed to a circle of like-minded cult members all chanting “Yes, man! Yes, man!” in rhythmic turn.
Of course, in the case of Pop Team Epic, the scenario looks more as if half the members in the circle suddenly turned to demons, the song of the ring an increasingly loud and aggressive “No, idiot!” with both sides on the verge of slaughtering each other. Pop Team Epic is an unbelievably, viciously polarizing show, with outcries of love and hatred struggling for dominance. What could possibly make something so divisive? It's hard to say for sure, outside of the old saying that comedy is subjective, but it may have something to do with the show’s unorthodox nature and format. Put simply, there’s little else quite like Pop Team Epic, for better or worse. The closest reference point I can imagine would be parody sketch comedies like Robot Chicken, but even this fails to truly capture the format-stretching, meme-generating, self-aware surrealism on display here.
So, with little comparison to go on, and a product which in many ways defies traditional metrics, it’s easy to become dismissive - to take your first, most basic impression of a title like Pop Team Epic and jump to conclusions about the work as a whole, whether positive or negative. I'll openly admit I did exactly this when I first saw the premiere episode, believing it to exist primarily to troll its audience (which it certainly does at times, but I'd hardly call it the show's sole purpose). Other stances span the full range from "hilarious collection of memes about pop culture" to "insufferable unfunny barrage of nonsensical randomness to amuse the bottom-feeders of the internet" among others - and to be clear, I'm not saying these specific stances are invalid or necessarily arise from quick dismissal. But if we're not careful, there's the risk of getting swept up in our immediate reactions and forgetting about the craft behind them - of losing perspective of the elements that go into the work as a whole to make it what it is. Pop Team Epic may come off as strange at times, but I believe like all media, it still deserves acknowledgement as an art piece, regardless of one's overall experience with it or eventual stance reached regarding its quality.
So here we are, as I make a serious attempt at understanding this show’s vision and the tools it uses to pursue it, and then deciding whether or not I liked what I saw and why. All this, because I don't think a work like this should see its weird, experimental nature become an excuse to immediately write off its craft before at least giving an honest and open look at the content on display.
With that in mind, there IS still the question of whether I personally liked it, so without further ado, I present my honest thoughts on this little oddity:
Pop Team Epic is an absurdist sketch comedy starring Popuko and Pipimi, two recurring avatars who go around making all variety of over-the-top events happen, all while screwing with as many characters as possible, including the viewer watching it. It sets itself apart from other such comedies by embracing the concept of meta-humour, but in ways that are far more creative and interesting than the often-seen approach of simply breaking the fourth wall and calling attention to its tropes (some may know this as “lampshading”). It also consistently gets creative with its formatting, whether subverting the standard 4-panel setup in various ways to enhance the element of surprise in its jokes, or making use of many alternative formats and styles to keep the variety up. Perhaps most critically, while wildly inconsistent in terms of quality, it shows an ability to tell its jokes without falling into common pitfalls of non sequitur and referential comedies… most of the time.
That last point is one I’d like to emphasize. Personally, I see more in this show's sense of humour than just arbitrary references for arbitrary references’ sake, and this is coming from someone who typically isn’t fond of non sequitur comedies. To explain why I feel this way, I feel it is helpful to try and break down why exactly I find randomness played for laughs to be ineffectual, as well as a bit about “humour” in general - hopefully, without coming off as conceited; it’s no secret that comedy is a highly subjective affair, so take everything I'm about to say not as any sorts of "rules" for comedy, but rather, as an elaboration for why I find Pop Team Epic to work where so many others fail, leveraging my understanding of my personal sense of humour while still respecting the skill displayed by the content at hand.
There are many theories out there which attempt to explain what makes something funny, but one that generally seems to align with my own sense of humour, and a useful starting point here, is Peter McGraw’s Benign Violation Theory. Those interested in the study of humour are free to explore this and other theories, but to avoid needlessly padding this review, I’ll stick to what’s relevant here: it suggests that something will be funny if it simultaneously a) acts as a violation of what a person believes an aspect of the world “ought to be”, and b) be presented in a benign (safe/non-threatening) manner. That's rather abstract, so to make a somewhat more concrete extension of this in the context of anime, one could theoretically achieve this by in some way surprising a viewer - such as by setting up expectations for the show or its universe and then defy them with some kind of “punchline”, joke, whatever - but in a way such that the result is something the viewer won’t find offensive, annoying, upsetting and so forth. Of course, this will vary from viewer to viewer. This is only one approach and not a perfect explanation by any stretch, nor are these anything close the only variables which may be involved. But it's a helpful springboard for diving into this show's content.
Applying this idea to non sequitur humour, if something incredibly out of place suddenly shows up in a show’s universe, then you’ve defied the viewer’s expectations for that universe, so you might get a laugh once or twice. But by repeating this joke, once it’s been established that weird or arbitrary things can and will happen in this universe, you lose that element of surprise for any future irregular occurrences, and the effect is lost. Worse still, if everything is completely random, without some thread of logic or flow to latch onto, viewers may stop expecting anything aside from this randomness. And, if you keep showing non sequitur after non sequitur, and the viewer interprets that as the joke, it could get incredibly obnoxious.
One could also say similar things for referential humour; the first reference is an unexpected intrusion on the show’s universe originating from another, but if you keep throwing out bare references, then the viewer begins to expect them.
Given this predicament, how exactly does Pop Team Epic seem to avoid this pitfall? The answer, I believe, is that Pop Team Epic is not truly random; it would be more accurate to say that the specific subject matter of any one of its mini-skits is seemingly random. By this, I mean that any given skit can have literally any topic of focus, regardless of what the previous one focused on, but on the other hand, most of the individual skits themselves do have their own sense of continuity and strange yet self-consistent logic. What this means is that so long as Pop Team Epic is able to set up and deliver actual punchlines through these self-consistent skits, it can function as an effective comedy despite its apparent randomness of subject matter and the prevalence of pop culture references. Does Pop Team Epic do any of this, with any degree of success?
Yes, it definitely does!
Starting with the basics, Pop Team Epic makes use of many commonly-cited forms of humour in amongst all its madness. These include, among many others, comedic shifts in tone (certain “Hoshiiro Girldrop” interjections), ironic character actions (the cigarette joke in an idol skit), situations being taken 4 steps further than expected to the point of absurdity (the same idol skit’s conclusion), escalatory repetition (episode 2’s manga speech bubble skit), some puns and wordplay I’m not qualified to evaluate, and, alas, a few instances of seemingly barebones references that don’t seem to have any strings attached. However, those latter types are thankfully a much smaller minority than one might expect. In most cases, there’s a concerted effort to at least add something of substance the the reference in question, even if it’s not always immediately apparent.
Of course, simply having punchlines present isn’t enough on its own. The fact that most of these “traditional” styles of jokes are condensed into extremely short skits (setting aside some longer-form exceptions with multiple punchlines like the aforementioned idol skit) does pose a challenge for the show in terms of having the time to instill expectations or ideas in a viewer, and then deliver a joke that isn’t completely obvious from the brief setup given. However, I personally found Pop Team Epic’s success rate to be higher than anticipated, perhaps because its variety of material and approaches gave it plenty of options for what direction to take any given skit in, while still maintaining that critical sense of flow to avoid a nosedive into true randomness. It’s a precarious approach - a constant balancing act which didn’t hold every single time - but as far as I’m concerned, it worked well enough.
So yes, this show does make use of some tried and true approaches to telling jokes, and frequently succeeds at maintaining the elements of surprise, buildup and payoff. However, Pop Team Epic is no ordinary comedy, and in addition to these more conventional approaches, it also carries a number of less-common tricks in its grab bag.
For instance, Pop Team Epic will often subvert the standard 4-panel format in order to further enhance its element of surprise, or add even more variety to how its jokes are delivered. 4-panel comedy strips will often spend three panels setting the stage, and then deliver their punchline on the fourth panel. This, of course, also applies to their adaptations, whether or not the boundaries between skits, sections or scenarios remain clear after the transition. In the case of Pop Team Epic, this transition is marked clear as polished glass by voiced-over title cards.
Pop Team Epic, however, often defies this conventional setup by placing an unexpected punchline near the beginning of the skit - what would be equivalent to the first or second panel in its original form - with the remaining panels adding onto it in some way, such as by taking the joke to further extremes or making humorous comments. This further adds to the element of surprise by varying the timing at which a punchline can hit.
In other cases, Pop Team Epic will flip the idea of the non sequitur card on its head, taking its normally-unrelated skits which the viewer expects to be unrelated in subject matter, and adds unexpected continuity between them to catch the viewer off guard. A good example of this (***brief spoiler for episode 3) is in a skit about Pipimi trying out a car, another person making disclaimers about its red colour and quietness, and Pipimi being satisfied, commenting that they can “kill in silence” and hide the blood on the car’s crimson hue. The skit ends, and the viewer expects the joke to end with it. Then the next skit is about Popuko looking for a job, and Pipimi handing her a suitcase full of cash, a gun, and a hitlist for assassination.
(***end of spoiler)
At another point, a skit makes reference to a certain piece of media, and then the next skit starts exactly the same way as the first, because the circumstances the first skit ended on would trigger a time reset in the universe being referenced. As a brief aside, this displays what I look for in referential humour. There should be some kind of punchline to go with the reference, and if the reference is necessary to understand the joke, its source should be something fairly recognizable to whatever audience is viewing it. In this instance, these conditions were met, showing that, at least some of the time, Pop Team Epic seems to understand that its frequent references cannot carry the comedy on its own.
On a more straightforward level, Pop Team Epic will change up the styles and even mediums in which it presents a given skit. Later episodes in particular got especially creative with exploring new formats, including alternate animation styles, various live-action/animation mixtures, and an enthralling segment involving two live-action performers manipulating pages of a sketchbook. This variety alone added a certain degree of entertainment value simply in seeing what the show would come up with next, even setting aside some of the jokes that were told by leveraging these new formats.
But that’s enough about formatting. It’s time to graduate to talking about the show’s attempts at full-on meta-humour that I’ve been building up.
To be honest, I’m usually not the biggest fan of meta-humour, but this has less to do with the concept than it does with the execution. As I mentioned before, I very often see attempts at meta-humour amount to little more than breaking the fourth wall, or a show plainly pointing out what tvtropes.org entry it’s using at that particular moment. My gripes with this type of humour are similar to those of the non sequitur and referencial varieties: in isolation, as a one-off joke or small aside, it can work. However, doing it repeatedly ceases to surprise and can become increasingly annoying when overused. Furthermore, it simply lacks creativity; it takes next to no effort to do it and is far too common an approach. In short: it’s a lazy, done-to-death gimmick.
But once again, Pop Team Epic steps beyond these trappings! It doesn’t stop at trivial self-awareness or fourth wall breaks. Instead, the fourth wall ceases to exist here, and the show makes use of the viewer's acceptance of its self-aware nature to tell jokes that simply wouldn’t have been the same otherwise.
A character proclaims an action they'll perform in 30 minutes; the show shows them standing there waiting in real time as the ending sequence plays in the background. Viewer comments complaining about an animation quirk in certain segments are read; the show fixes this quirk and lets you witness the humorous results for yourself. Later episodes make sudden, unexpected yet seemingly obvious additions to the opening theme to comedic effect. Even the necessary censorship of copyrighted words leads to a pun that translated shockingly well into English, with the incredibly stupid yet earnest results leaving me rolling! These are just a few of many examples of Pop Team Epic reaching beyond usual approaches to meta-humour. These gags are novel, creative, and often surprisingly witty, leading to arguably some of the show’s best and most unique material.
What I’m saying, in essence, is that for all this show's madness, I do see a method behind it. It has far more tricks to offer than simply throwing snot, superglue, tree sap, maple syrup, sticky notes and other trinkets at the viewer in hopes that something will stick. Furthermore, these tricks are often interesting and creative in their own right, and the show displays a clear ability to make use of them for uniquely comedic effect. Well, most of the time, anyway.
And on that note, here is where I must address my main gripe with the series: its inconsistency.
While I found many of Pop Team Epic’s skits to be a hit, and for others could at the very least see what the joke was, there were also quite a few segments which I simply didn’t understand. Whether it was because I didn’t know a reference, the joke was poorly presented, or because there simply wasn’t a joke at all, I can’t say for sure. Regardless, many of them just seemed to truly be random, have no point, or in rarer cases, simply exist as a reference with no apparent joke attached. Of course, some such segments turned out to simply be setting up for punchlines in later skits (“Are you upset?”, though this one arguably had a punchline to begin with), while others could be seen as planting expectations for a later variation with something in common (the first knitted musical number), continuing the trend of playing with the 4-panel format. Others, however, seemed to lack even this purpose.
For some of these segments, one could make a case for anti-humour - intentionally skipping the expectation of a punchline as a punchline in and of itself, or perhaps having the punchline be that what’s happening should, in fact, be taken at face value. However, I found that these segments seemingly devoid of a punchline happened a bit too frequently for this to work. As such, they had little impact and forced me to simply give up on trying to figure them out. Congratulations, Pop Team Epic, you've stumped me!
I’ll say this, though: I’d much rather a joke fly over my head completely than have it bashed into my head and get brain damage. But a quick smack to the face is perfectly okay!
In other words, I’m fine with blunt and over-the-top presentation (which can be found aplenty here), but I tend to dislike it when such presentation is combined with repeating or over-explaining trivial and obvious punchlines in a way that feels unnatural or forced. It comes across as the show being afraid the viewer might be too stupid to get it otherwise, or as some desperate attempt to draw additional laughs from something that’s clearly run dry of them. Thankfully, Pop Team Epic definitively avoids this particular pet peeve of mine. I can think of very few instances of a joke lingering beyond its allotted laugh-span - maybe some of the “Hoshiiro Girldrop” material overstayed its welcome. But even in those cases, it didn’t feel like it was forcibly dragged out, but rather, it simply went on as long as one might expect - which happened to be a bit longer than I found it funny - so this generally didn’t bother me much.
In all other cases, Pop Team Epic, leveraging its 4-panel format, moves at a quick pace, with quick setup, quick delivery of its jokes, and quickly moving on from it, whether you “got it” or not. This sense of pacing also means that even though many jokes or skits may fail to hit their target, their rate of fire is high enough to minimize long stretches of barren content. There are still some weaker episodes, mainly early on, but I found the series as a whole to fare quite well in holding my interest and keeping me amused.
And with that, I’ve just about covered my reasons for enjoying this show for what it is. For those brave or curious enough to give it a shot, a few things are worth noting in deciding how to watch it. First, if using official subtitles, I recommend going for Hidive’s over Crunchyroll’s. Many of the jokes contain nuances present in the former but lost in the latter. Funimation's English dub may also be a worthy alternative, but I can't speak on this personally. Secondly, Pop Team Epic has an unusual albeit suitable quirk in which every 12-minute episode is broadcast twice in a row, with the second adding extra context or substance to many of the jokes while giving Popuko and Pipimi different voice actors (usually a gruff male set for the second, adding to the surrealism). I myself usually preferred to skip to the 11:50 mark of each episode and just watch the more detailed second version, but how one chooses to respond to this quirk is up to them.
Of course, most of us watch comedies primarily for laughter, and no matter how many types or theories of humour we may discuss to explain our enjoyment or lack thereof, in the end, laughter is personal, which all but guarantees that titles with wildly diverging opinions like this one will show up from time to time. So for those who enjoy the show as a collection of memes for forum boards, or simply as “Shitpost: The Anime”, that’s fine; keep doing so. Likewise, if you find the show insufferable to watch, there’s no need to force yourself into thinking otherwise. But by the same token, whether watching it casually or going for further analysis, love or hate it, appreciate or despise it, let's not sit here and pretend that our own viewpoint or experience is the only legitimate one, that everyone in the circle who disagrees must be idiots, or that the work sitting in the middle is somehow beneath us.
As for my opinion, I enjoyed Pop Team Epic, both as a novelty act and as its own standalone product. Despite being more than a bit inconsistent, it still has its share of funny and memorable moments thanks to its straight-to-the-point attitude, creative use of meta-humour and blunt delivery of surreal gags, while mostly avoiding potential pitfalls of abusing non sequitur and referential humour. While it certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, the show is also wholly committed to its unusual vision and shows a degree of skill in using its varied material, structuring and formatting to sell its unique brand of absurdity, For that, I respect it.
