Paniponi Dash!

As far as spastic, random comedies go Pani Poni Dash! would be pretty high on anyone’s list. Frankly, I am a little bit surprised that it is only scored on the lists of a mere 3,000 MAL users. At its best, PPD is a hilarious parody with references from Gundam to Star Trek and Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, a good many of its jokes and humor will be lost of all but the most informed otaku's. Pani Poni Dash follows the exploits of Rebecca Miyamoto, an 11 year old child prodigy who becomes a high school teacher and her freshman class and the mysteriousaliens observe her from orbit. The comedy that follows is silly, random and a bit predictable. The story is pretty much nonexistent as this anime is really about just being funny. The episodes unfold in a fairly episodic fashion with little character growth and development. At the end everything remains pretty much exactly the way it was when the series started. Thus we discover what the main problem is with this show. It just requires a level of understanding of Japanese culture, history, anime, and pop culture that will be beyond the vast majority of people who try to watch this. The version I saw had a lot of notes explaining the various references but can you really say something is funny if you have to have the joke explained to you? That’s not to say that it’s not uproariously funny a great many times, but there were probably just as many head-scratching ones as well. Another significant problem is the characters. Number one being there are just too damn many of them! I didn’t count but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were 40 of them. And while the majority of the anime revolved around only 6 or 7 of them the sheer number of supporting characters took too much away from them. While most people will find several of them to really love, all of them fall into standard archetypes and are almost completely one-dimensional. As I mentioned previously there is little to nothing in terms of character growth. Everyone is static and unchanging, and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing it does make the show feel a bit repetitive as it reaches the end. If I had to pick one character from the show I found Ichijou, the bizarre class rep of 1-C to be hands down the best and funniest of all. What’s not to love about someone who creates the "Ichijou Festival" and keeps her little sister in her shirt? Yeah, that will make sense when you watch it. The art and animation are really good though a bit quirky. I think that fits the tone of substance of this show quite well. A lot of the humor is derived from the artwork and you’re likely to find something different every time you watch it. There is a bit of sensory overload in the amount of information presented to you visually. Strong voice performances add to an excellent soundtrack. I really found myself drawn to the music and the various OP/EN themes and animations were a great treat. Pani Poni Dash offers a lot to like for lovers of comedy. However because of the heavy amount of obscure or dated references (for a non-Japanese native), I can’t really give this more than a good rating. There is a lot to love about it and I would still recommend this show to anyone who likes parody anime. For the truly hardcore anime fans out there, I would consider this a must watch.

Pani Poni Dash is easily one of the best comedy anime I've ever watched. The background story is interesting but the "genius girl" thing has been done before. However, Pani Poni Dash takes an approach much different from other schoolkids anime like School Rumble and even Azumanga Daioh. Pani Poni Dash is chock full of fun parodies, cameos, and tidbits. You'd better have your finger over the pause button to read all the footnotes and references in Pani Poni Dash. The plot is very loose but present enough to give the anime a framework to works its humor off. The art in Pani Poni Dashis very colorful, cheerful, bright, and humorous. Of the many things Pani Poni Dash parodies is the anime art, and the parody is visible in every episode. Pani Poni Dash does chibi perfectly, perhaps the best chibi I've ever seen in anime. Besides that, the normal art is very well done and slightly softer than conventional anime. The music in Pani Poni Dash is very good. There are many songs as OPs and EDs. Great episode scoring and sound effects. I've grown to like all 3 OPs and the 2nd ED. Character development in Pani Poni Dash is unique, which is saying a lot in the schoolgirl-comedy genre. Rebecca Miyamoto is the perfect balance of kawaii, attitude, sternness, and little-girl... ness. The anime explores different character archetypes in the various students of Peach Moon High School, resulting in a uniquely balanced cast of personalities. It even parodies overkilled character types such as "magical girl" with Behoimi, and plain, underdeveloped characters like Kurumi. In conclusion, Pani Poni Dash is a definite download for anyone who likes comedy anime. The anime gets off to a great start but kinda winds down near the last five episodes. It's definitely an anime I can watch over and over again.

If I could be given a chance to describe Paniponi Dash! In one sentence, I would say it’s a very chaotic and experimental take on the slice-of-life school comedy genre of its time. It mercilessly bombards you with random referential humor. It doesn’t follow a distinct format in delivering its jokes. Whatever Shafts in the creator's minds on what they think is funny, they will insert it regardless if it makes sense to the overall theme of the show or not. In most cases, the show is not even identifiable as a school comedy but a jumble of genres instantly shifting themes from time totime. This review might have some minor spoilers but Paniponi Dash! the story is not the main focus of the show so you won't be losing much on the experience. First of all, we need to discuss the show's story. To summarize Paniponi Dash! It's all about Rebecca’s daily struggles in managing her main class while at the same time confronting bizarre forces lurking in the corner as the story goes on. The only twist the story has to offer to differentiate it from the rest of other slice-of-life school comedy is that Rebecca is an 11-year old genius that graduated top university in America. After Graduation, she flew to Japan to become a high school teacher. . In my opinion, she is better off doing things that might benefit the human race with her self-proclaimed superior intelligence, than doing a profession she literally has no passion for. That alone for me as an initial story doesn’t impress me or appeal to me even if it’s just a comedy show. But wait! There’s more! Not being satisfied for being just a plain old-school comedy. The show also has the audacity to add some sci-fi and paranormal stuff in the mix. It is revealed in the first minute of the show intro that Rebecca's intellectual potential has caught the eyes of these weird-looking mushroom head aliens and decided to monitors her every action 24/7. Does this show bother to explore an interesting story as to why Rebecca is special or explore the origin story of why is a genius in the first place? The short answer is no. It was never mentioned again in the next 26 episodes and the aliens only serve as trouble makers to do more weird shenanigans to Rebecca Life thus feeding the show with random SciFi and paranormal humor. The show even bothers to show the alien daily lives in a comedic fashion that serves no real purpose aside from Gag Filler. And that’s what will you expect in Paniponi Dash Main Story. The spoiler ends here. The main heart and blood of this series is comedy. I usually put the comedy in a separate section when I made reviews for school comedy. But for Paniponi Dash! case, I will be talking about both the comedic elements and the characters side by side to explain my points on what I found funny and not funny in this show. Let’s start with the characters first. I have an issue when a show has far too many characters and not a single one stands out or makes an everlasting impression on me. In your standard school comedy you might get 3 to 5 characters sometimes more than 10 but Paniponi Dash! has like 20+ plus regular characters and some other extras along the way. And not a single one gets a fair amount of characterization, fails to retain their sparks in a few episodes, or worst a few minutes of screen time. Taking into account the show bother to highlight some of them but don’t have the dedication to make the audience feel invested in them. For a school comedy, characters don’t really need to be complex or written with layers of personality but they need to have some additional identity aside from their core punchlines. If you are going to use them for more than 1 to 3 episodes at least add a little bit of character. The only character I see that changes a little bit is Rebecca's interaction with her students and that's about it. Characters in this show are defined by their surface-level traits, not personality but particular physical traits that define their one-liner joke. For example, there is a character defined as looking bland and boring, another one describes having a shiny forehead while there is a girl describe for her hairstyle, not joking. Kind of an offensive joke trait if you ask me. And sadly, they never improve upon the status the show gave them. And we spotted the first problem of the show, the characters feel irrelevant. The show never invents new gag to make the characters funny, they continue repeating the joke over and over again in every single episode. It gets boring really fast. Sure, the first 1 or 3 joke getting repeating is ok, but abusively repeating it from episode 1 is pretty overkill. Another thing I want to highlight is referential humor. I really don’t think this show nailed what makes those references funny in the first place. Instead of making a creative satire of the source material, they just added it there without any meaningful context thus a cheap knock-off parodies. I can forgive if the reference is in small amounts since a lot of school comedy does the same tactic but in Paniponi Dash! it is a constant barrage minute by minute that even the most hardcore of hardcore otakus might find overwhelming. Referential Humor occupies the majority of its episode runs. For Visual complaints, not so much except for CGI NPC's is just an uncanny valley for me. Sure it's intentional for comedic purposes and it was already done before by other shows. But for me, 2D NPC's has some charm on it on not alienating its setting and characters. And that’s sums up my negative gripe with the show comedy. Now after bursting the weight in my chest, let's move on to the interesting and funny part of the show that made me believe it’s not a total dumpster fire. When it comes to jokes and humor that are not related to any outside media source, the show is funny for me. Simple conversations about daily living and personal interests are very engaging to watch. Added with some very enjoyable soundtracks between the comedy and the relaxing moments, the show has a good ambiance in setting the mood. Too bad this good trait of the show is overshadowed by the creator’s ambitious nature in making the show as explosives and chaotic as possible. When it comes to creativity and animation, I give this show a pass. I can appreciate the sure amount of passion and effort place in the visual presentation of this anime. Combining 2D animation with real-life still images with eye-pleasing color choices. Even on complicated sequences like SciFi machinery and fast-paced action, the animation is very fluent and consistent which some other referential comedies failed to replicate. Studio Shaft also improves upon the art style of the source material making an extra plus in my book. Final Thoughts It is obvious by this point Paniponi Dash! sole purpose is delivering a different approach to the ever-developing boom of the cute girls doing cute things sub-genre. It's quite an experimental series since this is the time when Shaft is still trying new things to spice up the visual experience. I admit because of this experimentation the anime visually made an identity for itself at the time. Thought because of this trial and error pace took a toll on the character writing and possible potential the show can produce. To me, the show can be a potentially good slice of life series since it has the elements. A relatable setting, relaxing atmospheric soundtrack, and probable likable characters if they were flesh enough. But that’s just me wanting the show to be more than just a wacky flavor of the seasoned comedy. I can’t really blame the show if it decided to focus on the comedy elements since the plot itself is a joke. But it also works against its since the gag is so random and trivial, it gets less impact as the show continues. If the series lasted long enough before the comedic magic grew stale, I would find this show memorable and recommendable but it's 26-episode series that repeats its joke. It gets less and less engaging over time for having a lack of direction to its characters. I’ve lost interest around episode 7 when nothing is actually changing. I found it bad because of that. When it comes to referential comedy, it’s always a hit or miss to me. But when it does hit, it’s pretty enjoyable. I like when they pay tribute and homage to very classic anime like Gunbuster and other mecha shows but that is not enough to keep my attention. The very thing that I acknowledge and happy that Ponopani Dash! anime existing is that it gave way for better adaptations of series Shaft created with similar style and cinematic approach. They improve upon the same concept with Hidamari Sketch which one of the best Slice of Life School Comedy the studio ever made and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei that perfected the comedic formula. Especially the usage of the same visual style in the Monogatari franchise. Thus establishing Shaft Animation style as a whole. Final Scoring: Characters Mediocre (4/10) Comment: Characters define by 1 line jokes and appearance. Need fleshing out to become memorable. Story Mediocre (4/10) Comment: There isn't any plot, what you read in the synopsis is basically what you get in the entire show. Comedy is a hit or miss. Music Good (7/10) Comment: Have a very good set of soundtracks ranging from calm to wacky. In my opinion, OP 2 is the best song "Roulette☆Roulette by by Momotsuki Gakuen Ichinen C Gumi". Very fun to listen to from time to time. Art Good (7/10) Comment: Experimental and Consistent. It's a pass. Enjoyment (6/10) Above Average Comment: There are times the show is very fun. There are times it's very boring. Since this is a referential humor-heavy show that is also very dated now from the time I write this review this 2021. Not all folks will enjoy it. I am already familiar with the culture and seen quite a lot of old media references. because I have no problem with most references and get some giggles for it. Overall (4.9 or 5/10) Ok or Meh School Comedy Series Comment: I am saying it now. The only thing that interests me to watch Paniponi Dash! that serves as a stepping stone in improving Shaft's later works. The premise and appeal alone of this show are not enough for me to actually continue finishing it. To me, I only recommend this anime if they are looking for a wacky comedy made in the early '00s. Other than that they are even better off watching newer comedy shows if they want referential humor they can relate to. To me, this anime is a relic of the past that nobody is obligated to or a must-watch. But if you want to travel back in time to see what is Shaft is all about in 2005, go ahead and try it. And Always Thanks for Reading

"Rebecca Miyamoto. Born of an American father and a Japanese mother. Graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the youngest graduate in the school's history. She then returned to Japan to become a highschool teacher. However, she was only ten years old at the time." The success of a little manga-turned-anime you might have heard of called Azumanga Daioh spawned a long chain of imitators, eventually developing into the slice-of-life sub-genre that many of us know colloquially as the "cute girls doing cute things" genre. Pani Poni Dash is one of those shows, and that, coupled with the quote above, ought to be all I reallyneed to say about the plot for you to know exactly what this show is like... notice I said ought to be. The show's creators decided that putting a new hat on an old face wasn't enough for them, and the end result defies concise classification, so I won't even try. What's really important is that this show is intended as a comedy, which is one of the most subjective genres in existence. As a consequence, it can be extremely difficult to give such shows an honest and fair critique. The approach I'll take for this review will be to look at what the show tries to achieve, how it attempts to make its audience laugh, and whether those moments "work". I hinted that this show was rather unique, and that's partially due to the visuals. Production studio SHAFT and director Akiyuki Shinbo are known for blending standard animation with stop-motion photograpy, numerous art shifts, simpler color choices when they're effective... what I'm trying to say is that the look of the show is memorable, and this especially applies to the opening and ending themes. At its most basic the animation doesn't really impress and the moe character designs are pretty generic, but it always gets the job done, and when the show decides to try out a different animation style they consistently up the ante. The show also makes interesting use of the foreground, which adds an extra degree of expressiveness. If I have one bone to pick, it's that the extras are very, very ugly. Considering the extras in each classroom have different designs and they're all ugly, I can only assume it's intentional for... whatever reason. Overall, though, this show looks mostly fine. I've heard some people say that SHAFT's odd visuals are their way of saving money, and there may be a grain of truth to that, but it still leaves a definite impression. The soundtrack is about what you'd expect from a slice-of-life anime: relaxed or quirky when it needs to be, a bit repetitive but never really jarring. This is in part because there are several episodes during which we're taken out of the typical classroom setting and into several more outlandish scenarios, and in each case the music adapts suitably. It's not particularly memorable music, but it's mostly fine and I guess that's all I have to say about it. "About what you'd expect" and "mostly fine" are also what I'd use to describe the Japanese cast, which is pretty much comprised of typical soft moe-girl voices. Never bad, but they don't impress either. The dub, on the other hand, was handled by the now-infamous ADR director Steven Foster. For those not familiar with his work, Foster has a tendency to take excessive liberties with the material he's given. This includes inserting profanity or mean-spirited comments in odd places, along with an uncomfortable combination of overacting and underacting. All his usual stuff is here, and in particular the voice acting in this show comes off as both high-pitched and wooden. There are several good voice actresses here, so I'm inclined to blame that on Foster. Still, it doesn't really detract from the show, and in a roundabout way it actually sort of matches. So, even though Pani Poni Dash! is technically a highschool comedy, the show's situational humor has remarkably little to do with actual highschool. Its scenarios range from searching for a lost cowlick to fighting off alien mushroom spores to an archaeological dig to a battle against a giant comet in space, the list goes on. That's just the stuff that happens episode by episode; even the supposed "everyday life" at the school is filled to the brim with hidden rooms, weird animals, and some things I can't even identify, and there's almost always something happening in the background. There's a camera crew that seems to be recording the show (they obviously have no idea what they're doing) and a group of aliens who seem to be monitoring Rebecca and her students from orbit. This show makes enough references to stump even the most hardcore of otaku at least once or twice. The writers put so much effort into filling the school with weird and interesting ideas, in fact, that they completely forget to give any of them punchlines. Those are kind of important, guys. The biggest problem with the situational humor here is that the writers make the common mistake of assuming that "weird" or "random" automatically equate to "funny", without anything clever or relevant to hold the joke together. This isn't high-class humor, but if it's handled with a good timing it can still work. The problem? Pani Poni Dash! has no restraint. It essentially fails as a comedy for the same reason that Hellsing TV fails as a horror: it can't set up its audience's expectations properly. It's one thing to hit us with something random and out-of-the-blue at the last moment we'd expect it, quite another to shove that kind of thing in our face all the time without ever letting us build up a sense of normalcy. Once the weirdness stops being unexpected, it's not fun anymore. A good portion of the stuff that happens we're expected to laugh at it because it's there and it's weird, and that's pretty much it. When the punchline to a good portion of the jokes is "I don't get it", you know you have a problem. The show will make references simply to make the audience say "wow, that sure is a reference you just made". I mentioned that the show makes frequent art shifts, which are handled competently from a technical standpoint, but the writers never do anything witty with them. If you're going to switch to an RPG-esque visual style, why not make it an episode about videogames? It's not that hard to justify these things. Even if they don't handle their situational comedy well, some shows get by on good character-based humor, but that's not the case here either. Like many other shows of its ilk, Pani Poni Dash! basically revolves around the antics of a group of schoolgirls, with the added "gimmick" of a kid-teacher who tries with varying levels of success to act like an adult but still shows her childish side. Then there are the students, ranging from Himeko, a hyperactive girl with a hair problem and a verbal tic (maho), to Ichijou, the class representative who constantly straddles the line between evil mastermind and... Osaka, if we're making Azumanga Daioh comparisons. But that's just a tiny portion of the cast, especially if you bring in the students and teachers from other classrooms. With such diversity, this show should have the potential for a wealth of character-based comedy. But then the series completely blows the most important element of character-based comedy: making the characters likable and believable. There's not much character to like, seeing as a good portion of them are essentially comprised of one or two jokes, like the clumsy girl and the cosplay girl. Seeing Becky's rabbit Mesousa fail to pick up an object because he doesn't have fingers gets old really fast. There's also big, muscular, masculine-looking girl named Zula, and a cat who claims he's God, haunts vending machines, and happens to be another Azumanga Daioh reference. Once again, the joke is that they exist and that's it. This kind of half-assed, repetitive writing does not good humor make. The show never gets its characters to play off of each other in any clever ways, either, often resulting in a reliance on out-of-character moments just to force out a joke. For example, there was one episode where everyone suddenly decided to take advantage of a girl for being "too nice", even the ones who aren't usually smart or mean enough to do such a thing. Worse still, some of the characters can be terribly jarring. Your mileage may vary, but it's hard to find Rebecca's "cuteness" endearing when she's so bitterly cynical all the time, and an eventual look into her backstory reveals that she was incredibly introverted and distant when she went to college, which make her occasional lapses into an innocent child less plausible, not moreso. As a result, most of the time she just comes off as a precocious brat. That's to say nothing about Himeko and her goddamn Maho, which can become positively unbearable. The reason I said the English dub didn't really detract from the experience is because there's really nothing to detract from--the characters already act so unnatural (and in many cases mean-spirited) that it can be hard to tell where the show ends and Foster begins. Pani Poni Dash! is ultimately a series of missed opportunities. The few (and I mean very few) moments where this show genuinely managed to make me chuckle were when the show took a simple but neat idea and then followed it through to a weird-but-logical conclusion. It's not hard stuff, which makes the show's failure to pull it off all the more frustrating. This series does everything it can to get the audience's attention while failing to do anything to deserve it. It's immature, is what I'm getting at, and loud and obnoxious to boot. Just to clarify, I do not hate this show. At first I hated it, but as I neared the end all my rage had more or less burned out. That's not to say this show is an acquired taste, if anything it's an acquired immunity. By the time I finished, I didn't even care enough to hate this show, it had just become boring, which is the one thing I never thought this attention-seeking brat of a show would become. This isn't anywhere close to the worst I've seen in an anime; I know there are some people out there who will enjoy this, and it should be easy to tell from the first episode or two whether you're one of those people. Despite that, I can't bring myself to recommend this show in any capacity, not even on a "give it a chance if it's put in front of you" level. What it comes down to is this: all of the shtick in Pani Poni Dash! I've seen done better in other anime, some of which can't even be considered good. That more than anything should speak for where I stand with this series.

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