When one reads the first volume of Goodnight, Punpun by Inio Asano, they face the cute and funny-looking bird-like protagonist living through his elementary school years. He is surrounded by friends, has big dreams, and falls in love with the transfer student, Aiko. All seems well until the moment a tragedy strikes in his house. His mother’s hurt, his dad is not allowed near them anymore, and Punpun is forced to live with his uncle. From then on, things will only get worse, up until the point of no return.

Goodnight, Punpun is a manga about hopelessness. Hiding behind the sweet aspect of the bird-looking family and the cute elementary children, there is a heavy, traumatic story about not being able to follow your dreams.

Punpun’s Unique Design: The Shapeshifting Protagonist

The first distinctive visual trait of Goodnight Punpun is the protagonist’s appearance throughout the manga. Punpun is a small bird with only a few lines to define him. His family – mother, father, and uncle – looks similar, with only a couple of traits to differentiate them. This feature is particularly striking, as the world around them is realistic, including the other characters. However, everyone treats him no differently.

Punpun’s weird appearance has more than one purpose. Since Punpun doesn’t have a human look, it’s much easier to identify with him. Furthermore, Punpun’s design changes as the character grows up and experiences new things, in increasingly absurd ways. For example, during moments of uncertainty or confusion, the author decides to draw him as a floating triangle with a smug face.

Like in other works such as Solanin, a distinctive trait of Asano is the backgrounds, which in Goodnight Punpun gain particular meaning. There is a strong, constant opposition between the backgrounds originally photographed and Punpun’s minimalist traits. Asano draws on the photographs, achieving an extremely realistic and detailed result. It almost seems like the characters were in the real world, while Punpun stands out as a kind of anomaly.

Unreliable Adults and the Struggle to Keep Promises

Adults in Goodnight, Punpun are a complicated matter. Starting from his family, no adults seemed reliable enough to offer him guidance in his childhood years.

While Punpun’s father is largely absent and seemingly uninvolved, Punpun’s mother is erratic and seems to blame her son for ruining her life. The only one who tries to relate to the young boy is his uncle Yuichi, but he is a flawed man himself. Even the teachers get angry at the students for no clear reason. In general, they do not seem to care much about anything, letting life lead them wherever it wants.

This is not only the case for Punpun but also for his friends. Because of this, they grow up disenchanted, inherently aware that their dreams will never be fulfilled and that they will have to look after themselves. Alienation is a deeply felt theme in Japan, as shown by other works such as Welcome to the N.H.K. by Takimoto Tatsuhiko. And Asano continued exploring it in his next series, Dead Dead Demons De-De-De-De-Destruction. In this case, the opposition comes from a story about ordinary high school students while an alien invasion is underway.

Broken Dreams and Harsh Realities in Goodnight, Punpun

In an interview (contains spoilers), Asano describes Punpun as a character brought to the extreme by his principles.

At first, Punpun is very pure and honest, and he takes things too seriously. He’s a character who thinks he has to follow through with whatever he says he’ll do. There’s no grey area for him.

Inio Asano

Punpun tries to distance himself from the carelessness of the adults by holding himself to very strict principles and promises. He, like every kid of his age, tries to find a way to be comfortable in the world. However, there is just no way to be comfortable in an uncomfortable world – much like the world Zerocalcare presents in Tear Along The Dotted Line. For every character in the manga, happiness is a concept that is as unreachable as distorted. A major factor in this general disillusionment is the belief, expressed with confidence by Aiko as she meets Punpun, that the Earth is slowly falling apart. Similar to the hopelessness described in Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up.

Love and Conflict: Punpun’s Complex Relationships

It is Aiko herself who becomes the purpose of Punpun, almost unwillingly. He sees in her his own redemption and his chance at happiness. However, Goodnight Punpun is not just about a love story: it is actually a love triangle. As explained by Asano, Punpun’s whole story is foreshadowed in the first chapter:

 In chapter one, there’s a scene where Punpun’s dad looks through a telescope and talks about the summer triangle […] Vega is Orihime, Altair is Hikoboshi — and then with the addition of Deneb, it becomes the summer triangle. Satchan similarly creates the triangle with her and Punpun and Aiko — or Hikoboshi and Orihime.

Inio Asano

Like Watanabe in Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood, Punpun’s conflict between his need for Satchan, another girl he will meet later, and his love for Aiko is a conflict between life and death. Through his conflicted feelings and increasingly toxic relationships, Punpun explores a hidden side of being human that Asano brings to the fore with abrupt sincerity.