Paniponi Dash! Volume 1: Lethal Lesson - Ain't It Cool News
- Ain't It Cool News
- Scott Green
- 11/08/06
- click here
"...its up-tempo, free-form absurdity bulldozes through logic."
"Perfect for fans of zany anime comedy."
The Pani Poni Dash formula could be equated to Nurse Witch Komugi crossed with Azumanga Daioh. This high strung geek parody meets relatively more mundane school situation comedy is a belt and suspenders approach to humor, varying the jokes enough that some are bound to catch. Yet, the success rate isn't evenly distributed. The results are perfect for the fans of zany anime comedy. It doesn't just skate around logic the way a sitcom might. Instead, its up-tempo, free-form absurdity bulldozes through logic. This approach is one of the more successful aspects of the anime, and the effect might be welcome news to fans of anime like Excel Saga or Hare+Guu. However viewers who were surprised to discover the degree to which they enjoyed Azumanga Daioh might embrace the Pani Poni Dash experience a bit more tentatively.
There is some contradiction in the attempt to work both with everyday minutia and with wilder humor spun out of a cultural consciousness. The classroom that the anime focuses on is 1-C at Peach Moon high school. The core situation comedy contrivance is that the instructor is Rebecca Miyamoto, an eleven year old, half-Japanese, MIT graduate.
In this context, an 11 year old school instructor doesn't stand out as an exceptional conceit. There are jokes build around it, such as Rebecca's reaction to frightening situations, which involves hiding behind the class room's drapes (not exactly sure why the classroom has drapes), but more often her traits are used as quirks among quirks.
Pani Poni Dash works on its own, odd concept of equilibrium, where the exceedingly out of the ordinary is greeted as a minor curiosity , and the people who should be representative of the norm are generally anything but. In some cases, caricature gets mixed in with stereotypes. So, a studious girl is given a giant, glinting forehead and minor ESP. Or an unruly, hyper girl implodes if her hair cowlick is removed.
Some jokes are reflections of character reception and self-definition. For example, characters who fade out when not commanding series attention. This fading happens to most of the unnamed characters in one episode and it is a running gag for a specific "plain" girl in other episodes. Perception that isn't quite reality is also applied to a super powered "magic girl" who appears to be a regular, non-supernatural student dressed in a pink uniform, wearing a pink Florence Nightingale cap, and carrying a pink wand.
Other characters seem to be invented out of whole cloth. Maybe Rebecca is supposed to be some sort of parody of young teachers, but it seems more likely that she is an original comic device. Similarly, a bulbous, thug who appends "dot com" to the end of every sentence could be a joke directed at tough-guy-lingo, but he seems to b just be an inspired gag.
Other jokes revolve are outright supernatural, such as a sweet girl who finds in amusing to tap on a person's pressure points, causing them to experience chronic diarrhea, or the characters stumbling on a camp of kappa turtle monsters in the process of building interplanetary rockets.
The human dimension is not Pani Poni Dash's strong suit. From a character composition standpoint the nuance of Azumanga Daioh is on a completely different level. Even compared to a more patently exaggerated anime like Galaxy Angel (which shares some writing staff with Pani Poni Dash), the characters seem more like vehicles for specific gags than developed personalities. Even Rebecca, who is more multi-faceted than most, often seems more like an overly refined comic device than a personality with space to react naturally. As a result, the chemistry between characters is dependent on the intended use for the given characters. Interaction tends to gel best when the series has built paired routines, as with several well developed eccentric/straight person duos sprinkled among the secondary characters. However, spread thin over a large cast, with most of the characters executing on their own jokes, the inter character dynamic is flimsy.
The other tenuous aspect of the humor is the parade of pop cultural shout outs.
Each episode opens with Earth being observed by an upside down Star Trek craft, staffed by aliens that look like a Gogg mobile suit from Gundam. Don't know a Gogg from a Hizack or a Rick Dom? Well, the majority of the reference humor is going to be over the head of anyone who isn't an ultra-hard-core fan. Part of Pani Poni Dash's idea of humor is to fill background black boards with references to what many viewers would consider to be obscure anime or video games, or esoteric references to more familiar ones. Some of this, such as the Gogg-aliens, is preposterous enough to be amusing, but the majority adds little beyond atmosphere. Even with the DVD's "ADV-Notes: option, which can be enabled to provide copious explanations, there is not enough familiarity for a pay-off. If these were native jokes, the presentation might have worked brilliantly, but here, its success rate is marginal.
A noteworthy aspect of the references is that while Pani Poni Dash features a primarily female cast, the references are almost completely to male-oriented media. The possible exception being a reference to theatrical drama shoujo Glass Mask. Like Azumanga Daioh and many others, Pani Poni Dash offers plenty of cross-over appeal, but don't be surprised when that mostly female cast bends and twists to pose in such a way as to suggest T and A.
Despite what doesn't work, the constant barrage approach to humor does manage a sufficient quotient of live rounds. Throughout, the strategy is quantity over the purity of an idea.
Each episode hovers around a specific situation. The 25 minute, rather than 12 minute format could have been a stretch, but the series figures out how to fill the time.
Whatever can be fit in, is fit in. There are fourth wall jokes that pull back to reveal a sound-stage or feature collisions between characters and a camera. There are funny animal gags, such as Rebecca's perpetually moping stuff rabbit. There is running absurdist humor, such as a gag with the cat deity that lives in all hot beverage dispensers to warn the drinks with his body heat. Toilet humor... Scholastic humor.... Linguistic humor... (it's a bit hard to buy that the former resident of American couldn't say Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but it's still cute).
Those who are disinclined towards or selective about madcap anime comedies are might not be won over by Pani Poni Dash, but for those who appreciate the style, there are more than enough laughs to justify the series.
Posted on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 (Archive on Friday, December 08, 2006)