Goodnight Punpun (おやすみプンプン)

Hey Charlie, how are you doing?

It's me again but today I'm not going to talk about Rock or Metal, today I'm going talk about a manga. I've just finish it and I felt like "I have to write an article about it". So today I'm going to talk about a manga written by a guy called Inio Asano (the guy on the photo at the beginning of the article) published from 2007 to 2013.

The story is in fact the life of the main character called Punpun, where we see him evolve from a little child to a grown up adult. We see him meeting his first love, moving from a place to another, facing major family issues, etc... But here it's not your everyday fun and distracting slice of life book, we are in front of a manga called a Seinen (basically, a manga made for adults) and let me put a huge warning sign here: this manga is going to play as much as possible with the dark sides of your mind and soul. Despite his title that can make it look like a book for young children, this manga is dark, very dark. The theme aborded are quite serious and (to me) extremly well treated; we have for example: the notion of god, religions and sects, family, murder, sex, insanity, perversion, innocence... Honestly, I knew that this manga was darker than you thought but not to this point... But don't get me wrong, this is not scary, it's simply making a lot of thing in perspective thtough its characters.

And let's talk about these characters. We have for example Aiko, the first love of Punpun with an awful mother, Pegasus a weirdo that leads a sect of "lovers", Yuichi who is Punpun's uncle, the one called "God" that comes to visit Punpun from one time to another and who is pictured as a guy with an afro, Nanjou a determined mangaka, and of course, the main character: Onodera/Punyama Punpun. You know Charlie, I haven't read that much books in my life, but I can assure you that this character is certainly one of the most complexe and well developed you'll ever see. And we can really feel an evolution of the character thanks to one thing: his design. Punpun is represented as a small white bird in 2 dimensions, just like the rest of his family. But we can see him evolve since he goes from this:

                                                                              

                                                                               to this:

 The drawing of the author is... well somehow unique because for the first time in the manga, I really had the impression to see exact faces of real people. And talking about Asano's drawing skills... Well just look at that:

Beautiful right? I think I'll leave you with these images Charlie ;).

To conclude, I would say that this manga just gained a place in the category of: books that changes your life. This is a must read, with lots of symbolism, various interpretations, an extremly moving story, super interesting characters... but you have to be warned: this book can be extremly dark and I would suggest to read it only if your mind is in good health (yes, the end is quite dark and "insane"). And for the ones who want to read it: it's available in French (Kana editions), or English (Viz Media editions) and it's 13 books long (also available on scan).

I'll leave you on these words, bye Charlie, tell me if you liked it and if you would like to see other masterpieces like this ;).