Oyasumi punpun

Punpun is an ordinary 11-year-old student from Japan. An honest idealist and incorrigible romantic, the protagonist watches how his life changes quickly when a new girl, Aiko Tanaka, comes to his class. The boy learns how fragile relationships can be and how difficult it is to abandon the illusions of a naive childhood. When Punpong once witnesses how his father offends his mother, he brings a new lesson for himself: those whom he once considered an example for himself were not at all what he thought.

This is Inio Asano’s deep mangaka story of growing up, full of conflicting emotions and intractable problems.

• Punpun Onodera ( 小 小 野寺 野寺 プ ン プ ン ) is an ordinary student with low self-esteem, his image changes during the manga, but most often he is depicted as a bird. Communicates with God when he is depressed, calling him using the phrase "God right, God right, tili-tili-bom." In love with Aiko.
• Aiko Tanaka ( Jap. 田中 愛 子 ) - studied with Punpun in elementary school, because of problems in the family is quite depressed.
• God ( Jap.神) is a creature depicted with a photograph of a head with an afro that appears in front of Punpun in difficult times.
• Punpun's mom ( Japanese:野寺 雄 Onodera Yuiti) - she suffers from mood swings and anger. She has a very controversial relationship with Punpun to whom she gives her last name Onodera after she divorced her father.
• Punpun’s uncle (大 隈 翠) is the brother of Punpong’s mother, who looks after him when his mother goes to the hospital.
• Sati Nanjou (南 条 幸) is a girl whom Punpun meets as an adult, starting a mangaka .

After his editor rejected the idea of ​​creating a combat fantasy manga set in a hot spring , Inio began a search for a new story. In a desire to break out of the role of creator of a positive youth manga, he came up with a story about Punpun, for the design for which he was inspired by his own scribbles ^[1] .

The manga was originally conceived as a romantic story with a turning point in which twenty-year-old Punpun commits a murder, after which he and Aiko would have to flee, and the plot would develop according to the concept of a road movie . Choosing the ending, Asano first leaned toward the idea where Sati's child falls from the railway platform and, saving him, Punpun dies. However, the author decided that this was too “a good” ending. Wishing the worst ending of the story for the hero, he left him alive, believing that "it is harder to live than die" ^[2] .

Asano planned to draw the manga in seven volumes, but in the end there were thirteen of them, and work on the manga lasted almost seven years. The plot has increased due to the addition of new characters and their stories. For example, the author came up with Seki, Shimizu and Pegasus while working on manga. He also paid more attention to some heroes than he had originally expected. For example, the storyline of Uncle Punpong or the frequent appearance of God ^[2] .

Backgrounds were made using digital photo processing . During work, Inio resorted to the help of assistants ^[2] .

Punpun in the manga is depicted as a cartoon pigeon so that the reader can identify with the character without being distracted by his appearance. Also, such an image helps to surprise an unsuspecting reader who, on first reading, may find this a sweet story. A caricature he appears only to readers, and the characters see him as an ordinary person. At the same time, Asano never did the human design of Punpong ^[2] .

The manga has a lot of symbolism. For example, in the first chapter there is a scene where Punupun and his father look through a telescope and observe a summer-autumn triangle , consisting of three stars: Vega , Altair and Deneb. In Japanese mythology, the star Vega is represented by Princess Orihime, and Altaira is the cow shepherd Hikoboshi, who fell in love. With the addition of Deneb, the stars form an already summer-autumn triangle, which creates an allegory for the love triangle of Punpun, Aiko and Sati in the future, where Punpun is Hikoboshi. In the eleventh volume, the author again hints at this, portraying Punpun with bull horns ^[2] .

This is not the only case of Punpong's transformation in manga. At some points, it was also drawn as a tetrahedron or in a hittoko mask. According to Asano, there is no hidden meaning behind these images: “Manga is a mixture of things that make sense or have absolutely no” ^[2] .

First, the manga was published in Weekly Young Sunday and after its closure migrated to Big Comic Spirits ^[2] .

Many readers have described manga as depressing and surreal. . However, Inio himself does not like such definitions of his work. The dark, depressing narrative even affected the sale of manga. The first time sales fell after the publication of Yuichi's flashback, the second - after the scene of the murder of Aiko’s mother ^[2] .