Puni Puni Poemy

Puni Puni Poemy is a two-episode original video animation that spun off from the *Excel Saga* manga and anime. It brings back several supporting characters from that series, along with much of its crew, especially director Shinichi Watanabe. The show parodies anime, manga, and pop culture in general, much like *Excel Saga* did, but here the main target and framework is the magical girl genre. The whole thing started as a running joke in one *Excel Saga* episode; Watanabe decided to push that joke as far as it could go and turned it into its own series.

Each of the two episodes runs about 26 minutes.

**Part 1 – Poemy is in a Bad Mood** The opening shows Poemy fighting shadowy versions of other magical girls, including Usagi Tsukino from *Sailor Moon*, Tickle from *Majokko Tickle*, Utena from *Revolutionary Girl Utena*, Megu and Non from *Majokko Megu-chan*, Sakura Kinomoto from *Cardcaptor Sakura*, Sally from *Sally, the Witch* (often called the first magical girl in Japanese animation), and, oddly, Mahoro from *Mahoromatic*—who isn’t a magical girl at all. A new school year begins, introducing the hyperactive Poemi Watanabe (nicknamed Poemy) and her adoptive parents, Nabeshin and Kumi-Kumi. Poemy races to school to be first there while repeatedly shouting her dream of becoming a voice actress. Her best friend, Futaba Aasu, supports her completely and is also perpetually sexually attracted to her. After school, Poemy and Futaba find Poemy’s parents and their robot dog crucified by Alien #1, an extraterrestrial assassin with unusual genitalia. With her home destroyed, Poemy moves in with Futaba and her six sisters. Later, a giant alien robot attacks the city. It turns out Futaba and her sisters are a secret team of super-powered heroines who defend Earth (also called Sol III). But their magic is purely defensive, so they can’t stop the robot. Poemy then gets a talking magic fish; when she uses it as a wand, it transforms her into Puni Puni Poemy, a powerful magical girl. After the standard transformation, though, she immediately tosses the wand aside, ignores magic, and attacks the robot with her bare hands.

**Part 2 – With a Dream Greater Than Earth** Picking up where the last scene left off, Poemy uses her new strength to tear through the alien mecha and destroy it.