Panchi Line

My small obsession with Kotaro Uchikoshi continues as I delve into one of his latest works - Punch Line, an anime he worked on as the writer. I was interested in seeing how a story made by him in a completely different genre than Zero Escape would look, and what I didn’t expect was just how many conventions would return, even though some of them felt completely tied to his most famous VN series’ premise. With that said, let me start by describing what this show’s about. I’m gonna spoil the kind of stuff that I wouldn’t mind if someone else spoiled me on, but I’m probably above average in terms of spoiler tolerance, so this is your fair warning.

It’s actually not that easy to summarize the show just because of how much info we are constantly presented with, and because the story really likes to jump from detail to general, but let me try. Yūta Iritatsu is a boy of high-school-ish age who lives in a boarding house with four girls. One day he loses consciousness during an accident and after regaining it he finds himself in the middle of an out-of-body experience, with someone else possessing his body. He meets a cat spirit named Chiranosuke who starts explaining stuff to him - what happened, how being a spirit works, what sorts of powers he has and also what he needs to do in order to prevent the impending doom of an asteroid hitting the Earth and destroying everything. What follows is a confusing entanglement of conspiracies, secret organizations, extraordinary powers, time loops and incomprehensible motivations that lead into a contrived ending that probably wanted to feel weightier than it actually did.

Fans of Nonary Games will immediately recognise some of the more characteristic elements of Uchikoshi’s storytelling. Characters bringing up pop-science trivia out of nowhere. Supernatural phenomena ruled by very weird, arbitrary rules. Huge tonal shifts as tension gets broken by a completely unexpected joke, before diving right back into the seriousness. Shenanigans related to time travel and consciousnesses jumping between bodies. While I think it speaks poorly of a writer to hang on so tightly to their narrative quirks, so far they at least still fit the type of story Punch Line tells. But I’m not so sure about others. For one, this story feels just as claustrophobic as the Zero Escape titles. Unlike them hovewer, this one doesn’t feature an enclosed location - characters are free to leave and travel. But aside from a couple of scenes, everything takes place within a single household. And just like in ZE, what we learn about the outside from dialogues makes it really difficult to imagine the world existing and functioning, which was a big part of what made 999 and VLR’s atmospheres so unique and captivating. Here I’m not sure if it’s intentional (and if so, then why), or if it’s just the only way Kotaro knows how to tell stories, but I found it strange to say the least, considering that characters will sometimes leave the houses premises to do something, but it’s just not shown to the viewer and usually summarized in one sentence.

Overall I can’t say I was terribly engrossed or impressed. The ideas story was built on seemed even more randomly generated than in the aforementioned trilogy and they really didn’t connect into anything remotely meaningful or interesting. The nail in the coffin was pacing - as in Zero Escape, Uchikoshi likes to build tension with cascading mysteries and then suddenly reveal a bunch of stuff at once, but only those parts that don’t really tell us anything and only raise more questions, and then immediately sway into a completely different thread. I think the big part of what made this work was the actual gameplay aspect of solving puzzles to escape rooms, as the players get left alone with this new info they just got, wondering what it all could possibly mean, but at the same time they have to put it away and focus on something completely different in order to continue. In the animated show format there’s unfortunately no way to recreate the dynamics of interlocking story and gameplay, so it doesn’t really work if you try to tell the story in the same way. It results in a feeling of emptiness, as if something is missing. And when the big revelations start coming in, viewer doesn’t have gamer’s (or reader’s) agency over how fast the story progresses. There’s really no way to pause and take in the reveal (unless you want to pause the video, which, uh, I’m not really into, but you do you).

If pacing was the nail in the coffin then the humor would be the dirt covering it. Now, this is only my interpretation, but I think the title itself contains a joke, as the word “Punch” read in engrish sounds very similar to “Panty”, and the show constantly features the motif of women underwear. They serve as a catalyst for some of main character’s powers which is an excuse to constantly flaunt them into the “camera lens”, and later they serve as a weird form of tribute, not to mention they are heavily featured in otherwise great opening sequence (90 second song goes through 5 very different sections inspired by genres such as barbershop, vaporwave, martial, j-pop and musicals). There’s plenty of pervy humor and comedy of misunderstandings, very little of I personally found funny. There was one exception to that, the ghost cat Chiranosuke, who’s complete deadpan led him to saying stupid jokes and important story details in one breath, which was refreshing compared to stereotypically predictable behaviour of everyone else in the cast.

If you’re as obsessive about me about works of an author who once managed to pull at my heartstrings, even though it was long ago and untrue, then you’ll probably find Punch Line interesting in the same way I did. Perhaps that sort of manic storytelling gelling with dumb humor and colorful designs is exactly up your alley. Or maybe you’re just an unironic fan of Uchikoshi. I don’t guarantee you’ll like this show, but there’s a chance. For everyone else, I can’t recommend it.