A small step in the Preservation of Media: The Sad Story of Puni Puni Poemy

This came up briefly when me and Mildra, during an episode of The Adventures of the Monk and the Monarch, talked ADV. Puni Puni Poemi, the original DVD edition, came with a pamphlet detailing an exaggerated and half fictional version of the making of the show. This isn't something I have seen posted anywhere else online, and since the show wasn't a huge success its something largely lost to the modern era.

So, while I don't have the best camera, I give to you pictures of the four page pamphlet, and a word for word written transcript so you don't have to read off the images. They are just there to verify this is in fact what was written. It's a real shame this is largely lost media, because this behind the scenes stuff is the most entertaining aspect of the the show, which itself was a bit disappointing.

Anway, hope you enjoy reading what is one of my favorite things to have ever come out of an anime.

The Sad Story of How Puni Puni Poemy! Was Born.

“Let's Sell our souls and make a pretty girl anime filled to the brim with selling points!” That is what Producer Kitayama at Victor thought. All Sorts of Things had happened and he was tired. He was going to get dirty. He would make a half-baked pretty girl anime that would have his coworkers, editors at anime magazines, the staff, the voice actors, and the fans of previous shows pointing with scorn.

“If I'm going to do this anyway, it'd be great to do this as a magical girl show. Oh, come to think of it!” Producer Kitayama suddenly remembered the fiction anime (Notation 1) Puni Puni Poemy that appeared in Excel Saga, a TV anime he had produced recently. He seemed to recall that the designs Satoshi Ishino came up with were pretty cool.

Producer Kitayama took another look at Excel Saga. “...This'll work!” His hunch turned into conviction. The Previous Breakneck writing style could be brought down a notch and the magical girl side could have a little more dead space. If he was going to act, it had to be now! Producer Kitayama made a call to Nabeshin, a.k.a. Director Shinichi Watanabe. This was where the mistake started.

Nabeshine was all for it. It seemed fun that he would be free to do anything because it was an OVA, and he was short on money because of repairs to his LanEvo (Notation 2). The two took their plans to J.C. Staff. J.C. Staff's Producer Matsukura just happened to have a hole in his work schedule and immediately accepted the production of it. This was where the regrets started. They called Studio Orphee.

Hideyuki Kurata turned it down, saying, “I don't want to write a magical girl show! But I'd do it if it were Samurai Maccione (Notation 3). Such was his foolish reply, so necessity dictated that Yosuke Kuroda would handle the composition and scripting.

Two 30-minute episodes would be a piece of cake, just more of the same old same old, an easy job before breakfast. The mistake went into a higher gear. The project meeting began. The main character, Poemi, would be an active girl in the 4th grade. Of course, she would actually be a magical girl, who protected Earth, Puni Puni Poemy. She would have a long-haired, quiet best friend. The best friend would have a total of seven siblings. Naturally, they would all be beauties! It would be beauties galore, ranging from career women to pretty little girls! The enemy mech would be a giant robot, of course. Since we're at it, let's bring out some tanks and fighters, too.

Speaking of which, I had my bike parked in Shibuya the other day, and someone had thrown trash in the basket. That's awful. Young people these days have no respect. Let's have Poemy take them out. But, will the story come together like that? Oh, Yosuke Kuroda will take care of it somehow. Don't worry, this is the man who wrote up Trigun and Ryvius all by himself. The mistake slowly began to accelerate.

Yosuke Kuroda made an offhand comment out of the blue. “The image of the main character, Poemi, is like Kobayashi.”

“That's it!!” The other staff members jumped on it.

Somewhere, the alarm indicating the decisive mistake went off and reverberated, but no one noticed it. It was decided that Yumiko Kobayashi would play Poemi. It was determined that Poemi would refer to herself as “Kobayashi” for some reason. New premises were added one after another. Her dream would be to become a voice actress, but she would suck at it. Her good point would be that she was wastefully energetic. Her family would run a beach cafe and her father would be Nabeshin. Her magical wand would be an opened and dried fish. By now, the mistake was going at full throttle, off the course, and beginning to go on a wild rampage, mowing down all related personnel and those in the gallery. The staff had already lost sight of their original goal. The only person who had not lost sight of himself was Satoshi Ishino, who was working diligently on coming up with cute character designs.

The scenario was finished. Yosuke Kuroda managed it somehow. But as expected, it was incoherent. However, it was funny, so the scenario was approved. And then, the storyboards... were not finished. Summer passed and Autumn came. Te autumn leaves colored the fields and mountains, sports fests began to take place, the Chief Cabinet Secretary resigned (Notation 4), and the storyboards were not finished. If it was on Channel 2 (Notation 5), we could probably write about it, but various accidental happenings that cannot be written about here came together and by the time the storyboards were done, the no-confidence motion against the Cabinet had been rejected (Notation 6). The staff vaguely began to be aware of the mistake. Puni Puni Poemy had already greatly deviated from the original intentions and metamorphosed into a 'wastefully cute, wastfully high-quality hyper an eccentric anime.” (To be continued.... right now)

*This story is roughly half-fictional

1. See Excell Saga, Episode 17 “Animation USA” (Volume 9)
2. LanEvo is a name of a car which is sold in Japan. The full name is Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
3. A Fictional Anime that also appears in Excel Saga, Episode 17. A Japanese Samurai travels to America and engages the Mafia in heroic life-or-death battle... supposedly.
4. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nakagawa resigned in late October 2000 over scandals.
5. Cannel 2 is a large, public message board where people are free to post whatever they want anonymously. Www.2ch.net
6. There was a no-confidence motion against Mori's Cabinet in late November 2000, which was rejected.

Producer Matsukura was at his own desk at J.C. Staff and he was worried. This was because the recording was coming up, but the animation for the first part wasn't making any progress at all. Based on the principle that “because it's an OVA, the quality should take priority over keeping to the schedule,”the animation for Poemy was steadily falling behind. Why do grade school kids take care of all their summer break homework in the last three days? The saying, “What you are as a child, you will be as a man,” was so apt, oh, man.

Producer Matsukura had seen much of life for his age, and every time a delivery date approached, he would become trapped in infinite loops of philosophical thought on the pitfalls he had fallen into. As he did so, he suddenly thought of his pet cat, who would only drink “Rokko's Tasty Water,” while he drank tap water.

Knowing Producer Kitayama, who's rather cowardly for all his big talk, he's probably telling outsiders that the release date was January, while the internal deadline at his company was a nice, calculated March release date or so, right around the end of the fiscal year. Having made this conjecture, Producer Matsukura reached for the telephone to make his preemptive strike with an “I'm sorry” phone call. It was almost sad just how accurate his read on Producer Kitayama's personality was.

Directly east of J.C. Staff, approximately two hours way by train, bus, and walking, somewhere in Chiba Prefecture, Yumiko Kobayashi's little heart was racing with the recording script in front of her. Her first lead role. I'll finally be playing the heroine. That the story of the anime was pitiful, that the main staff members consisted of Nabeshine and other even worse good-for-nothing adults, and on top of which, that the show was only a 2-volume mini-series, and that this lead role would probably do nothing to further her career as a voice actress did not enter into young Kobayashi's mind at all. Thinking was not her forte to begin with anyway.

The day of the recording came. Among all the veteran voice actors assembled there, Kobayashi could be in the lobby, watching the video tape that had been specially delivered to her the day before, matching her lines in the script. You may think that she could have just watched it before coming, but because she had only received it the day before, she had not had the time to get all her practice in. Even so, the fact that she had been handed the video in advance was a way for the staff to consoler her, or rather, show her consideration, by lessening the pressure on her on recording day. Kobayashi was raring to go. The time had come for her to exhibit the fruits of having continually observed the supreme talk of Kotono Mitsuishi, her much admired senior, during the recordings for Excel Saga.

Don't worry, it'll all be okay, Kobayashi will do it, if Ms. Mitsuishi could do it, Kobayashi could not do it...(!) The Recording took the whole day. Her seniors put up with her without a word of complaint. Some even gave her advice, as they found themselves unable to just stand by and watch. Kobayashi was happy. Becoming a full-fledged voice actress would be how she could preay her seniors. And tehn, next time, I have to be in a position to give advice to my juniors. Kobayashi would do her best and not lose heart. Yeah! Kobayashi swore in her heart as she gathered up the snacks that had been brought in to take home. The next day.

Kobayashi only remembered the steak dinner that she had been treated to after the recording. Half a month later. The new assistant at the editing studio, Namoi Nakamura, came into the office with high expectations. Nakamura loved anime and was a Nabeshin fan, and she had been asking her senior far in advance, “Please let me work on editing Poemy.” And today was the long-awaited day when she would be working on Poemy. Nakamura had had a bad cold since the day before, but she was in high spirits thinking, “I have youth and passion on my side. A cold is nothing!” Nakamura was far too potimistic.

Nabeshine belonged to the new generation of directors, who fully utilized PCs and digital technology in order to complete a show. In addition, he was not the type to calculate things out, preferring to make decisions based on the inspiration of the moment. To put it positively, he was a go-by-the-feel-of-it type of guy. To put it negatively, he had an irresponsible personality.

The editing work began at 10 in the morning, and by the time it was all done, it was 9 the next morning. Nakamura was utterly exhausted after the all-nighter and her cold had come back with a vengeance, but she had to start her next job in another hour. As Nakamura said, “Good Work,” and saw the staff members out, she looked as though she was ready to burst into tears.

At any rate, a great deal of sacrifice was made in order to complete the first part of Poemy. The reset would be okay if they just took this momentum and surged onto the second part. Aren't there going to be any events? Oh, good idea. What should we do with the closing party? Hot spring would be nice. The good-for-nothing adults had learned nothing and were sorry about nothing. It would still be a little longer before producer Kitayama would hang his head and make a conference reoport on the “Postponement of the Release for Part 2.” (Not to be continued...)

(No, seriously. There isn't anymore. Sorry. We tried.)