The manga “Goodnight Punpun” by Inio Asano is a dark and brutal look into abuse, mental illness, and culture in Japan. Throughout the manga the titular character Punpun both causes and endures suffering within those he meets, giving us a glimpse into the mind of him, his relationships, and his effect on others.
Sachi - Lifelong Insecurities
In the manga, Sachi Nanjou is a confident, independent woman with a harsh past. When she was younger, her family would make fun of her appearance constantly, causing her to develop bulimia and lose a lot of weight. When she went to college, she worked hard to get money for numerous plastic surgeries and completely changed the way she looked.
Sachi herself thinks that the surgeries helped her take control of her life and become more confident, saying “My face, body, lifestyle. I chose every aspect of myself with my own will.” She is agressively independent and makes sure to show those around her that she can take care of herself due to her past, but her toxic mindset of not needing anyone eventually causes her to crash and reflect on her relationships. She realizes that while she can be self sustaining, she ultimately needs connection, giving those who may relate to her struggles a hopeful ending.
Punpun - Cycles of Abuse
Punpun Onodera is a textbook example of “hurt people hurt people”. In the manga, he is represented mostly as a doodle of a bird, but his form changes depending on his mental state. His unique form compared to the surrounding manga represents how isolated he feels by everyone around him.
Throughout his life, Punpun has only seen love through numbness and sexual relationships, his mother being neglectful and his peers exposing him to harmful content at a young age- an experience that reflects Japan’s problem with oversexualization and mistreatment of women. Due to these events, Punpun has never experienced a true connection that wasn’t based on hatred or lust, leading him to hurt everyone he has a relationship with.
Through the manga, we see Punpun getting abused and witnessing abuse multiple times. Whether he knows it or not, the reader can see that he is very similar to his uncle Yuuichi, who has also hurt people in similar ways. Punpun never unpacks these events and keeps them bottled up, represented by him taking the form of a tetrahedron, said in the manga to be the strongest of all the shapes. Punpun never seeking any kind of help makes him a violent and angry person. The only person he has a somewhat stable relationship is is Sachi because she is not afraid to check him on his behavior, but almost all of the people he meets he hurts in some way.
Conclusion
The characters in this manga have all experienced some kind of childhood trauma. Some of them become self-sufficient to a fault, some need connection to feel whole. Some hurt others in the future, others cling on to abusers because its the only way they know how to love. The artist aims to explore how trauma can affect different people in different ways through the context of friendship, socialization, and Japanese culture.
