Bleak, pessimistic, uncharismatic...
Oyasumi Punpun shows the world through a dark lens, grotesque murky darkness blots out the entire world. Desperation, violence, and desire run rampant frequently painting the world as dark as one could realistically view it. With characters often finding/putting themselves in the worst possible scenarios. Spread throughout the long stretches of cold cruelty are small breaks of softness, of growth, evolution, passion. I'm sure it's no accident that those breaks serve as the best points of the series, those moments of fragile humanity are the reward of suffering through the stretches of darkness that the story presents.

The story of Oyasumi Punpun follows a number of different characters with little physicality tying them together, instead using metaphors and symbolism to draw connections between each other more often than not. Its a very mature way of telling a story where certain things can be easily missed if the reader isn't really thinking about what's being said as well as what is being shown. The structure of the story is impeccable, from the way every panel is drawn to how it sets up for each climactic moment within the story based on a single detail 80 chapters ago, giving you hints as to how things will twist, while still keeping you guessing for exactly how it will go down. 9/10

The art fits the story perfectly giving it an eerie and an extremely uncanny feeling, I don't know if the story was made to fit the art or vice versa, but it is a match made in heaven. The level of detail in some of the panels is crazy making some beautiful artwork while still capturing the expression and feeling that the story demands. Sometimes characters can be shown with extremely goofy or unrealistic expressions and personally it felt too jarring at times bringing me out of the moment. With that being said I can understand that those still add to the uncanny feelings that the story relies on so I can just kinda blot them out of my mind for the most part as they aren't too frequent. 10/10

Characters. While the other characters are good, Onodera is really the star of the show here being the most interesting, while changing a number of times shedding out of his skin, not always for the better, he is a product of his environment and the world he lives in, and those are not very good places. The way he is depicted, from the way he's drawn to how the author expresses his emotions to the reader is all unique without feeling cheap and corny. Looking at a deeper level Punpun is clearly well thought out being multifaceted with any number of different emotions he goes through at different points in the story and its really hard to put him down as one type of character or put him in a box, he's just too complex of a person for that. And that's really the best way to talk about the characters in Oyasumi Punpun, they feel human, its easy to understand why they do things after going through their life story, like real people. 9/10

I don't know how many people can say they "enjoyed" reading Oyasumi Punpun. So instead I decided to look at it as how motivated was I to go to the next chapter, to continue the story. For some reason throughout my whole read I felt something was missing, it was so draining to continue reading through sometimes and I was just, kind of bored, I wasn't feeling anything, I didn't care to see what happens next. I typically cry at any number of things when reading or watching anime so the fact that I was just going through this feeling bored... was a weird experience for me. Its hard for me to quantify why I just couldn't feel anything when reading, was the world just so dark that I couldn't give a damn, were the characters decisions so far from what I accept as right that I don't care, something intangible was just missing and for whatever the reason, I just wasn't interested in going to the next chapter for a large portion of my read. 6/10

Overall Oyasumi Punpun is a great story told through the eyes of excellent characters with brilliant art direction. It is one of, if not the, best executed coming of age/slice of life story I have read. It is dark, filthy, disgusting, and vile, if things such as rape, bullying, suicide, etc. etc. put you off, don't read, however, if those things don't bother you or for gods sake interest you, give it a read, it is a very unique series. 9/10