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TW
This manga is a masterpiece, and an uncontested benchmark when it comes to distressing media, but i could never recommend it.

This is my experience with Oyasumi Punpun.
I finished this manga in January of 2024. It took me 2 months to finish. Not because its super long, its pretty short, but because it made me scared. I was scared of it, and the things it made me face, the things it made me feel. I was sick. This manga is the only manga, only piece of media that has made me feel this way. It made me pick smoking back up after being clean for over ... a year. It made me stressed about my own life. It made me nauseated, anxious, tired and miserable. It made me break down as a person, i stopped being able to function during those two months. I couldn't think clearly. Speaking became hard. I stopped getting hungry. I stopped being with friends.

Yet despite all that, despite all the things this manga made me feel, the fear, the anxiety, the relentless stress and nausea, i just couldn't stop reading. Sure, i'd take a break every once in a while, i'd go a day, a week, 2 weeks without reading sometimes, but it didn't help. That gut wrenching feeling stuck with me no matter how much i wished it away. When i finally finished it, that feeling still stuck. I took a smoke, i went outside. I went for a 3 hour walk in the freezing cold in the middle of the night. I walked over to a frozen over lake and sat on the bridge, smoking, thinking, fearing. I thought to myself "Why do i feel this way? Why can't it stop?" And thats when, for the first time in years, i thought about killing myself. I thought about jumping off that bridge, down onto the meters thick ice below. I had good friends, family that cared about me, I did well in school, i had a good life. Sure, i had some issues, but it really made me go that far, made me think about crossing that line. In the end, i didn't do it, thank god. But what if? I shudder to think about it.

This manga is one i love and hate. It is undoubtedly a masterpiece, but i can never recommend it to anyone. What I've written today might sound hard to believe, but it was my experience. Not everyone will feel the same way, some might be able to shrug it off, some might laugh, some might even find it amusing and childish. But if you have issues, if you struggle with mental health, please, don't read this manga.

I wish i could tell people to read Punpun, i wish it didn't make me feel the way it did, but if it didn't then it just wouldn't be what it is.

I am better now. I don't get nauseated, my anxiety is mostly gone, i rarely feel stressed at all, but i still fear this manga. Reading it made me a better person overall i think. It made me face aspects about myself and my life that i tried so desperately to ignore, and i thank it for that. It took me months to get over this manga, and its taken me a year to review it.

I could have talked about the humanity of the characters, the hate and empathy you will feel for all of them. I could have talked about the amazing art, which there's plenty off. I could have talked about the amazing plot, dialogue, innuendos and themes. But i didn't. All that comes second to what this manga does to you, because it makes you FEEL. It makes you THINK. It forces you to reach into the deepest recesses of your mind to claw out whatever doubt or stress you have, and confront it fully. And THATS the beauty of this manga. Simply saying "It has really good characters and the art is pretty" doesn't do it justice, because thats not what its meant to do. A normal review isn't enough to fully convey what this manga is, because its more than just a story on a page with cute girls on it, its not even close, and thats why i wrote this the way i did.

If you decide to read this manga, then i urge you to take frequent breaks, talk to people, discuss your feelings with people you trust, and to not let it consume you like i let it consume me. That is all.

Thank you for reading.