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THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS
Just about everything in my review of the first series applies here

Story:
It's a continuation of the first series though that doesn't mean the plot has gotten any better, if anything it got worse.
The stakes are higher, yet there is a strange and arbitrary time limit to things, but it doesn't get resolved in this one apparently it does in the sequel.

Art:
It's the same as before.

... Character:
It's probably even worse, as the spoilers will discuss.

Enjoyment:

There is no real closure from the first series and it requires another series to finish it, I didn't have a good time reading this.









Spoilers:
So the story is worse than the first.

At some point in the first one they just started going
'IT IS THE LAW OF THE ISLAND WE HAVE TO KILL EVERY VAMPIRE' despite the fact their leader IS a vampire, albeit an original one who doesn't go crazy. The sequel acknowledges this and goes 'Oh he'll killhimself later' but its still super bland
I mention this because the starting story, the first 1/3rd of the sequel, is a woman getting infected and her Bf and her running off. There are a few idiotic moments with it, the boyfriend basically goes "ARE YOU OK WHATS WRONG" everytime the GF wants blood, he should be pretty understanding that the vampire lady with glowing eyes going "I NEED BLOOD" wants blood, but he's even intelligent enough to cut himself and let her drink off him at one point.

I find the entire situation silly though with how unbudging this 'LAW OF THE ISLAND' shit is because the protagonist just winds up killing her anyway.
We've done it.
We've had 0 character development. No 'Hey, maybe it is kind of fucked up we just kill EVERYONE who's a vampire when they are just people with an infection'. The first series had a whole village full of them that were polite, farmed crops, and shared a meal with the protagonist...yet here we are.
In the first sequel the protagonist was also willing to be friends with his brother, who was infected, yet it was the brother who decided it wouldn't work.
I guess the protagonist forgot all about that? There have been 0 situations in either series where someone has trusted a non-crazy vampire and it has backfired.

This is a more minor complaint but:
There never seems to be repurcussions for these massive battles they have. The protagonist has had bones broken nonstop, and almost died several times, yet recovers in a week or a month or however long the author wants to give him. The humans have had their village wiped like 3 times at this point in the series yet still manage to have enough soldiers to constantly fight. The vampires lose like 4/5 villages and are still full of numbers with no issue. In fact he's teamed up with somewhat unstable vampires in the past, one that lost its legs and had to be carried on his back, so there is already precident for this.
So a vampire that is mostly sane and wants to live her life with a man she loves = Killed, no exception
A vampire who wants to kill him and actively admits to being ready to betray him but is needed = Keep him around, well after his usefulness runs out. He's a good ole pal!
The second character mentioned is brought up like 10 chapters AFTER the woman is killed, so this would still be fresh in the authors mind. It's unfathomable to me.
Twenty five chapters after killing the woman 'because no exceptions' he's asking one of the vampire leaders to join his side. Then, when said bad guy inevitable dies, he carries him while still alive to his mothers grave.
Yet he had to murder that vampire lady I guess?
How the fuck is anyone alive right now?
The protagonist being such a Gary Stu murder hobo has me hating him intensely and, I haven't finished it yet as of writing this, I hope he dies.

Once again, this part of the series continues the 'I WILL BE YOUR OPPONENT' shtick. You can find my review on the first series as well, basically everything I said there is the same here. 'I'll beat you with my next strike!' or *Sheaths sword, closes eyes, audience gasps as he gets ready to do some edgy katana attack*

Another issue of 'the author forgetting the rules' it's been stated MANY times a vampire can track by blood and scent. Yet a character, who is covered in his own blood, manages to evade a vampire by hiding like 10 feet up in a tree.

The author has introduced 'attacks' that the chief has, their vampire leader.
It doesn't explain what these are at all. The vampires, the original ones especially, need blood to LIVE FOREVER not 'avoid getting really upset sometimes' and they don't explain anything about these attacks. It's just 'The chief is chained up again' and it's brought up out of nowhere.

This is the first time I've taken notes reviewing a Manga because of how much I disliked it. THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS AT THE VERY END


First, a review based on the existing categories.

Story:
Higanjima has a basic story outline and idea that quickly becomes convoluted and boring, and stereotypical. Around chapter 50-100, somewhere in there, the story quickly stops being a 'Survive vampire island' and turns into...something. I don't know what to call it.
Tropes are used ALL the time, annoying tropes. You'll have characters fighting, deal a major blow, then go 'HEH, this battle isn't over yet!' then the battle continues for more annoying chapters. You'll ... see the phrase 'I'M YOUR OPPONENT NOT HIM' then they start fighting them, then the other person in the fight goes 'WHY ARE YOU FIGHTING THEM, IM YOUR OPPONENT'.
'THIS IS THE FINAL FIGHT'
etc.
Very annoying things to hear in a story

Art:
The art isn't all that bad, all said. The characters don't look fantastic but the backgrounds can get rather in depth. The monster designs are okay but some are much better than others, it appears the author doesn't draw animals as good as he does human-ish monsters.

Character:
The characters are either terrible or bland, with little development between them. Outside of the main character becoming a cool guy bad ass I can't see any development to be had.

Enjoyment:
I stopped liking this Manga after around chapter 60 or so and finished it to completion just to give a thorough review and recommendation.
Should you read this?
Probably not.
Who would I recommend this too?
If you are looking for a shounen-styled plot with seinen level nudity maybe this would peak your interest, but I sincerely doubt it.



Spoiler section.

First off: The author's kinks
This is mostly a joking heading but, I honestly believe the author has a piss kink.
Whenever a vampire bites you it makes you light in the head, and in some cases feels good. This is explained in the lore. However people don't tend to enjoy being bit mid combat, it's scary as hell.
Everytime someone is bit in combat, or in a stressful situation, the author draws the character being bitten pissing their pants in copious amounts. ITS A LOT OF PEE. It borders on a fetish.

This part is less of a kink and more of a complaint about the story: The cuckolding.
The author has Alice and Kyle. The protagonist is in love with Alice but otherwise they don't chat much through the entire story. In fact, despite Alice being involved from the beginning she basically disappears till like chapter 120 or so. Alice then says to the protagonist, who has done nothing but gotten 'strong' and not talked to her, that she has fallen in love with him and they begin kissing and what not. Alice and Kyle are still dating.
This is a dumb decision on the author and we are more or less watching Kyle get cucked.
Kyle is still dating Alice when he inevitably dies. They don't ever break up and Kyle never finds out.
The problem I have with this is Kyle dies pretty soon after Alice and the protagonist start kissing and what not, so they could have easily had this happen after his death so it isn't borderline a cuckolding fetish.


The story and pacing are just awful.
I had high hopes for the beginning of this. It felt like a 'survival horror' story. They would be on an island full of vampires and have to survive!
It very quickly turns into dog-poo-poo and resembles a wuxia novel more than it does whatever it was supposed to be.
The main character is a human yet uses a katana to cut through solid trees, FULL GROWN TREES, and at one point a stalagmite. He cutes through iron bars with a katana. He does feats that are beyond human. This isn't a setting where humans can do this, this is every day humans and he's an every day human, yet after '8 months of training in the woods' he's able to chop trees down with a damn sword.

There are scenes where they feel like filler to fill the page.
Main character: Hello my ally, please go grab me a weapon
Ally: NO I CANT IM SCARED
Main character: I'm going to repeat myself four times and spend half the chapter saying this
Ally: Ok but I'll still be a scaredy cat the rest of the manga.
It feels like they are just wasting time?

The characters FORGET rules conveniently.
Vampires turn into demons when they are not fed blood. One of the characters from the vampire island captures a vampire and says, verbatim, 'Oh no, I forgot vampires turn into demons'.....why? The character is fighting a demon, and like vampires can only be killed by having their heads removed, and goes 'WHy isn't it dying yet!'...he knows why it hasn't died yet, you have to cut off the head! I was wondering why this had happened but then someone runs in and provides lore/plot for the demon ("it's my mom!")...so the author had the character conveniently forget how to kill the demon so this guy could come up and spout backstory.

The AUTHOR forgets rule conveniently.
The vampires turn into demons when not fed blood, right?
Well there is a group of vampires who have been living in a cave and haven't had blood in a long time...but they aren't demons.

There are 'born' vampires that don't turn to demons but still need blood to live forever.
Yet one of the characters, who is secretly one of these vampires, hasn't been drinking blood to maintain his immortality and hasn't gone nuts or gone crazy yet. But he's been hiding the fact he's a vampire. They could have just mentioned he let a few people known and he was drinking their blood but they gloss over it.



This is one at the very beginning and I left it for last.
This woman wants these people to come to the vampire island and help her free it. She lies and says it's only 2, when really it's like 100+.
The group who comes with her decides to tell their friends they are going on vacation and grabs 30 people and doesn't tell them whats up.
They can only fit 12 on the boat and head to the island.
They get destroyed instantly.

There are so many issues with this.
The woman who brought them to the island, as it is revealed, ISN'T an idiot and ISN'T evil or trying to kill the humans. Why would she let them bring a bunch of unarmed, unintelligent college students to the island with vampires?

Why would the group, who has seen a vampire in action, bring people who have NO IDEA what is going to be happening to them? They more or less got these people killed. Even if it was only 2 of them, and the main character points out she is lying when she says this, it's still very dangerous.

The only reason I can think that this scene happened is because the author had no idea what he wanted to have happen till he got to these portions of the plot. The woman who invited them disappears for like 150 chapters so I imagine he later went "Ah yes, I will have her be a super good guy" when in actuality she's responsible for many deaths.

It's bad. Don't read it.

I enjoyed my experience reading Pun Pun though I'm not sure I'd like to go through it ever again. The entire story is, generally, depressing and if you are not into depressing styled stories it may just bore the hell out of you.
I'll briefly touch on the normal categories and touch on why I think they did well.

Story:
The story of Pun Pun is structured well enough but it doesn't tend to be a story that gives hints of what is going to happen in the future. There is no mystery scenarios where the user can clue together what might be happening next, there is no ... tropes (At least, no obvious tropes) indicating what the next scene may hold. It's, in a way, similar to real life in that things just come out of left field sometimes. That isn't to say I view the story structure or overall plot as /random/ but I do think I wouldn't define Pun Pun as having a linear pacing to its story.
I enjoy this sort of thing, you might not.

Art:
I think the art style is gorgeous, everyone but the main character and his family of course. I consider the art an 8/10 only because I've seen other manga have even more highly detailed individuals and backgrounds drawn but I still consider Pun Pun to be one of the best in terms of a realistic-ish art style.

Character:
I enjoyed most of the characters but there isn't much in character development. This could just be because in real life, despite how we may think of ourselves, people really don't change /all that much/ (People still do change, of course) but I wouldn't consider Pun Pun as having a huge dynamic character base. Lots of static characters and that isn't the end of the world.

Enjoyment:
I highly enjoyed reading Pun Pun. I was in a sort of 'depths of despair' mood when reading it and for some reason reading depressing material alleviates that sort of feeling, or at least provides enjoyment, so it perfectly hit my niche.

Overall:
A solid 8/10 or more but I consider it a very niche sort of manga. I recommend reading it. If it doesn't click at the first 'oh my god that's depressing' moment maybe consider dropping it, it might not be for you.