Punpun Onodera or previouly Punpun Punyama is the main character of the series Goodnight Punpun by Inio Asano. The series consist of his life from age 10 to 22.
He is introduced as a 10 year child of a problematic family, as the problem being his dad being abuse towards his mom. However, his relationship with his father is better then with his mom. Punpun had interests in space and his dad liked to talk about it with him. Although they slowly part away as his dad gets arrested for domestic abuse. Him and his mother never had a liking of eachother. His mother doesn’t like him as she doesn’t like kids, Punpun doesn’t like her as in his eyes she’s always complaining and annoying. This observation can easily be made when at her funeral Punpun doesn’t feel any negative feelings but only relief of not hearing her complaining again later on.
Apart from his family, there’s a girl he loves since he’s 10 (or at least he thinks that he loves her), Aiko Tanaka. Their teeth relationship starts as Punpun doesn’t understand or know what love is. He’s a naive child who confuses love with sex, horror and obsession. As they get closer with time, their relationship grows into a toxic mess. They find themselves in situations that they have to kill Aiko’s mother in order for Aiko to survive. With time their mentality takes a complete wrong turn, Punpun begins to scare Aiko and Aiko can cannot keep up with life’s burden and ends up killing herself.
There are a lot more told in the books but I think these are enough to make you as the reader understand Punpun is not the most morally acceptable character. I like him nonetheless, not the character but the way he is written. It reflects the horrifying part of life beautifully. He lives through that, becomes one one of the problems, it looks like it is never gonna get better for him but he is still going and living.
If I were him, i would have killed myself. As I know nothing gets better for him, I would’ve just end myself. And that’s the mere reason why I’m still here today, my life isn’t a book that I can skip thru chapters or that I can look for what bad things are gonna happen. I can always hope for the better for myself, and he’ll be the one that I look up to not become.