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Pop Team Epic
Episode 12

by Gabriella Ekens,

How would you rate episode 12 of
Pop Team Epic ?
Community score: 4.2

POP TEAM EPIC IS OVER and I am both glad to be relieved of my shitpost burden and sad that this blessed nonsense has come to an end. (Unless that second season announcement for Hoshiiro Girldrop means anything...) Overall, I'm torn about reviewing this series. I think I made the best of the experience, but I also sorta wish that I had the chance to watch the show like a normal non-writer person. Reviewing Pop Team Epic naturally meant feeling an intimacy with the show, but by that same token, the series couldn't serve me as a relaxation of responsibility like most viewers. It's a unique position to be in when watching a "kuso anime".

Existential digressions aside, this last episode was everything that I could have wanted – Pop Team Epic bust out the big guns in its production to make a long meta-joke about dumb anime finales, replete with callbacks to some of the series' best moments. I know some folks wanted PTE to end on a full-length Hoshiiro Girldrop episode, but I don't think that would've actually been funny to sit through once the basic idea had been gotten across. In the end, hegemony was destroyed, anime was saved, and the girls will live to crap on my face until I like it another day. Since my brain is firmly mush after twelve weeks of Bob Team Epic, I'll take a page from this show and sum up my thoughts on its finale in disparate blurbs.

  • I know that the introductory sequence is a riff on Evangelion-style mystical nonsense technobabble in general, but I also choose to believe that the show is dunking on Captain Earth – one of the more recent examples of the genre – specifically. Phrases like “Hamlet Death Gods” and “infinite break from the miniature garden of Macbeth” tipped my brain in that direction. Keep in mind that this dunk is thoroughly deserved, as Captain Earth is unintelligible.

  • Couldn't send the show off without one of those musical felt sequences! While rare, they were responsible for some of the show's most iconic moments. (Especially Let's Pop Together!, I mean holy shit.) Appropriately for the finale, this one parodies Japanese school graduation anthems. There's actually some thematic meat here too – the song they're initially performing is superficially optimistic, but actually quite passive-aggressive as it goes on. This mirrors how older generations tend to treat younger folks, with a commitment to pleasantries and decorum concealing an attitude of bitter condescension. Of course, when the girls rebel against this by bursting into threats and profanity, the scene turns joyous as they finally revel in their individuality. This also speaks to me as capturing the shitposting spirit – aesthetically, shitposting makes explicit the shitty attitudes that society harbors against a younger generation, unwrapping their niceties and satirizing them in a game where those in the know communicate as aggressively as possible. The message here is: cut the bullshit pops, I know what you're saying, and I'm going to make my own game that operates in a completely different way.

  • Takeshobo finally got blown up lol

  • I realize that people are all over Shō Hayami's Popuko (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's Enrico Pucci) shouting MADE IN HEAVEN during the final battle, but the Fate fan in me couldn't get over him and Jouji Nakata (who voices Pipimi) making fun of the Akashic Records. Those two voice Tokiomi Tohsaka and Kirei Kotomine in Fate/Zero, and the Akashic Records are the very serious in-universe reason for a bunch of the stupid bullshit that they pulled in that show.

  • The two other seiyuu are Mami Koyama and Kotono Mitsuishi. That's apparently a Sailor Moon + Mobile Suit Gundam Seed joke, but those shows aren't Fate/Zero, so I don't care about them. I'm just glad that they got Jouji Nakata in this show by the end – I've been hoping for him to show up since the beginning.

  • I didn't know who Shōta Aoi was prior to this episode, but now I love him and thank him for doing his duty to preserve the universe's balance. Every Popuko needs her Pipimi, and as we all know, if they are ever separated, then we shall know true hell.

And now, the moment you've all I've been waiting for...!

TOP TEN BEST POP TEAM EPIC JOKES

T E N

N I N E

E I G H T

S E V E N

S I X

F I V E

F O U R

T H R E E

T W O

O N E

Read Part Two of this review here!


MY EDITOR WANTS ME TO GIVE THE SHOW A REAL GRADE AT THIS POINT SO HERE YOU GO

RATING: A+ 169% GOOD JOB!!

Pop Team Epic is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and HIDIVE.

Gabriella Ekens is dead. Her body will be placed in a state-of-the-art cryogenic chamber to await Ragnarok, when the dead will walk the Earth again, and a second season of Pop Team Epic will appear to lead a chorus of souls into the final battle against the forces of boredom. Whenever that happens, you can follow her live coverage of the event on Twitter.


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