Puniru is a Kawaii Slime – Episode 1

What’s it about? Once upon a time there was a little boy named Kotaro who made some slime that magically came to life. The slime took the form of a cute penguin and was named Puniru, and the two of them became the best of friends. Years later, Kotaro is now trying to live an ordinary middle school existence, and Puniru has taken to transforming herself into a cute human girl to try and get his attention.

“What if your childhood imaginary friend wouldn’t leave you alone and also had boobs?” is… well, it’s a question that you can use speculative fiction to explore. It’s not a question I was personally intrigued by, but it’s a question that Puniru is exploring nonetheless.

For a peek behind the curtain, we initially weren’t going to review this title as we presumed from the adorable, bright, simplified art style and its “slime come to life!” premise that this was a show aimed at children, and/or a series of shorts (both of which we typically don’t cover, in the name of brevity and focus in a release schedule that’s already very full). What a surprise, then, to discover that not only is this a full-length show but a goofy romp with teen protagonists peppered with fan service and sexual jokes. Nothing severe—it could certainly be more bawdy than it is—but jeez. Once upon a time, there was a reviewer who experienced such whiplash between expectation and reality that, so legend tells it, their neck still hurts to this day.

There could, honestly, be some fun stuff to explore here: a silly but bittersweet coming-of-age story about the remnants of your childhood whimsy attempting to co-exist with your emerging adolescence. But if the show is putting those themes down, I can’t pick any of them up, because I’m so painfully distracted by the incongruous creative decision to make fan service gags about the still-very-childlike sentient slime girl that leapt from the protagonist’s mind when he was seven years old.

Her characterization is at odds with the situations the episode puts her in, in a way that’s tonally weird and deeply uncomfortable. She’s clueless about sex and sexuality but ends up the fodder for breast-bounce camera zoom-ins, transforming herself to mimic two popular idols to impress Kotaro and his friends and, later, into a short-skirted gyaru on Kotaro’s request, as part of a harebrained scheme to “seduce” and distract the boy he considers to be his romantic rival. I feel like we can reasonably predict that she will repeat this gimmick across the following episodes and transform into whatever hot-girl shape the narrative needs of her, all while not quite getting it.

It is admittedly a bit funny when idol-Puniru asks the boys if they want to touch her boobs and then pops them off, sending orbs of pink slime wobbling across the room, but this visual gag isn’t worth the gross undertones. It’s also not worth the weird sexual assault implications when one of the boys starts stretching and squishing her—playing with her like you would with non-sentient slime—and she yells “don’t touch me!” and then cries to Kotaro about how she’s full of air bubbles.

The show wants to do fan service capers but it also wants this character to read like a cutesy child and, arguably, represent the protagonist’s childhood. This is, as I’m sure you can imagine, a deeply uncomfortable combination, even if the sexualized imagery itself is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. “It could be worse” is not praise here. Kotaro complains that hugging Puniru gets him sticky, but I’m the one who feels like I need to clean myself off after all this nonsense.