It was... fine? I don't really get the love for it...

This series is shit, and it serves alongside Fire Punch, Berserk, and many others, as proof of this board's garbage taste in manga.

>His character itself felt interconnected enough to tie it altogether in the end
I'm not sure how you felt this. The road trip was the exact point in the story where his character flipped with no discernible reason for him to turn out that way. It felt like a betrayal of what the story was building up to with Punpun finding the mangaka gf and living a mediocre job, because that was a very realistic portrayal about how your life changes and people move on, and it seemed like the ultimate message would be learning to find meaning and acceptance in this, but with that drastic shift near the end of the plot this more or less gets tossed out. I just think back to earlier segments in the manga like when Punpun befriends that guy who has his eyes on Aiko or how his childhood friend gets acquainted with his mom at the hospital, and see how much more impactful they are than what comes later, despite being less dramatic.

In truth, I thought it originally ended at volume 5 when I was first reading, but when I look back now perhaps that might have been better.

There were lots of great parts (mostly the childhood stuff with its drama that made sense), but some of it was pretty fucking boring. The road trip with Aiko was stupid, but I'm glad it was there to wash my mouth off from the mangaka and cult parts.

This desu

I don't think it gets tossed out, hell, if anything I think it's reinforced because Punpun doesn't follow that message and things end up terrible for him.

Because the characters are pretty much just the baseline ideals of depressed millennial characters.

I'm this user , the reason I didn't think it was weird was because I don't think I ever saw Punpun as recoverable in that sense. Even if he was getting more sociable, he was still keeping the worst parts of himself locked up within rather than ever really opening up to others about them, and Aiko's return provided the key to pull all of that back.

I will take the chance to ask:

Is punpun mainstream?
So, everyday i pass by a smallish bookstore, and there is a window with some manga and comics.
Mostly mainstream stuff there, One piece, Dragon Ball, Death Note expect for a full punpun set

user, no manga can become "mainstream" in the West without an anime adaptation outside of France.

I agree that "mainstream" might not be precisely right, but every niche has its faces and makes its first impressions.
I don't think that Punpun is one of them, for manga, but it's not exactly underground.

It's like top 5 manga in MAL.

IMO it's a very universal story regardless of age, country of origin or whatever though. You can be double the characters' ages and still feel a lot of the same things. The entire point is that allowing yourself to stay with things simply because they're familiar and safe is poisonous.

It's extremely overrated and mostly praised for the art and "muh depression THIS IS LITERALLY ME XD"

It's not entirely out of character for Punpun to flip out as he did, since he showed signs of having deep dysfunction on a few occasions (the cute artistic girl he scared away being a good example), but it lacked the setup to fully convince us on what the road trip scene set out to portray. Specifically, how it's trying to make Punpun look like a bad guy. The premise is that his life is defined by a crippling passivity that makes him suffer at the wills of others, so when he finally stands up for himself, it should be a wonderful moment in his character arc. However, it is made into his downfall. The act of retaliating against Aiko's mother is completely moral since it's in self-defense, but instead of just phoning the police and confessing, he makes a terribad decision and ruins his lover's life. Now, we could just blame this on Punpun not thinking, but really, I doubt he would've turned himself in even if he understood it was the better decision. This is because the moment he fought back, he became drunk on how thrilling it was to exert his own willpower, and used this opportunity to do the most daring thing of all - escape persecution for a homicide he committed - just to keep riding that high. Taking Aiko with him was just the cherry on top; He wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

This is why Aiko was so devastated in the end - she realized how selfish Punpun really was. When you think about it, the closing chapter is a fantastic bit of irony because to see Punpun smiling and moving on after the horrible thing he did just cements that flaw in his character, that he didn't learn a thing, and will go on to suffer for it in the future. I would say this is really the quintessential moment in the manga, and to misunderstand this is missing the point entirely. Still, there wasn't enough foreshadowing to quite pull this off, and show us that side of Punpun before it happened. It's great, but with flawed execution.

I got up to chapter 60 and I'm about to just drop it. I don't get why this is considered so great. Does it get better? I really don't care about any of these asshole, whiny-bitch characters so far, except the badminton kid who was with aiko.

It doesn't, don't waste your time

Not really, Asano was drawing specifically from his experiences at the time, he even says so in the afterword I think. Anyway, I don't think he was in a position of his life where he was able to channel that theme in any kind of compelling way. Compared with Punpun, Solanin has a much more consistent sense of atmosphere, but that's not really an upside when it comes to establishing compelling characters who should be jarring to some extent. It all feels filtered through recollection and reflection, which smooths out the wrinkles that make something interesting. Punpun (and Dedede) are much more engrossed in the moment-to-moment experience of the characters, giving you the details but leaving how we're /supposed/ to see or understand them more ambiguous.

Dropped it desu. I was expecting something less melodramatic, but by midpoint when Punpun fucks uncle's new gf and uncle does whatever the fuck he does, it just completely lost like connection to me. And it also seemed to me like it completely lost connection to reality and started to more and more look like grossout comedy. I mean, it was always a little silly from the start, but it just felt somewhat realistic, eventually it really essentially became a gross out melodrama, which is interesting as an idea, but it's just not what I expected.

>mfw that happened to me
Never been in mutual unhealthy love have you user?

Just read a girl on the shore cried my damn eyes out having had a gf like that
>thinking about her