The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide - Puniru is a Kawaii Slime (2025)

What is this?

Kotarō created a slime and named it Puniru. Seven years pass, and Puniru transforms into a beautiful young lady.

Puniru is a Kawaii Slime is based on the Puniru wa Kawaii Slimemanga series by Maedakun. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

How was the first episode?

Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

I don't know what I expected from this show but I certainly didn't expect to come out of this one confused. As the episode went on, I kept asking myself one question: Who is this for?

On one hand, things point to this show being for younger kids. There's the general art style, the middle school setting, and the focus on slapstick comedy. On the other hand, the show has more than a few adult-aimed jokes that I'm not sure kids would get (though, maybe I am underestimating them).

In general, this anime is a pervert rom-com with a twist. All the expected tropes happen: falling on top of a girl accidently, waking up next to a pretty girl, and having a clingy childhood friend end up in compromising positions that stoke jealousy and fear. The trick is that none of these cliches play out exactly as you expect because, well, the girl in all those examples is not a girl at all but a sticky slime.

Honestly, this is the show's one joke, and I don't think that it's capable of carrying the show. Sure, there's a twist to the pervert rom-com formula, but once you realize the pattern, you know how nearly every punchline will turn out. If every surprise is predictable, is there actually any surprise to be had?

Outside of the comedy (or at least the attempt at it), there's really nothing else here. I'm sure someone out there will find this hilarious—will be rolling on the floor laughing. I may not know who this person is, but I do know one thing: it's not me.

James Beckett
Rating:

When we're powering through this many shows for the seasonal Preview Guides, I try to keep a show's demographic in mind, because what doesn't work for me might very well be what the audience is looking for. Bad anime is bad anime, mind you, but still, there are certain concessions I can make when it is very obvious that a show is doing what it's meant to do well—even if it isn't even thinking about what I'd be interested in watching.

Puniru is a Kawaii Slime is based on a manga published in CoroCoro Comic, which is meant to be read primarily by literal elementary and middle-school students; it's where the officially licensed Splatoon adaptation lives, for crying out loud—never mind classics like Doraemon and the Pokémon comics. Given how much of the humor in this first episode rests on the, er, funny feelings that our main character Kotaro gets when he's interacting with the girls and girl-shaped slime-things in his life, I'd wager that this is a title that is meant to skew towards slightly older kids closer to Kotaro's age. I can see the value in a funny, fast-paced comic that also includes stuff about how confusing friendships and crushes can be once you get to that age, sure.

That said, I am most definitely not a pubescent tween that thinks girls are just as gross and inscrutable as they are fascinating, so I would be lying if I said Puniru is a Kawaii Slime spoke to me much. It did make me chuckle once or twice, though, and it's candy-colored visuals are certainly memorable, if nothing else. The titular Puniru is kind of a lot—though I appreciate how the show found funny ways to incorporate her being a slime-monster into its bits. Is it a little odd to have a pair of middle-schoolers be perving on Puniru's big-boobied magical girl form in this cartoon that is ostensibly for children? Maybe, yeah, but if I was twelve and had seen the gag where Puniru chopped those boobs right off to give to the horndogs, I probably would have been laughing about it for weeks.

So, while I can't say that Adult James cares much for Puniru is a Kawaii Slime at all, I'm sure there are plenty of kids in Japan who are giggling on the playground today and chatting about this premiere. Good for them, and for any other kid (or kid at heart) that has fun with this one. There are much worse ways to spend an afternoon, I suppose!

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Absurdist humor is very hit or miss, even more so than regular comedy, and this felt like a very mixed bag to me. There were a couple of moments that absolutely made me smile, with my favorite being when middle school hot guy Yusuke is revealed to be a playboy in a very different sense of the word than our hapless protagonist Kotaro was assuming. If there's one way to make seduction by disguised slime go wrong, it's to try it on the guy who really, really loves slime. Puniru's nature as a shape-changing slime lends itself to plenty of this kind of joke, with another good one being when she assumes that Kotaro's friends want to play with her slime bags as slime bags and just pops them out of her chest, gleefully misunderstanding that they were actually keen on groping her. When the episode is playing with this sort of miscommunication, it's really at its best because the fact of the matter is that eighth graders are trying to figure out whether they're kids or adults. Puniru is in the perfect position to take advantage of that.

Unfortunately, none of it was laugh-out-loud funny, largely because there's an element of mean that doesn't work for me. Puniru may be Kotaro's imaginary friend brought to life through the magic of borax and laundry powder, but she's also willfully annoying, determined to be everywhere Kotaro doesn't want her. It's all about her, all the time, although if Kotaro calls her “cute” enough times, she's willing to help him out. It's hard not to understand why he might not want her around; waking up to discover that the dog has drooled on your pillow is bad enough – can you imagine waking up in a slimed bed? (Is that a double-entendre? I'm almost afraid to ask.)

I will give this show all the points for energy, though! It's got a madcap, manic flow to it that keeps things moving at a good pace, and the ridiculous extended transformation scenes Puniru gets after squirting more slime-making liquid into her stomach are really something else. The bright colors and simple character designs are also good, making the whole thing feel like a Saturday morning cartoon on speed. It's not really my thing, and it probably would have worked better as a short, but it's still the sort of unhinged that could be a lot of fun if you're in the mood for it.