]Would you like your Welcome to the NHK to be twenty times more depressing and have a gorillion times less satisfying conclusion? Then this manga is for you!
Goodnight Punpun started out extremely promising. The artstyle is fantastic and having the protagonist (and his family) depicted in such an innocent childlike doodling speaks worlds about their inner selves. That's about where the positives about the series end.
The angst-filled growth story was fine. The sort of "life mission" to correct past wrongs for some of the characters seemed good. You know, something to live for even in an aimless freeter life. Except every character seemed to lack a will of their own and instead cling to others' opinions and words like their lives depended on it, and not actually think or do anything for themselves. What the guy below me said was right, the characters were ridiculously hard to relate to because of how absolutely exaggeratedly broken and prone to random insanity their minds and personalities were.
Towards the end the series turned into a masturbatory depression-for-the-sake-of-depression slosh that didn't as much present mindfuck metaphors for you to piece together, than to hammer them into your head with a piledriver.
Now, I don't mind a series not having a happy ending, but there's something about crushing the reader's every hope of even a small glimmer of light at the conclusion that just rubs me the wrong way. Sure, there was a lukewarm epilogue that felt like a half-hearted pat on the head after being flayed with a rusty garden hoe, but it didn't actually close any circles, it just reminded you that in this particular story's world, none of the characters would ever end up happy. Yay?