It was four
years, notwithstanding a TV special, before the pair of Popuko and Pipimi
returned for a second series. Less anime schoolgirls and more personifications
of pure id, their return to television naturally within the first minutes of
the first episode befuddles the audience by being a live action parody of a
tokusatsu show. Starring everyone favorite time travelling pixie of a male idol
singer Shōta Aoi, ever since the last
season heroics, it is a straight-faced opening credits sequence using up all
the budget, and it will return by the final episode with a vengeance. The fact
this was set up with TV special back from 2019, and you see how this series,
and the franchise in general, has played with expectations from its beginning.

Speaking of that
TV special, it deserves its own review, but it does feel like a necessary
aspect to cover as it feels like the gateway between seasons, showing what has
changed. That special says goodbye to the sprite based video game parodies from
pixel artist Makoto Yamashita, and
French animator Thibault Tresca. They are missed, and missed for
myself is Hoshiiro Girldrop, one of
the strongest candidates for the best anime show to only exist through end of
episode previews and one opening. It also marks the first glimpses of Square Enix, in a tie-in that would
continue with the video game publisher working with the production onwards in
season two, and the tokusatsu parody, which was first hinted at within it. It
is own weird beast that can be viewed as Pop
Team Epic season 1.5, only imagine a forty minute double episode, which is
technically two episodes repeated twice, that repeats four times and has a
recreation of a scene from First Blood
(1982), the first Rambo film.

Those sadly
missed for season two are honored by the new season's tone, as by the second
episode Pop Team Epic has broken out
a super robot parody. Already they are cracking jokes about going over the
budget, with co-producers King Record
tolerant again of being joked as being the villains, and the nerdiest of anime
references comes in with “Obari'd”, openly making a humorous tribute to Masami Obari, who whilst an anime
director is legendary as a key animator and robot designer too, someone who was
brought in for said parody because he is that capable of doing robot sequences,
and does indeed show (even with the character redesigns for the segment) his
talent. Pop Team Epic is still a
show of obscure references, jokes which does place it in the reference comedy
anime which could age greatly into obscurities in the time passing, if one
where the sense of being weird for the sake of weird was also a huge part of
its attitude. The references are so prominent they even have to beep many out
to keeping on the right side of Japanese parody law or standards, and that will
always be a factor which, to an outsider, will put them off this franchise.

For those that
viewed this like pure catnip to them, season two does carry a swagger, even if
the same as before in structure, of a victory tour from the first season
succeeding. The Obari robot parody,
with one of the first jokes depicted of Popuko and Pipimi resigned in other
character design styles (and genders), is very much alongside the live action
tokusatsu parody of the first episode the immediate signs of this. Like before,
this follows the template of a fifteen or so minute episode repeated with a
female voice duo, and then a male one for the repeat episode, voice actors here
including some big names, from the Yakuza
videogame franchise from Sega to Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) alumni, meaning
Shinji (Megumi Ogata) and Asuka (Yūko Miyamura) for those who know that
series have a very weird reuninion even next to times in their original
franchise. As we will get to, the voice actors for the Japanese dub, even if
you do not know their best work, prove a huge virtue for me this time round,
but for those who know them, this in itself a big aspect for the series,
especially as it leads to the surrealism of voice actors iconic for many for
the Yakuza games, playing gruff men in the criminal underworld, playing a
schoolgirl being tickled to death by her friend.

Even in terms of
the opening credits, with its mind boggling take on multi verses of Popuko and
Pipimi, and a head banger of an opening theme (PSYCHO:LOGY by Shota Aoi) which you would expect for a
far more serious show, Pop Team Epic is
gunning for more elaborate and weirder spectacle. The hugest advantage this
series already had, like the most interesting of these referential comedy
shows, is that even if you do not get ninety per cent of the references, they
linger and can last beyond their popularity in worth for how the non sequiturs and
ambition is as much the humour. Case in point, I have no idea what playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (2017) is
like, a first person shooter game which is entirely centered around multiplayer
elimination death matches, baring an inkling of its content and that it was the
likely influence  on one episode's main
segment. The joke still works however because, alongside all its action beats,
the punch line is that Pipimi will punish cheaters with the ruthlessness of a
contact assassin.

The humour when
it works and I think is truly ambitious is not the parodies, such as the Final
Fantasy parody which comes part of a clear licensing agreement with Square Enix; it does lead to the show
parodying deep-only released cuts from their video game history, which has to
be still admired, and those who get the Final
Fantasy parody should enjoy it with mirth. The more ambitious joke in a
fantasy parody though comes without needing even the obvious references, and is
absolutely ambitious and ridiculous at the same time, being a recreation of an
English language education show that diverges into a power metal music video
following the exploits of “Shining Shoulders”. Effectively Pipimi‘s heroic
knight alter ego whose shoulder armor gleams brighter than the sun and whose
feet smell of citrus, it is hilarious even in the one reference to something
that went out of pop culture relevant in the four years from the first season,
fidget spinners, that joke becoming funnier with less relevance in a mere name
drop at the strangest time.

Sadly there are
fewer experimental aspects in certain areas, such as the complete lack of stop
motion this time round, but thankfully, the segments in this series become more
elaborate to compensate, even an ending credit becoming charming when the main
theme is joined by a recorder for a one-off remix. A parody of a romantic
visual novel (specially a franchise called Tokimeki
Memorial), in which a nameless boy enters high school, takes the joke even
further in how, for the repeat of the episode, it drastically changes far more
than other examples within the series by turning into an otome, a genre of
visual novel video games with female protagonists and male love interests,
gender swapping the entire segment, changing the faceless lead to a woman, and
even changing jokes for the punch line which involves name checking the
original manga Bkub Okawa's romantic
life. That is not even mentioning the parody of boys-love/yaoi anime, with
gender swapped Popuko and Pipimi; already showing a level of closeness
throughout the series that manages to be sweet, even as characters meant to be
sarcastic and irrelevant, this obviously plays to the idea of boys romance with
recreating old jokes in a new content. 
Even the cruel joke, early into this season, that the segment is
cancelled mid-segment and will never appear again hits perfectly, particularly
as they at least take a building with them.

There are a
surprising amount of surprises to be had here – one for me is how a French
illustrator and animator famous for his work on his Twitter page, Kéké a.k.a.
Kévin Gemin, gets to recreate his
style of bouncing cute animals in a cartoonish form with more censored hand
gestures here one of the end credit animations. There is also the actual
endings where, whilst they are choreographed around the same text, the voice
actors working together can sometimes go off script; the best of these proves
to be the two actresses from Hunter x
Hunter (2011-2014), Megumi Han
and Mariya Ise, who openly admit they
were hired because new material was coming at the time, deliciously cynical
without undercutting either property. Voice actors Junya Enoki and Yuuma Uchida
in particular for me, for episode 3 part b, manage to out power even actors
from Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Horiuchi Kenryu and Otsuka Akio, voice actors famous from the Metal Gear Solid games, for completely going off script at times
including the penis trauma references. You can see the talent in the voice
actors on display, more so for me this season with a huge level of the
laughter, even in stuff which makes no sense in any context, coming from how
the actors say or shout the line out. Even the fact that there is significant
more cursing in the English subtitle translation suggests a sudden energy to
this series even next to the magic of the first one.

Then there is Kōichi Yamadera and the AC-Bu, who steal the show even next to
great competition, the later duo artistic team of Shinsuke Itakura and Toru
Adachi the heroes of the franchise from both their Bob Team Epic segments, returning here, and their Hellshake Yano
segment from the first series. AC-Bu,
an animation team know for working a variety of fields, managed to top that
segment by having the entirety of episode 7 being the return of the Hellshake
Yano character, all depicted in sketchbooks with incredible illustrations, the
duo voicing the still images and moving the sketchbooks, some cut and changed
for certain moments. The fact the segment is also nearly in one take, starting
with one member in a locked public toilet and returning to it in the end, with
the exception of closing remarks of theirs, is in itself exceptional too. Adding
to this achievement is how, for the part b segment, the entire story is told by
prolific voice actor Kōichi Yamadera,
doing every character in a variety of voices. From the Lupin the 3rd franchise to Donald Duck, and too many roles
including dubbing Western actors to count here, Yamadera is a veteran, and his performance here is incredible in
how one voice actor can produce so many voices as a single person. He makes the
best episode even better, and that is not forgotten the virtues of the show
before, after, and how the tokusatsu parody returns with a vengeance by the
final episode. Almost entirely a live action episode with it very clear, in the
production value, those who work on such shows, from the on screen fighting to
the costumes to the CGI effects, were brought in and were gun-ho to commit to
the joke, it is an incredible way to end a series. Baffling the viewer whilst
presenting a climax bringing live action and animation together in a way that
makes Marvel Cinematic Universe films
seen bog standard in comparison, this is what Pop Team Epic always was, the pretext of for self-referential,
sardonic and reference heavy jokes really an excuse to be as ambitious and
ridiculous as it can be. The littlest jokes, not just that final episode, like
a Bob Team Epic segment where the
leads mock an alien for a terrible crop circle from their UFO, made the series
better and anything too strange for me was still that, deliciously bizarre. As someone
who really felt cold for the first season, even for its virtues, returning to
it allowed me to appreciate the show, and by God, they managed to improve and
top themselves with the content here.