The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Puniru is a Kawaii Slime

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.

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.