PoPoTan Review
ぽぽたん
Po-Po-Tan

Since the Community Anime Reviews site frequently has issues, I’m republishing some of my OG reviews from there. I have corrected obvious spelling errors though. I will add new notes in parenthesis, labeled “ANB  note.”  😅 I won’t count these as part of the “Back to the Vaults” series as I have not rewatched them.

–> Buy PoPoTan DVD Collection on Amazon.com!

Community Anime Review of PoPoTan

(ANB note: This series was originally reviewed on 03-Aug-2003.)

Yikes! You can tell right away that this was based off of a dating-sim game and I wasn’t surprised to learn it was a hentai game to boot. Very ecchi with tons of fanservice. The reason for it? To give the guys who got off when they “put it in” to one of the various females in the cast, including the little girl Mii, something to get “excited” about. It is because the ecchi factor is so high that the rating I give this is only “Watch”.

That aside, PoPoTan is a very sweet, cute, charming, “slice of life” series where the three sisters Ai, Mai, and Mii along with their android maid-guard Mare travel in a house that literally dematerializes only to show up someplace else. During these trips, the girls meet various people and have profound effects on the lives of these people as well as their own lives. These trips are made as they search for a mysterious woman who will have all of the answers. Sadly, there were many answers that were neglected.

Here is the other big weakness of the series. There were a bunch of questions I wanted answers to. How did the girls get selected to make this journey? Who exactly is the mysterious woman and what is her purpose? How did the girls get their powers? Did the mysterious woman create the house and the android maid Mare? Was Mare really an android or did she just look like a persocom from Chobits? There are a lot of other questions, but why go on?

Music

Let me say a word about the music — very good if you like J-pop. The opening and ending theme songs are very catchy, especially the end song “S-U-K-I“. It was so good that I actually ordered the CD from Japan as soon as it came out.

Bottom line:

PoPoTan had so much potential. Had they taken all of the ecchi out and focused that energy onto a more focused story, this could have been a real winner. It is sad, really…