Summary: >

Three sisters live with their robot maid in a mansion which travels through time so that they can seek information from the mysterious and often cryptic Popotan. Popotan are actually dandelions, so it's not surprising that they're not very forthcoming with answers. Each time the mansion jumps through time a few years pass, and the girls continue their quest. However as they meet people, friends often get left behind. Can they keep up such a lonely existence? And what happens as a few people finally start to piece together stories of the mysterious three girls and their mansion?

Thoughts: >

Dumb and boring. Oh, and boobies! It's hard to really emphasize how much those words apply though. I find it hard to believe an anime this bad and bland was actually produced for a full 13 episodes. I'm surprised the plug wasn't pulled after the first episode when the company making it surely must have realized how dull it was. Another thing I noticed is that Popotan doesn't use kanji in most any of the text of the show. Typically this is the sort of thing I would expect of a kids show, or oriented towards people who had bad (Japanese) reading skills. Then I was like, "oh, so this is really dumb because it's a really bad kid's show." It had me going for a little while too, but then there's the excessive nudity. It's actually hard to describe how wrong the entire thing feels, like... well yeah, a dumb kids show with a bunch of nudity. Seriously every episode the characters take a bath, and aside from that it goes out of its way to show bare breasts as much as possible.

Characters were nearly all bad. The eldest sister Ai is introduced by sticking her bare breasts in the face of a guy. She never redeemed herself past this point either. She never develops any real personality and seems spaced out all the time. Mii who is the youngest sister is the obnoxious attempt at cuteness that made me more ill the longer she was on the screen. I would often fast forward through parts with her. Mea is the robot maid of the household, and about the only character that approached likability to me. As a show constructed to pander towards fetishes, what does this say about me? Hmm... The middle sister Mai managed to not be completely terrible, and her story is the only one that went anywhere.

In their journey through time, Mai feels hurt that she always leaves friends behind and feels lonely. She's detached and unfriendly at the schools she attends until one girl manages to finally thaw her cold exterior... right before she moves again. The sisters again travel through time, but in an odd twist Mai meets the daughter of that girl, and the two are classmates. This time however the daughter is the one who is unfriendly, and Mai is the one who struggles to become her friend. The friendships are a bit shallow, but it does get to the deeper theme of making friends and leaving people behind. I'm saying these good things about this anime because I'm obliged to, but honesty I don't think even this part of Popotan is that deep.

That was the most memorable story of Popotan, aside from an episode about a village that is abandoned that struck me as mildly interesting. The rest of them are very drab, and drawn out with far too much filler. Whenever something is suggested that references occurrences in a past episodes, Popotan ALWAYS goes back and shows us extended sequences of crap we've already seen. If something inspires an emotional reaction from the girls, each of the girls faces is shown in turn for a few seconds with the same reaction. How stupid do they think people are that they need to be spoon fed to this level? Strangely where this title does not spoon feed us is with the overall "plot". There are these girls traveling through time with this house looking for dandelions. Why? I'm not the sort who requires everything always be explained to me, but at multiple points in the story the characters refer to how important the quest is to them, and why they must keep trying. Oh, and why these girls are doing this, where they come from, why they were chosen, or what that quest even is: is not explained. It's hard to relate to characters who are supposed to be driven with a desire to fulfill a quest we know nothing about.

I think Popotan is supposed to be a comedy, but it would be an understatement to even refer to it as lame. Animation was bad, and the designs struck me as oddly crude. The music was bad too. There are many times when I asked myself why I was really watching this. With an anime this boring I had a lot of time to think about life and if this is really worth suffering through just to write a review on an anime page no one reads. I know some people actually LIKE Popotan and I tried to think of any reasoning behind this, but I can't. Nor can I in good conscience recommend this title to anyone.