Pani Poni Dash!

Rebecca Miyamoto is born to an American father and a Japanese mother. Think about that. She has a Japanese last name and an American father... Yeah...

Apparently, to be a teacher in Japan, you only need to be smart, I guess. Enter Rebecca Miyamoto, hereafter known as Becky, the nickname that her students give her. She graduated M.I.T. at the age of 11 (M.I.T. is an east coast college; you can tell by the large marijuana smoke cloud above the buildings and the very drunk football team members that you often see plastered all over the interweb doing things that make you throw up your ramen), and then decides to start teaching high school classes as her career choice. It doesn't make that much sense, but then again, nothing in anime makes sense, like giant robots being the best war machines or Neon Genesis Evangelion being popular. What follows afterwards is a conglomeration of so many things going on at the same time that your brain gives in to the insane randomness that is Pani Poni Dash!

Spinebuster or Gourdbuster prefered. Arn Anderson Forever!

The show features way too many characters to list out. They throw characters out like candy, and each has their own unique features and vital statistics, so it plays out a lot like an RPG, minus the crappy hidden message about saving the environment or relative morality that Final Fantasy has been churning out since they hit it big with the seventh game (considered the "GREATEST GAEM EVA!1!" according to the ADHD sufferers at GameFAQs message boards), and minus the fact that this is an anime, not a video game. Of the many, many characters featured, I should mention the regulars, though they all seem to pop in at any given time to try and bombard your brain with subliminal nerd references. Yes, Pani Poni Dash! features tons of pop culture references, not just limited to Japan either. From Planet of the Apes to The Prince of Tennis to Gradius to even Dragon Warrior, if you're a lame ass nerd like myself, well then damn it, you're right at home here! So many references subtlely or not-so-subtlely thrown out at a rapid-fast pace that it will give you a seizure just thinking about what you just saw! Oh yeah, I was gonna tell you about some of the characters. I should start somewhere. The next paragraph sounds good. How about that? Yeah!

Meet Himeko. Far too much awesome for you to handle. OMEGA AWESOME! MAHO! Supplied image biggie thanks to that bleeding heart liberal Adrian from Project Black. Yeah, he's a liberal. OMEGA LIBERAL!

You all should know Becky by now. She is the main "protagonist" if there is one in this show. Because she is still a child, she is subject to things that kids would normally be subject to... Think Chiyo from Azumanga Daioh, only more "aggressive" in that she is more rude and bitchy, yet that makes her awesome at the same time. I know, I haven't reviewed that show as of this writing, but if you haven't seen THAT anime yet, then you better go watch it now because I don't have to review it to tell you how AWESOME it is! You have Rei, who is kind of like a "voice of reason" despite the fact being kind of a self-righteous bully-type bitch. She is often the yang to Becky's ying, or however those Korean things go. You have Himeko, the carefree, energetic, not-so-bright student that is often distracted by things and probably has the mental age of like an eight-year-old. She says "MAHO" a lot, which doesn't mean a damn thing, but is awesome to say. I use it in my vocabulary now. She also likes to use the term "omega" as an adjective. For example, she would call Becky "OMEGA KAWAII" which means like "OMEGA CUTE" according to my high school Japanese studies or "OMEGA definition of small happiness" according to the very wacky Babelfish translator. Kurumi is an average student. Too average, apparently. In fact, many call her "plain," which throws her into a pit of depression. There's Sayaka, who is called "Rokugou" by everyone, meaning "number 6" roughly. Nobody knows why, but she is easy-going, polite, has oversized bows on her head, and tends to say things are "of the year," like "school teacher of the year" or "food of the year" or something.

Continuing on, there is Miyako, who has a wide forehead that is extremely shiny. People can use it as a mirror and it aggrivates her. She also likes to study, but apparently is average academically. Ichijou-san, the class representative, who is often tied with Himeko (by me anyways) as being the awesomest character in the show. She seems rather ordinary at first, but doesn't make any sense. In fact, a lot of her actions seem completely random and incoherent, disappearing, reappearing, doing the seemingly impossible, you just have to see her in action to understand the complexity of her crazy antics. Finally, you have Mesousa, who I guess is Becky's pet rabbit. He often looks depressed and is ususally used as fodder for slapstick humor. He is often considered useless by everybody, especially since he has no fingers or opposable thumbs, yet can walk upright and talk in an intimidated quiet voice. And I just listed a small fraction of the billions upon billions of characters that show up, of which include a girl named "Behoimi," named after a healing spell in the Dragon Quest games from ye olden Japan RPG lore, who acts like the stereotypical magical girl-type characters as-seen in shows like Card Captor Sakura despite the fact not knowing any magic at all, and Serizawa who... Uh... Think John "Hannibal" Smith from The A-Team minus the military stragety and The A-Team in general. Yeah, costumes...

I mentioned the fact that the show features a ton of pop culture references and enough insane random comedy to make you have a headache. As of this writing, no U.S. distributor has gotten the license to distributize (a new word I invented to capitalize on the word industry) the anime here, but if you wish upon an internet search engine, and you say the magic words "Pani Poni Dash!" really loud so as to wake up your parents in a violent rage from their much-needed sleep, then all of your dreams will come true, or you'll go to school the next day with a note saying you fell down the stairs and hit your eye a few times. Video game references are in it! Isn't that enough? Go watch it! Stop reading this! I hate you!