Goodnight Punpun: VIZ collected paperbacks
English paperbacks numbered 1–7; Vol. 7 completes the story. The English numbering differs from the original Japanese books.
Vol. 1
- ISBN
- 9781421586205
- Release date
- 15 March 2016
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 2
- ISBN
- 9781421586212
- Release date
- 21 June 2016
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 3
- ISBN
- 9781421586229
- Release date
- 20 September 2016
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 4
- ISBN
- 9781421586236
- Release date
- 20 December 2016
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 5
- ISBN
- 9781421586243
- Release date
- 21 March 2017
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 6
Goodnight Punpun 6 brings Punpun and Aiko back together, with disappointment already built into the publisher’s account of their reunion. This is the sixth VIZ English collected paperback, continuing relationships established earlier in the run. Its attraction is the reversal of an expectation: reaching the person he wanted does not make Punpun the person he hoped to become. The discussion below examines that advertised premise, not an independently inspected sequence of interior scenes.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
VIZ describes Punpun finding Aiko less wonderful than he remembered, then extends the disappointment to his sense of his own unchanged ordinariness. The expectation has asked the reunion to perform two jobs: recover a desired person and supply a more impressive self. Failing at the second can make the first seem worthless even after it happens. That is a harsher standard than asking whether two people want to be together. It makes the relationship answer for the distance between an imagined life and an ordinary participant in it. The publisher also mentions an unnamed terrible act, but does not identify it or establish that this disappointment caused it. The useful argument stays with the expectation the description does expose. Punpun reaches the hoped-for reunion while retaining the measure that makes it insufficient.
- ISBN
- 9781421586250
- Release date
- 20 June 2017
- List price
- $24.99
Vol. 7
- ISBN
- 9781421586267
- Release date
- 19 September 2017
- List price
- $16.99
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