Punch Punch Forever is a 80s throwback to the best of Japanese animation with a bit of NewGrounds humor created by Speedoru (formerly known as Speedosausage). The show follows the 11 year old martial artist Gogo Matsumoto who aim to win the infinite tournament where she will fight a near endless amount of demons from another realm to be granted one wish if she wins.
Punch Punch Forever is framed as an old lost show that Speedo found in his dad’s basement. The show supposedly has 62 737 episodes in total so I doubt we will be seeing a finale soon.
Speedoru
The creator of the show, Speedo, is an Irish animator who has been making animations online since 2012. Most of speedos library are parodies of other IP:s or people. Speedo grew a fondness for anime, he cites the cult classic Akira as one of the main reasons he wanted to become an animator.
Before Punch punch forever he had a couple cartoons that got viral but his most famous one today is probably Disgraced attorney: Pheonix Wright. Outside of full parodies he also took part in animated collabs like the dreamcast collab, where he made a Marvel vs Capcom 2 skit, and the Dragon Ball collab, where he made a short where a couple of acne ridden teenagers try to recreate the Namek saga poorly.
Speedoru has mentioned that he originally wanted Punch Punch Forever to be a fighting game and instead focused his attention on making a show. He holds a rather large collection of, mostly imported, art books and he holds a big admiration for 90s era Capcom fighters like Darkstalker, Streetfigher III, and the early Marvel vs Capcom titles. A lot of this can be felt in his art style although it certainly is its own.
In theme with his very Japan inspired show he was also commissioned to make the music video for God Save the Music by the Japanese band Wienners. Despite his interest for Japan he doesn’t speak the language. He has said that the idea of making Punch Punch Forever in japanese came from watching Worthikids animated short, Captain Yajima. He thus contacted the same japanese translation studio, RASH A1M, to work on his show.
Characters
The show is about 5 major characters, Gogo (HINAKO MORI), Nono(KL), Mama(AKARI UNA), emporor Koro(CHIHAYA HANAI), and cool frog.
Gogo is a bricks for brains 11 year old with a passion for fighting. She is despite her age an adapt fighter who easily can take out a large gang of opponents while barely trying. She is easily excitable by everything from sandwiches to outhouses, and has little to no understanding to how the world works outside of fighting. She don’t understand that people on screen isn’t as big as the actual screens and forgot that her own father exists. To me she feels like a mixture of Akira Toriyama’s most famous protagonists Arale from DR. Slump and kid Goku from the original Dragonball.
Nono is Gogo’s older sister. She inhabits a very common trope in old manga where she can transform when she sneeze, or get wet, or whenever she seems to feel like it. Nono is half human and half demon and is the illegitimate daughter of Mama Matsumoto and Emperor Koro. As a demon she is a gross and crude young adult who smokes, swears, and picks her nose, and as a human she is seemingly the same except for the fact that she seems more like a cry baby.
Mama is the only human who has ever gotten to the finale of the infinite tournament. She was a great and famous wrestler who turned into a calm and loving mother. She loves her daughters and despises her ex, Emperor Koro, although exactly why is somewhat unclear for now.
Emperor Koro is the emperor of all demons. He is a purple devil-looking figure who hosts the infinite tournament. He is unaware of his daughter Nono and Mama hates him for unclear reasons. Besides his threatening demeanor he is seemingly a rather tame guy. He seem to want a family, he is down bad for mama, and he is over all pretty dim. He is however a very powerful demon and is implied to be a lot stronger then the opponents Gogo are facing.
Cool frog is the family pet and Speedos mascot. He is pretty cool.
There is also one more character I just want to mention and that is the Japanese emperor which is a prominent figure played by the ever so iconic SepirothSword57. He is the epitome of the Japanese spirit, guiding Gogo through her hardest battles and congratulating her on her victories. His martial arts skills are by far the greatest in all the land.
Why I love Punch punch Forever
Talking about why I like the show is sort of hard to explain to an outsider. It is a show that I think stands on its own but a large part of it is what it is pulling from. Punch Punch Forever is pretty heavily ingrained in two rather big niches and those two things are 80s to 90s anime and manga, as well as online culture and Newgrounds animations.
I grew up with Dragon Ball and a lot of other one shots made by the late and great Akira Toriyama. To me Punch Punch Forever reads as a love letter to the comedic stylings of early dragon ball and generally how Toriyama wrote outside of his most well known manga, DragonBall Z. Toriyama was generally not interested in deeper stories and most of his catalogue was about gags. Before he was even known for Dragon ball he was very famous in japan for his manga Dr. Slump which is partially known for popularizing the Japanese “poop on a stick” joke and debatably chibi-characters as a whole.
I had a very different experience with the DB franchise then I know a lot of Americans did. I know a lot of American people never even heard of DB while watching DBZ because of how that show was initially released in America. To me, a Swede, there never really was a DB and DBZ, there was only Dragon Ball as a whole which was read as a manga. I couldn’t imagine having read the story without kid Goku’s antics which a lot of people did.
To me the best parts of dragon ball was always the tournament arks where Goku and Kuririn would fight their way through a horde of, initially, pretty weird opponents that they would have to beat with mostly gag logic. Kuririn must fight a man that stinks immensely to the level where people faint? Kuririn has to be reminded he has no nose to win! At fortune teller Baba they must fight of monsters from horror stories. During the red ribbon army, Goku has to fight of robots and ninjas and more in a fun fashion. I feel like all those fun and silly battles are what Punch Punch Forever tries to recreate and I love it.
I don’t know exactly how Speedo himself found Dragon Ball but I can imagine it being similar in distribution in Ireland as it was in Sweden. Either that or that you would need to pirate it online which seems to be inline with the meta story of Punch Punch Forever. We aren’t watching the original airing of the show, we are watching the fictional translators, DarkGod87,translations that he uploaded to his geocity site after apparently finding the show in his dads basement.
DarkGod87 seems to be an angry guy more interested in owning the IP which is his sub of Punch Punch Forever then to share it. He gets angry at others reposting his work, he puts in stupid editors note, and at points he takes some liberties with the translations. In the first episode he Gogo says “Maji de?” which mostly would be translated as “seriously?” but DarkGod87 thought that “for real homeboy?” would be a better option. No matter if you care for the character that is DarkGod87, it is just funny regardless.
This is real stuff that people did, not to get to of topic but there are some stories of fan translators going power hungry, most popular is probably the case of the Baki fan translator Wildfang that you can read more about here. I’ve spoken before about how I enjoy stories that sort of transcend the medium it is when I wrote about Loveweb and I feel that Punch Punch Forever does this in a way where I don’t necessarily have to find media outside of the show. I would love more of Punch Punch Forever but I don’t need to find darkgods87’s geocity page to imagine a grumpy translator trying to get the IP of a pirated anime.
Other more “terminally online” stuff that appears in the show is all from small things mostly in the audio. I think most that actually makes Punch Punch Forever feel like a NewGrounds cartoon is the cadence of its humor and the over all pacing. I think a lot of people sort of look down on online animated skits and its humor but I in no way think the ways that the show borrows from how NewGrounds animations work is completely warranted and only adds to the show.
I think the most clear thing that wouldn’t exist in a “real show” would be the emperor of japan. SephirothSword57 is somewhat of an online niche micro celebrity and the fact that he gets to take up so much space in the episodes he is in is just amazing.
On slightly artistic, speedoru mentions the idea of making an English dub since apparently a lot of people have a hard time understanding the subtitles. I do understand that it could be an issue for some watchers but personally I grew up reading subtitles and do so still when I need to. its always good to give people more options but I doubt it would outperform the original. Bare in mind however that if reading is hard for you it might not be the easiest to get into, but its not like you loose anything by trying it, its free on YouTube.
If I could pitch anything for Punch Punch Forever it would probably just be for Speedo to, like the subtitles, try to make the dub a fan-made dub of questionable quality or an abridged. You could even do a 4kids inspired dub but that don’t feel like it would fit the esthetics as well. Either that or to get some extremely anime sounding voice actors to make a “modern dub”. I think a normal dub could be good to but, I mean, the show wasn’t made in Japanese to cater to Japanese people, it was to fit the esthetics he was going for.
Punch Punch Forever clearly presents itself as a comedy over an action series but despite that the action is phenomenal. All battles simply look great, there is really nothing to complain about. I really like when Gogo and Geiko (EMI MIYAJIMA) fight in episode 2. the barrages of punches and kicks feels like they got real weight to them and but the gags still take a center stage.
I love how Nono seems to be borrowing from characters like Launch (DragonBall), who changes from good to evil when sneezing, and Ranma(Ranma1/2), who changes from boy to girl when doused with water. This goes to the level that the opening shows different versions of how this is supposed to work for Nono although sneezing from her nose picking is supposedly the main thing.
I love Punch Punch Forever‘s opening that quickly summarizes the plot and explains the main cast. I love the bumpers and fake commercial breaks that often feature other NewGrounds artists. I love how stupid Gogo is. I could go on about all the things i love with Punch Punch Forever, well, forever.
I think most people who walks into Punch Punch Forever in a good mood will leave the show in a better mood then they walked in with even if you don’t care about Dragon Ball or online animation but to me it really is a killer combination.
I recommend pretty much everyone to watch it.
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