Pop Team Epic – Episode 5 – “Donca*Sis”

Do you like shojo romances and drama? Do you like Marilyn Monroe? Do you like bad impressions? Do you like dances involving Gundam video games? Do you like pachinko? Well then, you’re in luck. This episode of Pop Team Epic had all of that and then some. Strap in, and don’t piss off our Disney overlords with mice that swear. Onto Episode 5.

To start, due to the nature of the corner of the anime, the image was temporary switched. It’s a nice boat. With the static sound to go with it. After the opening, it’s onto the episode title. We start with a necklace that’s in the shape of a “P.” A girl says her mom tells her about what was precious. Because she has found it. This is “Donca*Sis.” Or in long form, “Don’t Call Me Your Sister!” We meet Iyo Sakuragi, a 16 year old 1st-Year at St. Culture Academy.

Cute girl, huh? Well, she mentions she has a new stepmom with her, but we’ll get to that. For now, a soccer ball gets kicked to her accidentally by a guy. He is Hojo, or as Sakuragi calls him, “Hojo-senpai.” She throws it back, and like in most shojo-romance stuff, this happens.

Sakuragi loves it. Hojo is the soccer captain, a top scholar and the class president. And because of this situation, is the person who Sakuragi likes. As he leaves, she also wonders what her dad’s new wife is like.

Well, you’re about to find out. Because she gets home with her dad, who is Pipimi with a beard. There, we find his wife, who is none other than Popuko (Let’s just call them Mom and Dad for this bit.) Also there is her son. Who is none other than Hojo. Whoops.  As their Mom and Dad watch TV, Sakuragi talks to Hojo-senpai. Who, as they’re now siblings, she can drop the “senpai” part. Too bad that’s a problem for her, because of her crush and all.

Awkward. It doesn’t help that this isn’t the only problem. Because the Mom and Dad are the bigger ones. The duo spend their days at the pachinko palor and do puppet shows from the window. And keep them up at night with their “Gundam motion dancing.” Which, as you can see in the tweet below, was presented differently from whatever site you watched this on, with more stuff from the Gundam video game in the threaded tweet.

Not only that, “Hojo’s fangirls” at Sakuragi’s school hated how she always was around him. So they bullied her everyday for it, including having her be in a pool with sharks. And yet, at her limits, she was still happy just being with Hojo…until that day.

It starts with her dad kicking Hojo. They have rent problems, but the parents are doing whatever they want with said money they have.

If they get enough, they can even go to Hawaii with it. Sakuragi has had enough. She grabs a knife, and lunges forward at the two. She stabs someone, but it isn’t them. It’s Hojo getting in the way of her doing it.

As he bleeds, he tells her he doesn’t want them to end up like them. Basically, what he is saying is that he loves her, and that makes her so happy. It’s a love confession interrupted by pachinko.

Since he now confessed, she can now stop calling him “senpai.” It’s all good, considering the fact the ambulance can be heard coming in the background. 5 years then pass, and the 2 are still together. In fact, they got married and had an adorable pair of twins. Who, of course, are Popuko and Pipimi as babies. Life couldn’t be better for them. It’s a happy, and pretty much incestial, shojo ending.

The next segment involves both animation and live-action. A girl wants to see how fast her brother can hit a home run, with Popuko and Pipimi in the animation set. The clock has it set at 7.11 seconds. She didn’t want her brother to take this crap seriously. The next one is “Pop Team Cooking.” The girls are hosting a cooking show, and this week’s recommended dish made by Pipimi is …. simmering. Popuko ahhhs in excitement throughout. Pipimi turns on the heat, adds water to boil, and adds some vegetables. With the finish dish, it’s done. Simmering dish complete.

The next one is another “Bob Epic Team.” The girls are trying to find where to go on vacation, until a “supporting role character” in the form of an owl shows up. He wants them to get on a shuttle bus, go to the mall, and go straight to the pet shop where they know what to do. Which is to buy him some owl feed. Pipimi tells him to do it himself. The next segment has Pipimi asking if she can say the 3x multiplication table. She can, because she isn’t an idiot. It’s three three’s three. Just three three’s? Three.

The next part involves Popuko telling Pipimi that she loves good strokes. Pipimi starts to pet her head, and she enjoys it. She starts to moan and say Marilyn Monroe. Pipimi is also enjoying this. So much so, her neck starts to expand, stretch out over everything, and covers the entire screen. It’s the lewdest the show has gotten.

After all of this, the next bit starts with Popuko sad. And dead. She and Pipimi are both dead, as Popuko is sorry. 10 minutes earlier, Popuko had the hiccups. But she passed 90 times, and was about to hit 100. Pipimi heard that if you hiccup 100 times, you die. But Popuko stops at 99. However, she can’t hold it in. And the result is this.

It’s on to another “Bob Epic Team.” With slightly weirder animation this time than the other BETs, this one has the girls in the mountains, hoping to make it to the movies on time. It expands out to show they’re actually in the glasses of a random dude, kind of like in the OP. However, they then start yelling at him, thinking he is looking at them. I’ll be honest, I thought they were talking at the audience at first. But it’s quickly revealed they are talking to him. He says he isn’t. They argue back and forth as he keeps saying he isn’t, as he removes his sunglasses to show what is under his eyes. Which at first, his eyes are shut. Then he has himself covering his eyes in his eyes. Then it’s a weird, dancing eye, a sign that says he isn’t looking, then just a big, plain “NO.”

The next segment has Popuko do an impression of M**key, which is asking for death from a certain corporation. It shows a silhouette of her as Pipimi watches, with her doing a bad impression and her just cursing and snorting about, which M**key wouldn’t do when laughing. The last segment has a bunny who sees he’s late to a tea party. He starts to hop along, as Popuko tries to stop him. She chases him down Route 66 as “Poppy Pappy Days” plays though the whole thing. The Hoshiiro Girldrop preview has another girl all over Daichi, making the Female MC very jealous.

Then it’s time to switch to the male voices, and digest all that changed here this time. The first happens in “Donca*Sis.” Here, the male VAs do more giving a bit more of a role to Mom and Dad. For one, when they watch TV, they point out what is on it. Then when Sakuragi tells what they do, it has the two talk during it. Like during the puppet show and along with the Gundam thing. (The second part on Crunchyroll does translate what they said here with the Gundam dancing, going with “SGGK Gundam.” However, as seen in the tweet above, they don’t do as well a job in telling it fully as HiDive does.) In the baseball one, Popuko was in the animation at first with Pipimi appearing with her stats on her age, gender, etc. But this time, Pipimi is the one who appears here, but Popuko does not appear in the stats. Also, in the female voiced half, the end of this segment has a cute Popuko and Pipimi drawing of them. This half does not show it. In the cooking segment, Pipimi tells you to wash your hands and body. In the lewd headpats, there’s no moaning or Marilyn Monroes. Instead, we get commentary on what is happening, with an add-in on a producer’s name to Pipimi’s expanding neck for good measure. The final one with the bunny has the bunny do his own parody of “Born to be Wild.”

The female and male actors this time around were both good. The females actors were Kanada Tomoko and Kobayashi Yuu, with the latter of which more being know for voicing a certain potato girl on Attack on Titan. The male VAs, who are Nakamura Yuichi and Sugita Tomokazu, are best know for being the mains on the show Gintama, with the latter voicing the Gintoki. However, since I don’t watch that show, I can go with another role that I know him to play well. He voiced young Joseph Joestar in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, to which, I have to ask the obvious question.

If you wanted an episode that had a bunch of stuff that happened, this was this episode. It made fun of the shojo genre. It may have pissed off Disney, if they ever saw this. It gave us explosive hiccups, Gundams, very weird lewdness, and still showed that “Bob Team Epic” is what a bad trip on acid probably feels like. This was yet another fun episode that was just as good as episode 4. I’ll now leave ya with the clip that may have made you horny or not. Does it depend on which voices did what? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not gonna judge you on which one you like more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7UFrCi9HGU

We all do have to Marilyn Monroe ourselves alone at times when need be.

…

Okay, I made this as awkward as loving your brother-senpai.

Pop Team Epic is simulcasted on Crunchyroll and HiDive, and can be seen at 12:30 PM ET Saturdays.  The dubbed episodes of Pop Team Epic are on Funimation. The simuldub can be seen on Funimation Now at 5:00 PM ET Mondays.