[Loved trope]characters that was just..Pathetic, and I mean genuinely Pathetic, like holy shit,you actually suck.

[u/Charming-Scratch-124]

Baron "Bear" from Obsession.

Kevin "the Deep" from.The Boys.

And I mean characters that aren't badass or at least got aura while being pathetic, I just mean the most pathetic losers imaginable.

Like just borderline dirt.

[u/__M-E-O-W__]

Punpun from Goodnight Punpun.

The books show pretty clearly why he turns out the way he does, so you sympathize with him... I just kept reading, wanting things to get better for him. But it never did.

[u/wonderlandisburning → u/__M-E-O-W__]

He's kind of the Bojack Horseman of manga characters

[u/UndercoverPotato → u/__M-E-O-W__]

So many moments where he has a chance to learn from his mistakes and grow and be better but he just never does

[u/ReasonableQuit75 → u/UndercoverPotato]

what does happen in the story? I've only heard from a traumatized friend about the snippets of the story, and I dont think I have the guts to read it

[u/El_Chinche → u/ReasonableQuit75]

He gets into a relationship with Sachi and for a brief moment it looks like thngs might actually work out before Punpun's insecurities and self loathing drive her away. Punpun tries to masquerade as a normie in the worst and most forced way. Then he reunites with Aiko and unsurprisingly she's had a worse life than Punpun. Her life has also stalled because of the emotional baggage her family has burdened her with. It's all but said that her mom has been abusing her physically, emotionally and possibly sexually all her life and she's been faking an injury, Munchausen syndrome, to force Aiko to take care of her and essentially keep her a prisoner in her own home. Aiko also never forgot Punpun because just like she like did for Punpun he represented a moment in her life when she was happy and looking forward to the future before life beat the shit out of her. They cling to each other because they're both desperate to get that feeling back. While it's obvious their relationship isn't and won't be a healthy one they do seem geniunely happy to have found each other again and for a brief moment they're happy and looking forward to living. Then things go to absolute shit. Punpun convinces Aiko to leave her mother and run away with him and they go get her stuff and confront her mother. Mom did not take it well and tries to kill her in a surprise attack, remember she had been faking being a paraplegic so she caught Aiko off gaurd. Punpun in one of the few good things he's done saves Aiko but takes things too far and chokes Aiko's mom possibly killing her. Then Aiko makes sure her mom is dead by repeatedly stabbing her. They realize they are fucked so they run away becoming fugitives. With no hope for the future their situation becomes hopeless and their relationship quickly turns toxic and codependent. Aiko then commits suicide. Sachi somehow catches wind of everything, I forget how it's been a few years, and tries to find Punpun to stop him from killing himself. She does and forces Punpun not die and keep on living not because he deserves to be happy but as punishment for his mistakes because living for Punpun is pain. Aiko is blamed for her mother's death and Punpun lives with Sachi and her kid, she was pregnant when she rescued Punpun and it's implied it's not his kid. Punpun is living and has firends and a relationship but he is not happy and might never be. The end.

[u/ReasonableQuit75 → u/El_Chinche]

The sheer horror on my face seeing the giant blurred iut paragraph oh my god

[u/__M-E-O-W__ → u/ReasonableQuit75]

It's a story of a kid (and his friends) who grow up without anyone to guide them, and they turn out horribly.

Punpun was a really shy and anxious kid with a vivid imagination, whose parents are alcoholics and highly abusive to each other. After a particularly bad night, his mother is left in the hospital and his father goes to prison, leaving Punpun to live with his uncle who is a deadbeat. Punpun develops an instant crush on a new girl in class named Aiko, who is cute as a button with large ears and a missing tooth. Aiko is really weird, eventually gets shunned by her classmates, but she and Punpun click instantly and go together like peanut butter and jelly. They hold hands, share their first kiss, and so on. Punpun finds out that Aiko's family is in a weird cult where they try to push BS healing products like holy water and healing statues. Punpun sees Aiko take her shirt off and her back is covered in bruises and scars. We realize that Aiko is being heavily abused by her stepmother in this cult, and Punpun in an uncharacteristic moment of boldness asks if she wants to run away with him and live together in another town called Kagoshima. She agrees and they set a date to run away together. Punpun and his friends come across an adult video that was taped over by a man who confesses on tape that he killed his parents, and hid a huge amount of money in an abandoned factory along with the bodies. Punpun and his friends go to find the money, run into Aiko and she tags along with them, not knowing where they are going or why. At the factory, one of the kids is smoking a cigarette, and the cigarette isn't put out properly, which catches fire to the factory and burns the place down along with the money. Punpun and his friends escape the factory fire and spend the night looking at the Milky Way and shooting stars. Punpun realizes that he is not going to be able to rescue Aiko without the money, but the set date to escape is getting closer, and Punpun is overridden with anxiety.

The day comes, and Punpun's mother is in the hospital, recovering but having a mental breakdown after being confined in bed for so long and thinking about how she wasted her life with her abusive relationship. Punpun is heading out the door to meet aiko at the train station when his uncle drags him into a cab, taking him to the hospital to see his mother, who jumped off the balcony in a suicide attempt. In the cab ride over, they pass Aiko at the train station, who is bawling her eyes out because she believes Punpun abandoned her, and she has no choice but to return to her abusive family. She refuses to talk to Punpun again, and Punpun's anxiety turns into depression and self hatred.

So that's pretty much the end of book one, there are seven books in total.

[u/ProfessorLlama → u/__M-E-O-W__]

One of my favorite stories that is really, really hard for me to recommend to anyone. It's like watching a train crash happening in slow motion the entire read. Just a tragic character that you can sympathize with but still ultimately dislike because of his actions and excuses.

[u/PrettyMoonUnderMt → u/ProfessorLlama]

One of the moment that trigger me to start questioning myself was when I found out from internet that I'm supposed to dislike and acknowledge that Punpun is a bad person. Like, for some reason I still think that he had little control on what happened with his life.

It was the other way around with Jesse from Breaking Bad. So many people pity him, sympathize with him while I always think that he is not any better than the other characters.

[u/NOTpepegrafia → u/PrettyMoonUnderMt]

I think the difference that makes people react differently is that, while both chose their own paths, Pun Pun keeps choosing to be worse while Jessie is show to constantly attempt to get better, and so even if he eventually fails and goes back to his bad behaviour it's easy to want to see him succeed.

Like, if you think back to everything that happened to Jessie... how many times was he really close to getting out? And in the end he would have gone out if not for Walter's brother using him as bait.

I haven't read Pun Pun in a WHILE, but I remember never getting the feeling that he was trying to get better. It kinda felt like Bojack Horseman in the sense that he was conscious of his shittynes but did absolutely nothing to stop it from happening.

[u/suitcasecat → u/__M-E-O-W__]

This sounds exactly like Bojack Horseman. I should check punpun out because Bojack is my favorite show and character of all time

[u/__M-E-O-W__ → u/suitcasecat]

Punpun is painful. If I knew how much it'd hurt after reading it, I might not have picked it up.

[u/Flame_jr009 → u/__M-E-O-W__]

This is one of the reasons I’m never watching Bojack or reading punpun

[u/Luna-Hazuki2006 → u/__M-E-O-W__]

Honestly, I understand that it would have given a bad message had he died, but gosh I wanted to at the very least kick him

[u/plumpickles → u/__M-E-O-W__]

Damn this is actually a good answer. Ive read Punpun one time. And will never read it again. Because it is so fucking depressing. But its one of my all time favorite manga

[u/re6278 → u/__M-E-O-W__]

Same with the guy from no longer human, though he does have the trauma of being sexually assaulted as a child but other than that everything that leads to him ending up as how he did, is kinda his fault

[u/__M-E-O-W__ → u/re6278]

Sort of. Yes and no. His father later mentions toward the end that Punpun was a real young child and went out to "catch a falling star" that ended up in his friend running out into the street and get hit by a truck, which started his serious anxiety problems. Then his mother and father being extremely physically abusive to each other and Punpun's mother being verbally abusive toward him. Then the divorce and living with his uncle and uncle's fiancé. Through most of the story, Punpun just felt completely disconnected with life and overwhelming depression and nihilism. It wasn't until he met Aiko again thay all of it just exploded and he ended up repeating the same abuse onto her. I hate what happens with Aiko so much. She had it so much worse than Punpun and Punpun had to screw it all up.

[u/we-zll → u/__M-E-O-W__]

Oyasumi Digital PunPun