Okaiu

Desert Punk is a hard anime to review for a couple reasons.

1. Somehow this comedic show got REALLY serious about 3/4 of the way through. I liked the new direction but was unsure if it would throw other people off (i mean, it is suposed to be a comedy). I showed it a to a couple of my friends (26 episode marathons are awsome in the company of chips and energy drinks)and they were scratching their heads at the turning point in the anime's plot. Like there is a tangible line between comedy and rather interesting action. Ultimately i wish the series had been entirely adventure-esc OR comedy-esc.

2. the ending. What the hell happened??? I was just getting into the serious-mode of Desert Punk and suddenly the ending jumped out at me with no warning at all; there are no massive character revelations and basically everyone goes back to doing what they did before! Desert Punk affirms that his greed and survival instinct (not a sense of comradery) drive his actions, Kasuna stay annoying and whines all the time, Junko stays busty and skanky, and the machine brothers keep kicking ass. As a viewer i felt no amount of accomplishment in completing the anime; i felt like i could watch 200 more episodes of Desert Punk and the means and the ends would be the same as this series *cough Naruto cough*.

3. Setting. I get that the Kanta Desert is big. Really big. Does it cover the whole world? Why can't people move out of it? What is the extent of the oasis' governments? These questions plagued me till the end of Desert Punk and I stil haven't received an answer to them.

and finally....

4. THE ANNOUNCER, THAT GUYS WAS AWSOME! Why couldn't they have given him more time in the scripts? im sure he would have been alot more illuminating than the plot or the characters on just why exactly people were acting as they did ("even children become criminals in the Great Kanto Desert")

So, with all this in mind, Desert Punk can be summed up by the statement, "[fill in the blank] was good....but not great". The story was good, but not great; the characters were adequate, but not great. This is an average anime when it comes to the genre of action/adventure/.....comedy. I would recommend it solely because as ambiguous and undefined as the environment remains, it is quite a nice change of pace from jungles, forests, or the plains of Japan.