Pixie Pop: Gokkun Pucho

nathandouglasdavis Jan 6, 2020

3

It all starts when Mayu drinks Pucho's rainbow elixir. Now fe's cursed/blessed with going through a transformation every time fe downs a drink, with different drinks causing different types of transformations. Many chapters show fem trying to use feir physical and/or personality transformations in order to have Amamiya see fem as a viable girlfriend--with fem trying to be more forward, more intense, more manly, more elegant, more mature. Having erratic personality shifts like this does cause Amamiya to take notice of fem (though I find it strange that it's anything more than bemusement). Some chapters involve fem taking on transformations which allow fem to secretly observe aspects of Amamiya's life which fe would normally keep guarded from fem (turning invisible, turning into a pig, turning into a boy, shrinking to doll-size). And then my least favorite chapters involve more expansive bending of reality, with people other than Mayu having changes to their personalities (ch. 7, 11, 12). I don't think this type of "transformation" fits in very well with the premise of the story and shouldn't have been done. Also, while I'm complaining, I think it's poor worldbuilding to have Pucho and many other spirits be able to create the rainbow elixirs on their own, but then seemingly contradict that by saying that once Mayu drinks the elixir Pucho needs the seven droplets of color to fall from feir romance halos in order to create it a second time. Where did Pucho get the seven colors to originally create the drink? And while I'm on the topic of the colored droplets, what causes them to drop is far too vague and iffy and they just seem to be there to create the impression of structure. You see, each time there's some sort of romantic vibe or epiphany or whatever, a droplet appears. I think the explanation was that since feir goal was love, then as that goal is achieved fe slowly loses the power of the rainbow elixir. But it's basically just a magical drink with magical droplets that lets the plot work. In the first few chapters, they do a bad job of using chibi drawings. They mix chibi forms alongside regular forms alongside Pucho (who's naturally chibi). This creates a sense of distortion as to what sizes characters actually are and which characters the various drawings are intended to represent. Many of the characters look similar. The animals and Pucho aren't very cute. They also made a bad layout decision by choosing to have a sidebar comic appear in each chapter. The panels in these 4-koma are directly adjacent to the panels of the main story and it was a bit confusing at first since they include the same characters.