English Dub Review: Pop Team Epic – “Bump-Boo Crusaders”

In the second of two episodes this week, Popuko shows her murderous side. I’m sorry, her joking side, with a dead man on the ground, with a meat tenderizer in her hand. God damn, this escalated quickly.

However, after the opening, the namesake sketch started right away. This sketch has some real Yu Yu Hakusho vibes. With our main character Cthuo looking awfully close to Yusuke, and one of the punks getting punched out by Popuko looking like Kuwabara. We even get a 4:3 presentation. “Bump-Boo Crusaders” has all of the tropes and outrageousness of 90’s anime. The presentation and feel of “Bump-Boo Crusaders” easily has it around the top of my favorite sketches so far this season.

The 90’s aesthetic continues with a whacky commercial for a Brazil theme park. This, as well as “Bump-Boo Crusaders,” give me huge nostalgia highs, and I’m loving it. The writers and animators really knock the feel out of the park with this sketch, and I love it.

“Bob Epic Team” is back again with the weird. This time with an alien creating field art with his space ship. After, we get a new Square Enix sketch, where Popuko is playing “Titan’s Arena,” where she kicks the floor, and chooses one of two answers. I love how the show got to use the opening theme to Final Fantasy. I really dig the little things that Pop Team Epic manages to do with each skit, especially the Square Enix ones. Also, we’re back to the old outro this week.

There weren’t a lot of mini sketches this week, mainly because “Bump-Boo Crusaders” took up a lot of time this week. Popuko wanted to know three things she was good at, and Pipimi gave her three, but then said it was one big thing. Next, Popuko was standing on a tetrapod, and bugs started crawling up. That caused a Popuko freakout. The outro skit had Popuko trying to outrun a toy car. As you can imagine, it did not work out.

That said, “Bump-Boo Crusaders” on the back end sounds so much funnier with the manly man voices of a gruff 90’s action stars for Popuko and Pipimi. I was dying from laughing so hard.

I kind of wish the 90’s aesthetic flowed through the whole episode. It wasn’t necessary at all, but it would have been a nice touch. That said, “Bump-Boo Crusaders” was an extremely likeable episode. The execution of the “Bump-Boo Crusaders” sketch was amazing. The closeups of the Popuko and Pipimi fighting the school thugs was like watching a 90’s anime movie, not an episode on tv.

I like it when Pop Team Epic goes off the wall when it comes to their episodes. I was not expecting a 7 minute sketch bringing me back to 90’s Shonen anime, yet here we are. We need a Popuko and Pipimi 90’s shonen show. And I would watch the fuck out of it.