Somebody seriously needs to put GTO up on a legal streaming service somewhere. Alexei’s highly enthused recs for the show are so persuasive that I was thinking about it the whole time I was watching this. That’s not to say that PANIPONI DASH doesn’t work on its own merits - - it’s just that I find no shortage of amusement in anything that flips the familiar “daring, unorthodox teacher cleans up a class” plot on its head.
To be totally honest, I had to consult some outside sources to clarify the set-up of this show. I got it that Ms. Miyamoto’s supposed to be a young prodigy fresh out of MIT, but I figured the notion was that she was 22 while her students were all 18, at most.
That, in itself, is pretty funny. Not only does it reinforce how absurd the often arbitrary conditions of authority are, it also happens rather frequently in real life, too. Think about how ridiculous the notion of a senior teaching a freshmen is; then think about how only a single year somehow makes a significant enough difference to make that acceptable. After that, it’s hard not to look at each successive year’s pupil/teacher age differential as being just as arbitrary.
While that may seem like a bit of tangent - - considering how the joke is that Ms. Miyamoto is actually an 11-year-old, college-educated prodigy - - I’d say the satire still applies. Maybe she’s got serious academic brilliance, but she’s got plenty of professional and emotional intelligence to acquire - - and that sounds like a recipe for an endlessly funny show to me.
I suppose this has been an overly-serious meditation on a light and goofy comedy, but whatever. The winds blows where it chooses to blow with these write-ups. I thought this a funny show, and I thought that right from seeing the totally-unexpected PLANET OF THE APES parody in the first scene. What more is there to say, qualitatively, about PANIPONI DASH?
Watch this episode, "Summerwear in the Coldest Season, Winterwear in the Hottest Season” here and decide for yourself.
Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk
