"There's nothing wrong with being mediocre. Mediocrity... forces people to fight using their life experiences. It's pretty fun. You hear their lives in their [piano] playing, and it's authentic. Depending on their experiences and how they were raised, mediocrity can surpass talent."
— Hideo Dada
Lucky Sonoda was born as one of the septuplets in a music family. His father, Gakuon Otogami, is a world-renowned pianist who won a lot of acclaimed and prestigious concurs. Naturally, Lucky has always been fond of playing the piano. However, after the divorce of his parents, being separated from his siblings, and being shunned by his maternal relative, he becomes reluctant to play one. He is aware that his mediocre talent and lack of fantasy are the roots of all and the source to blame. Lucky is also set into a mediocre life, contrasting his siblings, who now get billed as The Otogami Sextuplets, geniuses of the music world. Seeing this, his bedridden mother encourages Lucky to play piano and enroll in a musical school, both for proving Gakuon wrong and granting Lucky's own wish to play together again with his siblings on the same stage.
PPPPPP (ピピピピピピ) is written and illustrated by Mapollo Sango (stylized as Mapollo 3) and it began serialization in Shonen Jump in September 2021. It is based on a one-shot named Dadadadaan (ダダダダーン), which was published in the same magazine in late 2020 and which eventually serves as the prequel for the series.
The manga was Cut Short due to low readership, ending in February 2023, on chapter 70.
PPPPPP contains examples of:
- Abusive Dad: Let's say that Gakuon is terrible at parenting. He berates Lucky's lack of talent/fantasy in playing piano, to the point it becomes the source of the divorce. He outright denied his existence, as well, by billing the other six as sextuplets. Even to the children whose talent he values and deems as precious, he has no qualms in slapping them when they do something wrong per his standard.
- All There in the Manual: The comic volumes and the official Twitter account
often gives trivial info like characters' setting, details of the excerpt that appears on a related chapter, or the song introduced in the current chapters. The Twitter account is open for Q&A sessions, as well, to provide some info that fans would like to know about the series. - Beach Episode: Chapter 26
- Black Sheep: Lucky is treated as one by his father for his average skill in playing piano and by his maternal aunt and cousin for being divorce cause. Some of his siblings are still civil to him, while some don't bother to think about him.
- Big Fancy House: The Otogami Family lives in one in Italy. They also lived in one in Japan prior to the separation.
- Call-Back: Chapter 51 has Da da da duum as its title, the very title of PPPPPP's one-shot pilot.
- Cut Short: The manga was cancelled after 70 chapters after consistently ranking low in Shonen Jump's reader polls.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Gakuon's solution to dealing with people he dislikes is simply crushing or banishing them from the musical world.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title of chapter 60 is a wordplay from Furusu's full name. It can be read both as Furusu's core and full score. The official English translation opts for the first one.
- Downer Ending: Because the series was Cut Short at 70 chapters, the ending wraps things up on a tragic note: Normal Lucky's dream of reuniting with his siblings and playing the piano with them never comes true. Brilliant Lucky takes over Normal Lucky's body (leaving Normal Lucky to be trapped inside as Brilliant Lucky's "guilt" and "remorse"). Upon waking up, Brilliant Lucky punches Gakuon, which is the very last thing the last chapter shows.
- The Namesake: PPPPPP can read as pianissississississimo. It is a musical term for playing an instrument in an extremely soft manner, which indicates Lucky's piano-playing style in the beginning. It becomes a Title Drop in Chapter 8, said by Dada.
- Parental Abandonment: This is what some of Otogami's kids feel towards their mother, Chouchou, after the divorce. Fanta outright claims that he hates her for abandoning him, and Shikato says he doesn't want to have any business with her anymore. Even Chouchou herself is fully aware of this.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Meloli hates the Otogami family for being geniuses, and Mimin the most out of all of them for the latter's obsession with playing freely. When she realizes that Mimin likes her playing style and sees her former self as her muse, Meloli decides to make Mimin hate playing the piano and quit the classical piano world. Meloli gets her own wish at the end of Mimin's arc... but when the girl quits, she's at peace and found new resolve in wanting to play the way she feels is right, rather than full of self-loathing and frustration. Meloli wins the competition and Mimin gets disqualified, but the former is left completely unsatisfied.
- Inverted the next time they face each other. During the Team Competition, Meloli loses against Mimin, who wins the competition, but she seems finally satisfied upon seeing Mimin vote for her instead of voting for herself, acknowledging Meloli as the one she looks up to and loves the most.
- Retcon: Chapter 51 recaps Sadame's backstory in the one-shot and adds more details to connect the timeline between the one-shot and the start of the series.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Overlapping with Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!. Gakuon has an infamous habit of expelling people he dislikes in the music world. Still, people are reluctant to cross him, as he has a genuine talent and is backed by an influential and wealthy patron.
- Soft Reboot: The one-shot didn't have any correlation at all with the series at first. However, it becomes clearer that both stories have the same universe.note Starting from Mimin's arc, every Dadadadaan character subsequently returns in later chapters, with chapter 51 importing Sadame's story with a little bit of Retcon, making it canon.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- For all of his effort in conjuring visual imagery that people can experience viscerally, Lucky still has a long way to to polish his piano skill due to his lack of training before enrolling in music school. Lampshaded in Chapter 13, Lucky's playing gets noticed as something noteworthy by the judges, but Reijiro wins the audition as he captures and fulfills the requirement that the judges need.
- On the students preliminary concour, Mimin played Chopin's Revolutionary Etude beautifully, succeeding in both upstaging Furusu and garnering praises from the audience. However, the judges are not very pleased with her attitude of disrespecting rules and considered disqualifying her if not for her father's influence. Even Gakuon warns her not to break any more rules. Unsurprisingly, when Mimin does this again during the finals, she is firmly disqualified, but she wanted to lose anyway.
- Translation Matchmaking: The official translation for Dadadadaan (the one-shot title) is Da da da duum, as shown in chapter 51, enough to avoid confusion with another similarly named series in the Shonen Jump+.
- Wham Episode:
- Chapter 22. For all those years keeping himself unrelated to the famous Otogami musician, Lucky finally shows his side of the story via the song he plays in the music competition to many people and media. He calls this playing something that will really annoy his dad, Gakuon Otogami.
- Chapter 49. The Lucky that Lucky sees in Sorachika's performance reveals that he, like the other Otogamis, was born a genius, but unlike them, he "chose" to be mediocre and ordinary after experiencing the world.
- Chapter 59: Chouchou dies, making the entire plot of the story, Lucky trying to reunite his family again for her sake, void.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Chouchou suffers a terminal illness and has no more than two years to live. Still, this doesn't stop her from encouraging Lucky to play piano freely and prove Gakuon wrong.
