When watching Pop Team Epic on Crunchyroll, each episode plays twice in a row. Both times the episode is nearly identical, only with the main characters voiced by male actors instead of female actors.
Why does each episode of Pop Team Epic play twice? Why re-record the show with different voice actors?
According to an interview done to the producer of the anime, there were several reasons:
The animation originally was meant to be broadcasted in web format only, not as a TV series. Then the author asked the producer if it was possible to record two tracks: one with female voice actors and one with males and broadcast the primary track and the auxiliary. This wasn't possible with web streaming.
Then when they considered a TV broadcast for the series, the episodes weren't long enough to allocate one full slot of broadcast, and unlike previous seasons, they didn't have another series to fill the slot.
So instead of broadcasting one episode with dual audio as the author requested, they just paid for the entire slot and broadcast the 2 recordings, with male and female actors. There are differences in both because the director and producer give full freedom to the seiyuus to do whatever they wanted (and they didn't like it), and they even modified some scenes according to the actor used (Ep. 3 Bison reference) or their performance in the recording (the Tomokazu Sugita episode). But these were minimal.
The interview is in Japanese here: https://www.animatetimes.com/news/details.php?id=1517584766
I'm not entirely sure as to why they've repeated this in further episodes, however it might be due to contact obligations with the voice actors needing them to have a full length run of work or not at all, perhaps cost-wise it was also more effective, etc.
However, the reason they have Male VAs in the first place is due to a gag within the manga where they ask two very famous male VAs to voice them in an anime adaptation
If we got an anime, what would you do?
I'd be dreaming lolololol
My VA would be.... Ebara Masashi-san! I look forward to working with you!
Ah so cool!
How about you Pipimi-chan! How about you!
Ootsuka Houchuu-san! I look forward to working with you!
I have a couple of answers, unfortunately they're all a bit speculative because I have no sources.
It feeds into the main premise of the show, which is surrealist humour. It's not meant to make any kind of sense, and it has a slightly unnerving result because it triggers a deja vu in the watcher.
It lets them try different approaches to the same premise. In the first episode, in addition to the change in voice actors they also subtitled the French segment in the second half. In the second episode, there were different ad libs in the storyboard segment, and the live action section was completely different.
Relatedly, it helps them find the target audience. Given the weirdness of the show, there will definitely be people who watch half an episode, see that it's repeating, and switch off. But the people who keep watching get to join in on the joke, and as a reward they get a few nuggets of new content mixed in with the apparent re-hash. You could compare this to the second season of Haruhi with the "Endless Eight" - eight episodes covering the same nearly-identical time loop, which were directed differently so that they wound up being both repetitive and distinct in a way that really divided the audience.
The other answers are technically correct. They're female characters, but they asked for male VAs in the manga somewhere. If you watch the two parts they're always slightly different in execution which is like watching a blooper real for the anime.
But to know the real reason, you have to watch both versions of the last episode. I won't spoil it for you here though ;)
In episode 12 there are some massive differences between the two, including a different ending. I recommend watching the entire episode from start to finish.
