The "life-and-death sibling" story follows Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa, a boy and his little sister who
find themselves all alone. One day, Yume sees a mysterious red butterfly and her body undergoes a
strange metamorphosis—into a creature that eats humans. Utsutsu struggles to find a way to restore his
sister.
(Source: Anime News Network)
~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/4QjWAHR.png)~~~ ~~~__"Warning! Pupa is disturbing. In several ways. And perhaps not in the way the creators had intended. This review will be delving right into that completely unhinged."__~~~ Pupa? More like... ___POOPA!___ There you go. The single and only joke I will be making throughout this entire review. It was a pretty good one in my opinion, but I feel as if I could have probably done better if I had tried. But I decided not to try because if these people making these shows didn't feel like trying, then why should I? Nonetheless, a little thing before we start. Pupa has forced me to introduce a new concept to these reviews. Let me introduce the brand new staple of the TGG Review Series™: The Pupa "Please Let the Suffering Stop" Alert Stamp™. ~~~img220(http://i.imgur.com/lXzGRf3.png)~~~ Prepare to see this throughout the review. Whenever a train of thought goes a little too far or too deep down the rabbit hole or when the review just generally needs "to stop", this thing shall appear to hopefully curb the unpleasantness. After all, I wish for all of my reviews to be family friendly if nothing else. ...It's too bad that one of this show's largest themes is inces img220(http://i.imgur.com/lXzGRf3.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/lXzGRf3.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/lXzGRf3.png) ___ #Introduction# Pupa is an anim--is a show--is a TV short adaptation of the [manga](https://anilist.co/manga/75613/Pupa). Some background information first. Apparently there was [hype for this](http://i.imgur.com/HYIom7B.png)? Really the only reasoning I can use to understand this is that people just weren't aware what Pupa was gonna be. I mean, if you only have the cover of the anime or the manga to go off of... or even just the description... img440(http://i.imgur.com/CjiXnNS.png) But then it turned out to only be a TV short... then it was [delayed](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-11-15/pupa-anime-delayed-until-january)... then it aired and people realized oh holy shit it's [so bad](http://i.imgur.com/S4BBh4d.png). ___IT'S [SO BAD](http://i.imgur.com/gRHPNXu.png)___. But just because a show has an overwhelming negative reputation doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it. Hey, what does everybody else know? Everybody has their own tastes and that's fine, and hey, maybe it's just an exaggeration. ___ #It's Not an Exaggeration# Okay, so let's very briefly put together of all of the flaws that really bother me in Pupa. 1. __Episode six.__ 2. There is no plot. Things just happen. 3. Trying to do entirely too much when the episodes are four minutes each. 4. Horror is more than just gore. Please. PLE[A](https://anilist.co/anime/11111/Another)SE. 5. Revealing the monster as soon as possible. 6. The monster form eventually being replaced with the character in human form but with tentacles. 7. Brother and sister relationships done the way Pupa does them. 8. Cannibalism done the way Pupa does it. 9. The whole point of the show is the cannibalistic incest and it's the worst part of the show. 10. Final episode being a flashback episode when nothing about the plot is resolved at all. 11. Unclear origins of the monster. 12. Just outright dropping a huge plot thread and never returning to it. 13. Horror cliches. Wow, okay. That is a lot of things. How about a positive counterpart of that list? What are the things I liked in Pupa? 1. The opening. ...Yeah, that's about it. It's unfortunate that the only reason why that's a positive is I think having your theme or your opening actually say the name of your movie/show is just such a wonderfully cheesy thing to do. Of course, they probably didn't think it was cheesy themselves. But that honestly only makes it better. ~~~youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO4MrI-9tIc)~~~ In any case, I'll try to go over all of my negative points without making this review stupidly long. I might not get to all of them, but I want to get to the major ones. ___ #This happens, then this happens, and...# Okay, so the sister is walking home from school, she passes by a lady dressed entirely in black with a scarred (burned?) face who tells her to go home before she sees red butterflies. We see the sister's weirded out face for a second and then immediately, _there's red butterflies_. img440(http://i.imgur.com/K7ONveh.jpg) Are you serious? The stranger in black JUST told you to not look at red butterflies. Obviously, the red butterflies are symbolism or some trigger that'll cause you to turn into a cannibalistic monster creature and--oh okay, that's a dog. img440(https://i.imgur.com/Dxn7oSz.png) Well, it's not like the random stranger warned you about dogs. It was about butterflies, and the butterflies did nothing. So just go right up to that stray dog and pet it. What could possibly go wrong? ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/ga2v8vI.png) img440(http://i.imgur.com/J71gOHX.png)~~~ ...The random dog exploded into tentacles that attacked the sister. Not ideal BUT--okay now the brother's here. Okay, now the sister just exploded into blood. Okay, now the sister has immediately become the monster and is already just cannibalizing the shit out of anything that's near her. Oh GOOD. img440(http://i.imgur.com/OBWoNpr.png) ...This is the very first episode. Can you calm down a bit? Look, when the whole thing is "there's a monster" you should try and build up the monster. The worst possible thing you could have happen is the monster just showing up right out in the open and completely visible. This girl's entire transformation into this monster creature just happens as a result of her trying to walk home from school. If this is not outright the most bizarre chain of events I've seen in an anime that's trying to be taken seriously (???), it's definitely up there. _A few episodes later._ ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/t8Dh5jY.png) img440(http://i.imgur.com/lL5b3gf.png)~~~ Oh my god no. Them being monsters aside, they're brother and sister, S T O P img440(http://i.imgur.com/53WYOqR.png) ___ #The Sister Was a Monster All Along? Child Abuse is the Real Monster? What???# We see throughout the show that these siblings have not had a good life, what with an abusive father and all. The father is abusive to an almost ridiculous extent. Every single flashback we get of him is exclusively when he's being abusive. Like it's as if the only purpose this guy has in life is to go home and literally beat his kids for no reason. But then. Then the show drops a bomb. The mother was even worse than the father. img440(http://i.imgur.com/UByxRgp.jpg) Let's not even stay on this train of thought too long, because this section of the review is going to cause people's opinions of me to plummet down into the fucking gutters as it is, but. I will give the people who made this anime this much credit. This baby is one of the creepiest fucking babies I've ever seen in an anime/fiction/etc. ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/P2YeZv2.jpg) img440(http://i.imgur.com/1px4EBL.png)~~~ The entire episode about the siblings' mother is just downright bizarre. This might end up sounding strange, I know, but this episode is I think the one that actually got the closest to "okay if this was done better, this could work as a downright creepy and psychological horror thing". The moment I saw the mother open that drawer. img440(http://i.imgur.com/G6YlMtM.jpg) I thought... there's no way. There's no fucking way they're going to do this. And for a brief moment, the schlock horror fan part of my brain took over as I realized yes, they were absolutely going in this direction. ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/OBnFiUv.png) img440(http://i.imgur.com/HPzHBUk.png)~~~ Assuming the father was about as abusive to the mother as he was to their kids, we can sort of see that the mother is probably psychologically damaged. And a mother seeing her newborn daughter as some sort of inhuman monster and then proceeding to try and kill her, only for the baby to not only survive but then go chomp on an injured bird... ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/tuaPZ7z.jpg) img440(https://i.imgur.com/kL7YvUb.gif)~~~ _~~~"Wow, what a cute baby. Wait, why are you biting my face please stop--"~~~_ __That's completely fucked.__ But the beginning of the show is Yume being infected by the monster. We're never really given a clear answer as to whether the mother was right or it was all in her head. The most bizarre thing about this episode about abuse and just general background information about how fucked up the relationship between these two siblings became is that this comes right before episode six. Episode six being where Pupa just outright drops the facade and just ~~~img220(http://i.imgur.com/cNMgYdE.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/cNMgYdE.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/cNMgYdE.png)~~~ ___ #Episode Six# "That was a pretty fucking weird episode that came out of left field. Baby stuff in horror is a bit... cliche, but I certainly didn't expect them to go full on attempted baby murder. Let's move onto the next episode..." ~~~img220(http://i.imgur.com/zxASQtG.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/zxASQtG.png) img220(http://i.imgur.com/zxASQtG.png)~~~ "Oh geez. I can't believe this. The Pupa “Please Let the Suffering Stop” Alert Stamp™ must have just completely broken. This is why these reviews can't have nice things. Something gets used too much and too frequently, and it loses all effect. Repetition ruins everything. Let's just get to episode six." img440(http://i.imgur.com/kbsPEvg.png) "...That's weird, where is this sudden deathly chill coming from?" ~~~img440(http://i.imgur.com/ZZ8mXIr.png) img440(http://i.imgur.com/bM8serw.png)~~~ "_Oh no_. I will give you so much money to stop what is happening right now. This doesn't have to happen. We can go back to baby murder which actually could have sort of worked in a genuine horror way. There's no way they would just do an entire episode of this. Wait no shit, I said that about the baby murder too--" img440(https://i.imgur.com/QeeWzi4.gif) img500(http://i.imgur.com/ZlVotE7.png) ___ # ~~Escape~~ Conclusion# I'll never not heed the warnings of the Pupa "Please Let the Suffering Stop" Alert Stamp™ ever again. They really did just do a complete [episode of nothing but the sister eating the flesh and drinking the blood of her brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPGn6zw2mdE). To an unforgivably graphic extent that is almost appalling. Then in a following episode, the brother basically states that he's apparently happy being eaten day after day by his monster cannibal sister. _I'm not a masochist. I just enjoy being eaten alive every day. What the fuck's the big deal._ This show isn't about abuse, it isn't a monster horror... it is a show about this incestuous cannibalistic relationship. Because even if the sister does briefly here and there kill people and show flashbacks of their fucked up parents, it always ends up going back to the familiar scene of the sister on top of her badly chomped on and bleeding to death brother. Like the whole point of the show is these scenes. Even basically the only conflict of the show is the sister rampaging against the government/a research group (???) who captures both of them so she can get her brother back so she can go back to eating him. Everything else is just salt into the wounds. The nonsensical plot, the continued besmirching of the horror genre, the cliches... like oh god... why butterflies? WHY BUTTERFLIES? A REALLY BAD AND GORY SHOW WITH BUTTERFLIES? [HAVEN'T SEEN THAT BEFORE](https://anilist.co/anime/21189/RanpoKitanGameofLaplace). It's just... oh god. This show is a cacophony of misery. Everything is wrong. __1 out of 10.__ ~~~img220(http://i.imgur.com/BaQRhuM.png)~~~
There comes a time when something becomes so bad that not even the good aspects can salvage it, and this is certainly the case with Pupa. From repetitive events to scenes that almost made me vomit, Pupa does everything it can to make you hate it. If that was your intention Pupa, you certainly did a great job in doing so. If I had to describe Pupa’s “story” (if you can even call it that) in two words, it would be “dreadful mess”. It’s basically just torture porn. Utsutsu, our main male character, tries to save his sister Yume from becoming a monster due to some virus, who then proceeds to eat him alive. After she’s done with him, he revives, because he also has some sort of virus, and the episode is over. Next episode, rinse and repeat until episode 11. Episode 12 however is completely different, but it establishes nothing remotely interesting and leads me to believe that the creators just gave up and said, “Well, if people didn’t like episodes 1-11, then why not fuck with them and produce a useless ending that has nothing to do with the rest of the show?” “Great idea man! *High five*” The characters are as generic as you can get, the only thing I remember about them is that Utsutsu has a scar over his left eye. That’s it; they left no impact on me. Not even the black-haired woman (who I think I’ve seen in a hentai by the way) made me care about her, she was just kind of there. I think the worst part about Pupa is the fact that they decided to censor out some of the bloody and violent parts, while keeping in others. For instance, in one scene a knife is censored out for some reason (don’t know why), but then like a minute later Yume is in the middle of eating her brother and that’s not censored? What is that about? You decide to censor out a knife but not a guy being EATEN ALIVE? Come on, you can do better than that. Continuing from my last paragraph, even if the show wasn’t censored and we got to see all the blood and gore, the art and animation is so basic that it wouldn’t even look decent. You’d think that since the episodes are only 4 minutes long, they would have to spend less money per episode which would lead to better art and animation, but that’s where you would be wrong. They instead decide to save as much money as possible by making low quality frames and character models. I can’t really enjoy something that portrays itself so badly and makes me want to stop watching it. I can’t see how anyone would enjoy this, unless you’re into torture porn or vore I guess. But even then, there are better options out there that don’t make you want to rip your hair out at how infuriating it is. Not many shows have made me angry while watching them, but Pupa became one of them, and for that I salute you; You’ve entered the pit of no return, the place where only the worst of the worst get permission to enter. You can never leave, and you will never hear from me again. Say goodbye Pupa, you will not be missed. To summarize, Pupa is an awful mess that not only repeats itself every episode and has a horrible ending that ties nothing together, but also makes you angry at the fact that the creators actually made this irredeemable pile of junk. Don’t watch this, unless you’re a complete masochist or into torture porn and vore. You have been warned.
*Spoiler Warning: Albeit there's..not much TO spoil* Pupa may very well have set a new record for me, not in just anime but in all forms of media. This may very well be the singular worst ...thing, I've ever had the displeasure of watching, somehow topping weird and insulting indie films done using dolls. Pupa starts off as no good piece of Horror media does, by immediately blowing its load and showing the monster in what may be a world record length of time, the very first episode. We meet one of the two main characters, Hasegawa Yume, A girl on her way from school when she runs into a woman who tells her to stay away from red butterflies, okay, ominou- *red butterfly INSTANTLY appears* ...Okay, not ominous in the slightest when it instantly happens.. Well I wonder what the red butterflies mean? Spoiler warning, apparently nothing. img220(https://i.imgur.com/XLt42HZ.jpg) __Seriously, this happens like, 10 seconds after Yume hears about the red butterflies, yet she seems to've forgotten the conversation. I think her memory might be worse than a goldfish. __ So then a dog comes out, dogs are our friends right? Pet dogg... oh.. that dog is a mass of organs aaand there goes the main character, well I guess the dog was the monster all along. Wait no the girl's back I guess and was the monster all along, man what a COMPELLING PLOT TWIST WITHIN 2 MINUTES. Well she seems to recognize her broth.. oh bother now he's dead I guess the series is over.. Except no it cannot be THAT mercifully short, so we learn as the non-plot continues that the woman who told Yume about the butterflys wants to harvest an incest baby using Yume's eggs and her brother's sperm to make.. I guess a stronger monster for her own Habsburg uses? Don't worry if that makes no sense to you, it simply doesn't seem to make sense period. The woman is ..part of? the leader of? an asset of? Some organization who opposes a medical research organization I guess? We get no real information on either of these organizations, which is unique, where literally any other form of media would tell you SOMETHING, about the antagonists of the plot, even if it's a poorly explained motivation, Pupa transcends storytelling by simply, NOT TELLING A STORY, we know basically nothing of either of the antagonistic forces at this point. Even going forward we only learn that the medical researchers are interested in the brother to study the..apparently virus both of them are infected with that allows for the transformation to a monster and insane regeneration. One of those at least makes sense for a medical organization to research so, maybe we have SOMETHING? Nah just wipe out all of this facility, because I mean we already saw Yume become a monster so might as well have her become one again, except this time somehow MORE disappointing! So now we know Yume was... born with this virus that.. somehow was sentient to realize her mother wanted to abort her because.. her mother somehow knew this before she was even born.. Though seeing what Yume looks like as a baby img220(https://i.imgur.com/YHvKs7V.jpg) __Yeah, that's a monster. Suddenly I don't feel like the mother's necessarily in the wrong. Though both of the parents are COMICALLY abusing and seemingly have no other traits.__ I guess the real monster is supposed to be abuse? Maybe? Who knows it never ties anything together so all I have left to say since there's no.. plot, is it has one last egregious thing to do to "unnerve" the audience, implied incest...YAY. Also it ends on an entire episode of unrelated flashback thus not attempting to develop or explain literally anything of the "plot" so.. Maybe the studio themselves realized it was horrible. Maybe, or maybe I'm just being optimistic in assuming they couldn't possibly have looked at it and decided it was good. But hey, I guess if you like incestuous cannibalism I guess this is for you. Because it's not for anyone looking for plot, or horror, or a compelling monster, or literally anything related to the horror genre except for a few tropes. Honestly a rating of 0 feels too generous for this thing. It broke my ability to rate because it'd have to go into negatives, This isn't simply bad, this isn't so bad it's funny or good it's just, a thing that exists for some reason, that only assaults senses and logic. So to conclude, this may be the most transcendental piece of horror media on Earth, because the horror, is the anime itself. The horror is the fact someone signed off on this. So yeah if you are looking for a horror anime, I recommend __literally anything else.__
~~~This is my first review, usually I don't write any, yet I just want to give out my thoughts on this one~~~ If you plan on watching this, for whatever reason, __there might be spoilers contained in this review__ but I am not really sure myself, since nothing really happens throughout the entire series and the synopsis spoils about as much as I ever could. Anyway, this way I am on the safe side. Also, Disclaimer: I did not read the manga, neither do I claim to be an expert on any of the mentioned topics, this is purely my __subjective opinion__! __"Story":__ The part that is meant to display the "plot" has a lenght of 11 (Episode 12 feels more like an OVA) episodes each 3 minutes long (4 minutes minus 1 minute Opening and Ending). As mentioned earlier there is nothing that ever really happens. We get thrown into a world, which appears to be haunted by a virus transforming people into manhunting monsters. One of said monsters is the female main character. Her older brother, the protagonist (?) happens to have the same regenerative abilities, but isn't a monster himself. There also seems to be some kind of special force dealing with the plague, yet we basically only see them abducting our..."protagonists". __Characters:__ Stitching right onton the end of the story section, you cannot really call them lead-characters because they are dragged through the series like a toy. Maybe this is what they try to symbolise with the teddybear parts. Their shared drive to action. There isnt much to say about them either, other than they got abused when they were younger, partly because Yume, the little sister, was already born a monster. They love each other very, _very_ much. To a degree, which feels...she might not only lick his body because she is a cannibal. None of the side characters are even explored in the slightest, they just appear, torture the siblings a bit and then disintegrate into thin air again. __"Poof!"__ - similar to my motivation to endure this after 3 episodes. Did I mention the siblings really like each other? __Visuals:__ It looks rather...special. At some times I wasn't entirely sure if it was the artstyle they were aiming for or if it was just plainly bad. Disregarding the general look, which had a vibe to it, resembling kindergarteners using finger-paint, this show featured the worst blood I ever had to witness. The colour looks like strawberry jam and the texture...I don't even know. Also, every time one of the monsters came into view, everything aroung them went dark and the shade turned obscure. I am pretty sure they just didnt want to think about the colour schemes all to much and hoped nobody would care. What trigered me most about the visual apects was the censoring. Every time a precarious scene was shown they threw a dice whether to censor it or not. Some random dude, which also abducted the siblings flashes a knife as you can clearly hear. Flash is fitting in more sense than one because you only see a ray of light. Yet the next time they decided to draw it. The time after it - the ray of light again. Maybe someone is trying to send a hidden message through those incredibly random direction choices. In short: It looks just as bad as it is written. __Audio:__ The music choices might as well have been made by a 2nd grader, ripping off Paranormal Activity. The sound effects feel...clunky. I liked the one they played when the episode title appeared and vanished, because it made me wanna tear off my toenails and I think and hope that was on purpose. When Yume is consuming her brother, it sounds like someone was scraping polystyrene with his finger nails. I think the voice acting was pretty okay, and standing out in comparison to the otherwise gruesome production. __Conclusion:__ I like myself a bad anime every now and then. The funny bad, at least. This wasnt the funny bad. It was entertaining in a weird way. You can always stay tuned how hard they screw up in the next couple minutes. Contrary to popular opinion I think, just because you tried your best doesn't mean the result is good. Considering you only have to invest about half an hour I would still recommend watching it, just to learn, how not to write an anime, or media in general.
This is my very first review since I haven’t really been compelled to express my opinions on anything until I seen this monstrosity of an anime online. I’ll try to not give away many spoilers if you feel compelled to watch it, but don’t say you weren’t warned about the pure dumpster fire awaiting you. As someone who has seen a lot of messed up stuff on the internet, I can’t say that it messed me up or grossed me out as I have seen some people say on the internet, if anything I felt so confused that I couldn’t feel any other way while watching this. I don’t know how to go about this other then breaking it down into some categories and discussing my opinions. Now let’s discuss Pupa in smaller categories: Characters- Not only are the sibling pair insufferably annoying, they are also very boring, share an odd relationship and go through no development what so ever. When looking at the backstory of these characters, although very sad, I feel it doesn’t fit with the current events that happen to them in the show and I feel like it doesn’t really do a good job at showing why the characters act the way they do (perhaps because they act the same the whole damn time). The only sense the characters backstory gives me is a possible explanation as to why they are so uncomfortably close to one another because they didn’t have anyone else to rely on. Not to mention that the only character that was remotely interesting in anyway was the pregnant hat lady and in the anime she randomly disappears and is never seen again. All other characters were not that important or interesting, they had very little roles and were only added for the sake of filler. Would have been great if they went into depth about their father and his abusive ways or their mother who could of had so much potential. Plot- As for the plot, I think it could have been so much better if they put time into it. It feels like a school project that they procrastinated on and then threw a bunch of stuff together last minute and said “yeah that’s good enough.” The plot had so many holes in it, gave no explanation to what was happening and seemed to have no meaning to it. The plot was interesting in my opinion and I feel like it could have been used in so many ways and it had the potential to be so great, but instead it was used for this weird incest, gory, cannibalistic (is that even a word) garbage. The plot was decently original and I think if they actually planned it out better, made better characters and actually gave them some sort of development, this could have been a chilling psychological and gory anime about two siblings from a broken home, only for the sister to turn into a flesh eating monster while the brother goes through the psychological distress of losing his sister and trying to avoid getting eaten by the flesh eating monster that replaced her (I’m not a writer or anything but anything is better than what was given to us here, let’s be real.) Dialog- This one is going to be short since the dialog chosen was pretty standard, everything said was relatively easy to understand. HOWEVER, the use of onii-Chan so many times over the span of however many minutes this short series was, was enough for my spine to want to revert back into my body. Like for real, stop. Music- Aside from the opening and ending which weren’t too bad, the music choice for this anime was not fitting at all. Not only did the music not fit the mood of what was happening within the scenes, but at times it felt like it was just awkwardly playing to fill up silence. Art style- overall it wasn’t that bad, pretty standard for an anime. Although, the character designs were kinda cliche and easily looked like generic characters that can be found in several different anime. Conclusion- If you’re looking for something that will change you, make you feel such a strong raw emotion, has amazing characters with great development and amazing sound tracks that go along with a great plot line, this is not for you and you should probably avoid it. However, if you have an hour of free time and want to watch something that will make you question everything and ask the question “what the fuck did I just watch?” Then I think this anime is for you. I’m not going to tell you it’s not worth a watch because perhaps you will see something in it that I just didn’t see, all I’m saying is to go in with low expectations because this show has very little redeeming qualities if any at all. Thanks for reading my first review, remember this is only my opinion and you can feel however you want to feel about this anime!
Sorry for any errors in advance; Like the summary says the only really good thing about this series in my opinion are the opening ("pupa" by Ibuki Kido & Erii Yamazaki) and the ending ("Dare yori Suki na no ni (誰より好きなのに)" by Kusuma San Shimai (Yurika Kurosawa, Minato Wakasa, Haruna Usui)) besides there are not many strong points. Now onto some of the parts that where trully bad. One of the first thing i noticed is that the censoring (for gore and nudtiy) is inconsistent. sometimes they censored a blood splash oly to not do it a minute later. animation gets reused and some scenes are just not worth it as they are badly animated. the story is inconsistent and constantly hops to another point in time or another vieuwpoint without any warning. For charaters this short series does only have 3 characters that could be named important to the already weird story. There is the older brother Utsutsu Hasegawa, in my opinion a character that could not choose if he wants to be edgy or cute. He has this scar going trough his right eye aparently from his father but he also wears a hair pin at the same side, these two details dont really fit togheter in my opinion. behavior wise he is the typical main character and older brother, he ould do anything for his sis. Yume Hasegawa is the younger sister and the monster of this story. i was surprised how she clearly has more time put into her screentime especialy her teeth. Her monster appearence is not the cgi dragon we know deen for but its also not great. It stands out in the few scenes it appeares in but not in a good way. as for her behavior she clearly is shown to have some mental isues displayed by the teddy bear moments. Ai Imari, straight up the most fleshed out character. She is the woman dressed in all black and kinda looks like lady dumitrescu if she had a white gown and did not have the wounds on half her body. She sees everything as a test subject wich causes the brother to become a food source for the younger sis. Somehow she was better worked out, and had more backstory then the two main characters. from here on forward the revieuw will be spoiler heavy consider this a headsup as ill shortly talk about some weird items in the story it can be a bit unorganized tho sorry in advance. the first episode starts in the clasroom and weirdly enough the older broher alredy has wounds on his arm the same he gets on his outer arm in one of the last episodes. the sister waits for him but they decide to come togheter in the nearby park. on the way there the girl meets the sientists who warns her not to touch red butterflies. But like many shows the young girl gets facinated with the red butterflies and, im not sure but she ends up eaten by a dog monster? somehow the girl ends up laying in the middle of the park only the brother finding her before there suddenly are other people. but not for long as the girl turns into a monster for the only moment in all 12 episodes and starts eating all people but not hte brother? a moment later the sientist turns back up, and she "wil take care of the people", after some ecouraging words the brother goes to meet his monster sis and ends up eaten... but wow he suddenly has beaten up a whole research team and he got regeneration powers stronger then deadpool. a whole episode was spend talking about daddy issues and hey canibalism right after. the mother pops up for an episodes only to change the lore about the monster. there is a certain episode, not sure wich one xactly, that mainly consist on feeding on the bed and well to summarise it its mainly "onee-san *crunch crunch*".mp3 besides some lines by the brother there is not uch else said and the animation gets reused the most in this episode. Remember the scientis? well she gots sperm cells from the guy and and egg cells from the girl and impregnated herself with it. she is seen pregnant, in one of the few naked scenes, but we never learn of what happens after. the two main chaacters get kidnapped by a guy with a knife, apparently super healing and a monster can be defeated by a switchblade! after this its more implied gore this time no eating but the knife play by the guy wth a switchblade. How to make an iligeal healt organisatio, or something like that, evil? well make them abuse the boy with the healing, fans of using chainsaws and illegal organ harvesters. suddenly the girl can transform and beat up all these trained soldier this evil organisation suddenly has. and brother beats up the whole room again. they meet up and its eating again. but wait what is this there is one more epiode, another eathing epsiode? No its a weirdly wholesome epsiode of the brother trying to win a teddybear for his sister but instead he wins the hairpin the sister has been wearing all this time. also we suddenly see the return of the best friend character. to finsih this revieuw and put this all togheter in a small paragrapf. Even if you are big fan of gorey anime and you just want to watch a quick anime dont watch it, besides the music and the weirdly wholesome ending you get what you expect a deen studios animation about a girl eating her brother.
____what a shitshow.____ Pupa, a rather infamous horror anime, but, for no reason that should be recognized as good. Making each episode 4-5 minutes tops is appealing to my ADHD-ridden mind that has commitment issues to longer animes, but it's not as good as it sounds. it causes things to be rushed, extremely rushed. Whatever "plot" in this anime existed was dormant, stowed away as the creators just seemed to say.. "nah." It would be more excused if it was old, but some of my favorite anime's reside in the 80s and 90s. This is a 2014 anime. __________________________________________________________________________________________ img220(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzQ4YzRhY2QtN2VkMC00NGE0LThmMTAtYjYxMmExYWViMWJhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjk2NDg1NjM@._V1_.jpg) # THE BEST This anime has one of the most banger intros I've heard. It shamefully gets stuck in my head constantly. It's catchy and all. Although it's subjective, I actually kind of enjoy the art style. It's muddy at some points, and the gore looks awful, but it looks retro, I don't think its meant to be, but if this came out around the 90s, I would like the art style a lot more. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ #THE __WORST__ Ok, here we go, buckle your seatbelts. Firstly, it's embarrassing for Pupa to call itself a body horror, especially when it came out THE SAME YEAR as Parasyte, one of my favorites and first-ever watches to this day. Pupa's 'body horror' is messy, the plot mixed in having no impact once so ever on the watcher. We JUST met these characters, and now they're monsters two minutes in? interesting. The most fucked up part? The incest. Yume and Utsutsu have an unquestionably incestuous relationship. It becomes obvious by Episode 6. The UNCUT 3 MINUTE EPISODE OF YUME EATING UTSUTSU. The sexual grunts and moans, the position, and the constant, infuriating repeat of "onii-chan". Ok, I get it. They've had a severely traumatizing childhood, abusive parents, yadda yadda. We find out through plenty of flashbacks that I accidentally cut myself on because of how edgy they were. Of course, you could create a good character with this background, but not in 4-minute episodes. But man, this sibling relationship is too much. a pure incestual co-dependence of a parasite and a host. The parasite being the sister and the host just so happening to be the brother. img220(https://blautoothdmand.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/pupa_ep6_04.png?w=809&h=455) Oh yeah, the part where the emo chick asks for the brother's sperm and the sister's egg for a baby. __Pardon fucking me?__ The sexualization of Yume is awful. The outro song is pretty good, but the imagery is suggestive, Yume constantly speaking in that high-pitched moany voice with one strap slid down her shoulder at all times. It's disturbing, considering these are both (assumingly) high school students, with Yume considered "The younger sister". Sounds like a buncha' lolicon shenanigans to me.
~~~img1000(http://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/wac1otz.jpg)~~~ Have you ever felt that itch in the rims of your ass crack that happens when you don’t wipe long enough? If there were ever an anime to signify that horrible itchy feeling in the most monstrous example of that region, Pupa would no doubt fit that description. Never has there been hype so decimated after a rocky development schedule, season after season. It will go down in the books of how not to screw up your production schedule, or it will bite you and your credibility. People like me were curious to see what Pupa had to offer in the horror genre in anime because it’s not often we get to see much horror-themed anime come out these days. Then all of our expectations suddenly dropped when this was announced only to be three minutes long. Judging by how I viewed the 36 minutes of content through the whole show’s run time, this was something that was just not finished. Why may you ask? The art style looks inexcusably low-budget, even for three-minute show standards. Hell, Ai Mai Mi looked like it had quality production compared to this. Especially the background artwork, where the colors look almost like an elementary school student painted it with a thin paintbrush. The characters' designs are at least slightly tolerable, considering they look like actual people in most cases. img1000(http://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/x3ru0ol.jpg) Now the animation part is where it gets hilarious. There is one instance where an ambulance car is driving, and you can tell, even from the crappiest quality stream imaginable, that the wheels are not moving whatsoever. It almost looked like the animator didn’t bother to put any frames on any part of the car, so he dragged it with the mouse. These are only a few of some of the glorious hilarity that transpires from the lackluster animation. Unfortunately, the networks airing it felt embarrassed to bother showing the animation, so they decided to censor almost 80% of it. I usually don’t discuss censorship in the shows I review, only because they’ll eventually release the uncensored Blu-Rays later. But considering how universally panned this show is, I can’t see this ever having that kind of royalty shortly. It is often a cringe-worthy experience to sit through censors in a horror anime that covers up the disgusting gore and blood, but with Pupa, the way they censored certain aspects felt disjointed. For instance, there is one scene where Yume eats her brother’s flesh, and obviously, they edited this outright. Then in another episode, we are shown a room filled with dismembered bodies scattered in a hallway, badly drawn by the way, yet it isn’t censored. Why? Was it because it wasn’t in motion? Or was the animation so horrible from Yume’s flesh-eating that they demanded that no one see it fully? Either way, it felt like an unnecessary decision. img1000(http://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/splmxap.jpg) Pupa’s plot leaves a lot to be desired, which is the understatement of this entire review. I would complain profusely about how unfocused the whole structure is and how each episode does not feel connected to each other in the slightest. Reading these negatives might leave the impression that it is poorly written. However, it almost feels like an unfinished product once you watch Pupa. Almost as if they were initially going to go for a standard 23-minute episode show, but somehow their work got corrupted halfway down the line. Considering they had to delay this for another season seems like the most logical reason for this. Could Pupa have been a great show had they been more careful with their development schedule? Who knows. That other reality is all but shrouded in mystery from our own, and we may not ever see that happen if they decide to remake the entire adaptation and make one that is more faithful to the source material. I would put this up as a grand cautionary tale for people who want to get into the business of TV production. Will this be considered one of the great classic bad anime alongside Mars of Destruction or considered an avant-garde masterpiece like Tsui no Sora by trolls? I would argue that the latter would be the most likely scenario. God help us. Grade: …………
Now, I am a huge fan of horror anime and the story seemed more than interesting. Siblings that only have each other? Mysterious red butterflies? Cannibalistic nightmare? Yes, please! But then I finished the first episode, the second, the third... and before the fourth ended, I started writing this. Quickly I found out that the only thing that worked well was Maria's character. Oh, and the bears. I liked the bears. (I wanted a spoiler-free review but... it contains spoilers!) Slightly incestuous, awfully stupid, and short. (Okay, the short aspect might actually be a blessing in disguise...) I won't even comment on the convenience of the parasite giving the host "an impressive regenerative ability" (which practically means that even though he's been eaten, he's still alive... which is great because, for some reason, he's more than willing to let his sister eat him over and over again) nor how utterly idiotic and NOT EXPLAINED AT ALL was the whole "turning into monster" thing was. The fifth episode is what I want to address. Let's say that Yume was a monster from the whole beginning. How did that come to be? Why did it happen? What was the story behind that very important detail?? The images of a killed baby, eating the bird... those were something. How did we get to Utsutsu defending his sister from the mother - if she was nothing but nice to her son, trying to "protect" him from his sister? And did the woman really beg her husband to beat her?? I feel like I'm not even making sense while typing this... Then the incestuous feeding came and I have to quote the person who said "Why doesn't he just take pain killers, chop off his arm or something and let her feed on that for a while - it would be a lot less painful than slowly being eaten alive" - and I have the answer for that. It's too smart of a move for this shi*show. We get to watch Yume lick her brother, eat her brother while she moans "Onii-chan" in a shot where we see her butt. Wonderful. That's what we all came for, right? And this quote from the show was great too: "Enduring the pain that I could almost confused with pleasure..." And while we're at it... if he's infected too, why does he not need to feed?! And just when I tried to compliment something about the show... the incestuous monster babies made me back up. I do have to admit that the name "Incubation" was a clever pun. During episode 9 something weird happened. I stopped hating it. The kidnapping helped the story, the talk about quick organ regeneration almost helped us understand how Pupa works. But in a span of two minutes... it was over. In the end, we were all left with more questions than answers. What were the red butterflies and what was their meaning? How did Pupa really work? Were there more cases? Why was Yume constantly hungry but Utetsu wasn't? Was Yume really born a monster or was there something else to it? And if she was born a monster, was Pupa the reason she changed (back) into it? What is the backstory behind Utetsu's scar? Was it Yume? When, how and why? What happened to Maria and the babies? Come on! Their hairpins got their own backstory but the really important things were left for our imagination?! Or is the answer hidden between the pages in the manga? Truth to be told, I do not care enough to search for the answers, so... thank god it's over. (Just like Yume said in episode 10 after too much yet not enough happening and then we got two episodes of... God knows what that was.)
I decided to just make a review so I can scratch it off my bucket list. You can decide to read it and if you have problems with how it’s written you can throw them on my account and I’ll give it an about 50% chance that I’ll actually listen to it. I don’t know if I’ll even write another review after this, we’ll see. So, Pupa. Scum of the earth, awful anime, nobody likes it. It has a reputation for being one of the worst anime to ever be made, which yea it 100% deserves it. Still, something about it is strangely intriguing to me, enough for me to have read the manga twice and watched the anime 11 times. In this piece of word vomit I’ll go into why I did this to myself (and no, it’s not because I like it.) Before we go fully into the part that specifically annoys me, let’s first talk about the other part of its reputation that people usually assume when they hear pupa: the shit happening in the story. Pupa originally was a, let’s not flatter it too much, not much more than a decent horror manga. Long story short, this anime revolves around a girl Yume Hasegawa who becomes a monster that will transform into a literal monster if she doesn’t feast on someone’s flesh (this sounds so Tokyo Ghoul it hurts, but Pupa actually started releasing about 6 months before Tokyo Ghoul sooooooo). Her brother, Utsutsu Hasegawa, can regenerate and come back from the dead basically. So guess what Yume has to do basically every day? Correct! Eating Utsutsu, which is already weird enough in the manga, yet the anime decided to up the sexual tones a little (Translator’s note: “little” means a lot). That’s the plot, with some other things added into the manga (abusive dad, backstory for the virus that makes them weird monsters, yada yada yada). But long story shorter, it’s incest cannibalism. Yummy, innit? That GlOrIoUs combination is probably the reason as to why people think the anime is so godawful (hell, the fact people found that part of the anime disgusting was the entire reason I watched it), and trust me, it REALLY doesn’t help. However, after probably my 3rd watch (I watch bad anime to get my expectations as low as possible for the next thing I watch, it usually helps me enjoy the new anime more), I got used to that and I decided to actually read the manga for Pupa. Then the rewatch I did right after finishing the manga made me find out something else: You see, the Pupa anime doesn’t make sense. The story is all over the place, and it feels like shit just gets retconned at times. This isn’t new information, anyone who watched the anime and is able to look past the weird brother eating shit already was aware of this. Once I read the manga, however, I realised that HOLY FUCK HOW DID STUDIO DEEN FUCK UP AN ANIME ADAPTATION THIS BADLY LIKE I KNOW PEOPLE GIVE DEEN SHIT FOR SOME ADAPTATIONS BUT THIS TAKES THE FUCKING CAKE. You see, the manga gives information in a particular way that makes sure you’re always wondering why characters are the way they are, and how the weird pupa virus works. It doesn’t do this in an extremely creative way, but it makes sure it doesn’t just throw shit at you with no context. Then the anime comes along and adapts like chapters 1-12, with a bit of chapter 22.5 (yes, a fucking BONUS chapter), in its 12 episode runtime. This sounds decent until you realise every episode is 4 minutes long with 1 minute of that being OP and ED it’s so stupid. This is a PLOT BASED story, let me remind you that much, and they decide to rush the PLOT PART. These aren’t small chapters either, these are 40 page big boy chapters. Now you might still have some faith in DEEN, thinking that they would at least try and make sure that they would fit as much story in those episodes as possible… HA HA, GOOD ONE, BUT TRY AGAIN, YOU’D BE WRONG. Episode 12 is, like I said, a FUCKING BONUS CHAPTER, episode 6 in the anime DIDN’T FUCKING HAPPEN IN THE MANGA AND IS PURELY JUST FANSERVICE FOR ALL THOSE MANY PEOPLE WHO LIKE INCEST CANNIBALISM, and with the rest they STILL fucked up the order of the things happening in the manga. Trust me, NONE of those changes helped the manga. They adapted some chapters in between ch12 and ch22 too, to give some answers to the mystery elements. Too bad they place them without some of the VERY MUCH NEEDED CONTEXT THAT THE MANGA GIVES. The entire anime becomes extremely fucking confusing because of this point exactly. For anyone curious enough to actually want to see what the anime adapted of the manga from episode to episode (in some cases almost being exact to the page number), I’ll add my list that I made while cross examining the anime and the manga in the comments for my review. Now to talk just a little more about the manga. You see, the manga does continue after the anime, and honestly I will have to say that, while not good, it’s pretty decent and I did have fun reading it at times. It was also nice to see this story told by someone who knew what they were doing, but I digress. The manga had a satisfying enough ending, and the 7.5/10 I’ve given it is a 7.5/10 I still agree with wholeheartedly. I will say that if you just wanna laugh and cringe at this shit then I’d just suggest watching the anime so you’ll be done in 48 minutes (which unironically is less time than I’ve spent writing this). Now for everyone who read all of this, my first question: why? Why listen to a crazy person (because let’s be honest, nobody who would even consider watching the anime more than 0.5 times, much less 11 times, is fully right in the head) ramble about a show I hate so much yet am strangely pulled to? I have no idea how anyone would be able to do it, so if you managed to then give yourself a pat on the back I suppose. Anyway the pupa OP do be kinda fire so 11/10 would recommend.