ピューパ

PUPA

TV_SHORT

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
March 28, 2014
LENGTH
4 min

DESCRIPTION

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)

CAST

Yume Hasegawa
Ibuki Kido
Utsutsu Hasegawa
Nobunaga Shimazaki
Ai Imari
Kyouko Narumi
Sachiko Hasegawa
Mamiko Noto
Yamamoto
Shirou Onijima
Kouji Yusa
Yuuhei Arita
Koudai Sakai
Hotoki
Kenjirou Tsuda

EPISODES

Dubbed

| | |

Not available on crunchyroll

RELATED TO PUPA

MANGA Dramapupa

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
10/100
An awful horror TV short that's genuinely disturbing but for wrong reasons. Wouldn't recommend under any circumstance.
__"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™.

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

Introduction

Pupa is an anim--is a show--is a TV short adaptation of the manga. Some background information first. Apparently there was hype for this? 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...

But then it turned out to only be a TV short... then it was delayed... then it aired and people realized oh holy shit it's so bad. IT'S SO BAD.

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. PLEASE.
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.

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.

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.

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?

...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.

...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.

Oh my god no. Them being monsters aside, they're brother and sister, S T O P

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

"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

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..."

"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."

"...That's weird, where is this sudden deathly chill coming from?"

"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--"

~~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. 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.

It's just... oh god. This show is a cacophony of misery. Everything is wrong.

1 out of 10.
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Ericonator
10/100
An abomination of abominations
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.
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YukiTheSnowCobbit
0/100
Pupa may very well've set a new record for me, This may very well be the singular worst thing I've watched.
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.

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

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.
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