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TV SHORT DramaPupa

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  80/100
  It must suck for your horror manga to be completely overshadowed by one of the worst anime adaptations of all time.

  

  Ah, yes. Pupa.

  I reviewed the anime adaptation back in 2017 when I first started writing reviews. Back then, I primarily only ever wrote reviews for series I had a strong negative reaction to.

  

  Having put dozens of reviews between me and that original Pupa review, I was never able to fully let go. The questions I had revolving around Pupa remained strong as ever.

  The primary one of course being why even try to do an adaptation of a serious horror manga when clearly the story requires episodes longer than three minutes to make any sort of fucking sense and not simply be incomprehensible slideshows of madness?

  Thus, I made the descent. I read the manga. Which might seem a bit odd to some considering how heavily negative my tone was for that review. After all, I've done plenty of massively negative reviews and then ended the review by still recommending the series or admitting that I could see a situation where someone else could enjoy a series that was just completely not for me or I thought was just... plain awful.

  Pupa was one of the few instances where I just full on said "don't watch this, it's not worth it."

  

  And after three years of meditating on the matter and having read the original manga... I can say that my original stance on the anime hasn't changed one bit. But the manga? That’s a different story...

  WARNING: Pupa has various potentially disturbing themes as well as gore. This review is definitely going to include a fair share of the aforementioned gore, so be warned.

  Additionally, this review will without a doubt spoil what sort of series Pupa is. If you haven't already heard of the arguably much more infamous anime adaptation, that is...

  

  ---

  Butchering up an Adaptation

  I do still genuinely wonder what Sayaka Mogi thought of the adaptation of their manga. Honestly, wouldn't surprise me in the least if they thought what I thought when I watched it.

  "None of this makes sense."

  In retrospect, it shouldn't have been surprising at all to see just how much the anime dumped from the manga. Even so, it still shocked the hell out of me at the time. Now the idea of calling the Pupa anime an "adaptation" seems both laughable and also an insult to Sayaka Mogi.

  It's more along the lines of a butchering. But to be fair to the staff that worked on the anime, what exactly are you supposed to do when you only have like three minutes per episode? The flow of the first episode, and I'm just going off of memory here, is essentially:

  This brother and sister are our main characters and they are at school. The sister leaves the school and she is accosted by creepy lady dressed in all black who mumbles to her something about red butterflies and in like two seconds time, the sister ends up seeing the red butterflies. Then a dog walks up to her, explodes into tentacles, she passes out, brother finds her, and then she becomes a monster.

  

  Between how much was cut from the manga and the anime's... you would think the uncensored version would be better, but it just isn't. The blood just fucking sucks. I don't know why back when I watched it I watched the censored version (I guess I was dumb and didn't realize an uncensored version existed???) but seeing the uncensored version years later is a disappointment I didn't realize I still had waiting for me.

  When your blood is so bad that the censored version is actually preferable... like how is that even possible...?

  

  You don't know what the brother and sister has gone through, you don't know what their circumstances are, you sure as hell don't know the creepy lady is... to be fair, you don't in the manga either yet but. My point is even before I read the manga, it felt so clearly that something was cut.

  The manga actually takes its time. It opens with this cool and disturbing opening telling the story of the siblings' family.

  

  "hey I got a great idea, let's move the opening scene of the series to episode two! that way we can get to the monster in the very first episode!"

  It gives you an immediate and pretty good idea of the sort of life these siblings have lived up to this point. And it immediately justifies why the brother is seemingly obsessed with his sister. She's all he has and given the sort of father they have, he feels a desperate need to protect his sister.

  This is highlighted when on their way home, he makes his sister go off by her own when he spots his father waiting for them. Rather than allowing him to be able to beat the hell out of both of them, he takes the brunt of the beating by himself.

  

  In the anime, this scene of course does not exist. The brother just tells his sister to go on ahead and he'd catch up while still at the school, and instead Yume has like a second long flashback of their father smacking her away from him? But you don't know who this person is, nor did you even know that they grew up in a dysfunctional and broken family.

  The first chapter of the manga establishes so much so quickly, while the anime just immediately speeds to the reveal of the sister becoming a horrible human eating monster as quickly as possible. It’s almost like three minutes isn’t enough. But I mean, if you’re adapting a horror manga into an anime and only have a total of like thirty six minutes to work with, what’s the most important thing?

  Characterization…? The plot (yes, Pupa does have a plot)...? The parental abuse angle…?

  No, it’s obviously the monster.

  

  But for some reason in the anime they made it red which just happens to be the SAME EXACT COLOR AS BLOOD.

  We need to see the sister as a monster killing people as much as possible and if not, then we need to see her chomping down the flesh of her brother with very odd sexual overtones.

  “Onii-chan I want your meattttttttttttttttttt”

  

  So basically what little of the plot that’s actually carted over from the manga just seems like nonsense and/or is forgotten because the viewer is most likely distracted by being horrified by the flesh eating scenes. Which are just as prevalent in the manga, but if I’m gonna be totally honest here, I was significantly less disturbed by them in manga form. Looking back on it, these scenes were primarily what caused me to not recommend watching the anime at all when I reviewed it.

  It’s not like I’m even disturbed by depictions of cannibalism that much. But it was that bizarre tone to those scenes that really just… it was just too much. Most of it though was that it felt like it came out of nowhere. Like one episode just suddenly starts with the brother and sister facing each other on a bed and any remaining interest that I had in where the anime was gonna go was just planted in the dirt.

  But in the manga I was fine with these scenes. Or... well... er...

  

  Okay, maybe fine isn't the right word to use there. But at the very least, they were fleshed out a lot more. And also there's an actual reason for them in the manga. I don't know why they didn't feel the need to include it in the anime. As I've said before, you know way more about the brother and sister's relationship in the manga. And him becoming more and more unhinged about how much he enjoys his sister chomping down on his flesh makes sense with the knowledge

  that he's actively beginning to become a pupa himself.

  In the anime, you just shrug and go "oh I guess he's a super masochist then???" Considering how important these scenes are and central to the series, you would think you'd really not want them to just come off as "it's just for shock value."

  

  And indeed, these scenes and given how shoddy (or rather, extremely rushed) the plot was plus the complete lack of a conclusion, that's basically what I took the anime as. But that's not what Pupa actually is, and the fact that the anime failed to get across what Pupa actually is, only underlines how much of a failure of an adaptation it truly was.

  ---

  Pupa is the story of a brother and sister

  That's it. That's literally all it is. All the bells and whistles, the pupas, the secret scientist groups, the cannibalism... it's all to prop up this story of a brother and sister who truly love each other. Granted, the love probably goes beyond that of siblings.

  The fact that Yume isn’t even his original sister and instead is just a pupa who ate her while she was still in the womb and then took her identity is moot. Because biologically, pupa Yume is technically still his sister and obviously he accepts her as such anyways. Even though his mother was 100% in the right.

  ...It’s odd saying that about a character who took a boxcutter to an infant, but if I saw my daughter eating a bird, I’d kind of have a mental breakdown as well. I mean maybe the first time I’d think I was having a horrible nightmare but after I found the third or fourth bird skeleton in her crib… yeah iunno maybe she actually IS a monster.

  

  I can actually look at the Pupa manga and say "oh, I get it." With the anime, I just have to throw my hands up in the air and say "oh, I guess someone really wanted to animate the cannibalism scenes...?"

  There's an actual plot, there are actual characters, there's something deeper than just the shock value of... well, incestual cannibalism.

  

  And additionally, I really like Sayaka Mogi's art. Putting the cannibalism scenes to the side, there's a bunch of scenes and horror moments where I thought it looked really cool and worked.

  

  It really needs to be stated that good art in a horror manga is a huge, huge selling point. Because while I'm not going to claim that it's the majority of the genre since I haven't come anywhere near close to exhausting it all, but... there's a lot of horror manga that just look absolutely awful.

  When I read horror, I want to be unsettled. I want to be creeped out. Hell, sometimes I want to be disgusted. Successfully invoking any of these feelings in the reader is made immediately harder when the art is… well, noticeably terrible. Don’t get me wrong it’s not like I’m saying I want just solely immaculately drawn horror manga or that the art is what primarily matters but… it’s certainly important.

  

  And it’s definitely a lot of why my opinion of Pupa (the manga) is so high even despite the incredibly rocky introduction I had to the series (aka the anime).

  ---

  Conclusion

  

  Is it perfect? Of course not. And of course, even though I'm still not exactly a fan of some of Pupa's themes, this still proved to be a surprisingly fun and enjoyable read. Pretty good and fun gore (not in reference to the cannibalism), a plot competent enough to keep me actively reading it rather than dragging myself ever closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, and as I said before, I really do like Sayaka Mogi's art which now after having seen, only makes the anime look that much worse...

  Oh, and somehow I think I didn't even mention this, but the manga actually does have a concrete and firm conclusion... which when you consider the way the anime ending... it's just so nice to have an actual conclusion.

  "I don't know, dude. Let's just end on a flashback episode?"

  I give Pupa the manga an 8 out of 10 and would honestly say it's legitimately worth at least a try if you're into the horror genre and also not severely squeamish towards cannibalism. Just... whatever you do, don't prematurely judge it by that absolute trainwreck of an anime adaptation.

  
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