Pupa

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.