Pupa

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.