Jul 17, 2015
This anime, I think, can't be understood literally.
It's a story about complicated and extremely painful relationship between brother and sister who were abused by their father since early childhood. The siblings are alone in whole world, adults are some kind of threat for them; so they begin to build their own world, their... cocoon of maturity.
The beginning of anime underlines: it's a story about siblings' love, and, actually, there IS a lot of love. Maybe, too much. But children haven't ever known what "normal" love should be. Their father abused them, their mother ignored them, and such type of relationship was "so it
...
be" for them. They are used to be beaten and to protect each other; now they are alone, they are closer to adults by age (but aren't adults YET), they can be free of abusing... More than it, their abuser wasn't interested in them during some time.
But they love each other so, so much, how should they express it? They were beaten and protecting each other before; now they are not beaten, can't feel pain and take more pain to protect the other.
And yeah, there is the virus, "Pupa" (which seems an allegory of being teenager, not child and not adult), and sister must hurt her brother to stay a human, not a monster. Literally she _eats_ him, but he's regenerating from time to time - he is also infected, regenerating is his only possibility.
All of us can understand the subtext of biting, eating and drinking blood - a sexual desire. The scenes between brother and sister, when he "helps" her, looks more like sex, than like anything else. They are partially naked, they are moaning, touching, she hurts him, he is bleeding, like a virgin girl - gender roles are vice versa, and this is the dark side of incest, like in manga "Berserk" (Serpico and Farnese), there a girl is absolutely dominant. But in "Berserk" we have other setting, the sexual desire's expressing more literally, and the parents are not so abusive - as a result, Serpico and Farnese are not so crazy for pain. They can express their love with other tools.
Brother and sister in "Pupa" can't. Why? Because they are only pupas, cocoons. So their relationships are painful and horrible - they are not used to normal life, normal love, all is complicated and causing pain... now.
But their cocoons may become butterflies someday - this is meant to be an adult.
You can understand "Pupa" only with allegorical thinking - and tremendous scenes from series are just footprints of reality, fantasies built around feelings grown in sadistic family.
Fantasies, in which brother sacrifice his body for sister - not vice versa. He is her victim, her food, her desire, her crucified love; all we know that men can be cruel and love in one time. Women can too - anime shows it.
Here we have a system of forbidden motives - incest and awful bloody love as the strongest. But it's definitely LOVE, mixed with desire and need in own sibling to be alive, to be a human; our morality's protesting, because most of us have good parents and don't know how is it to be beaten every day.
With the fact that this anime is short (imho it's good; I could understand the main idea and like it, now I'm interested in manga) and that it's thought to be a horror, not a family drama about teenagers who are siblings and love each other in forbidden way... I think it's not strange that it is underrated.
Personally I had my pleasure to watch it - story and characters are real for me, I liked music and art... And extremely liked subtext of the story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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