Puparia

With Satoshi's death, I always felt that animation could never reach a new peak and I was losing sleep trying to dig out all the obscure shows Nippon conceived, but in November 2020, Shingo Tamagawa simply opened my ass cheeks and came with the masterpiece that is Puparia.

A work of art that Jesus Christ himself wish he'd create. There is little to do, Shingo is undoubtedly the second coming of Satoshi and with these 3 minutes the viewer is immersed to the fullest and cannot escape for any reason in the world, not reluctantly but rather it is a choice, an act of benevolence towards a more meaningful and sincere life. Because yes, this short is deeply filled with messages that throughout the entire run you would think of each of them, and in the end, those messages would define a purpose but without saying it all, and once understood, you may as well have reached Valhalla and join Tom Hardy.

I'm ready to cut my dick off to get a feature film out of this.

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Puparia is a stunningly beautiful short that's well worth your time, all three minutes of it.

The biggest selling point here is the visuals. The art is absolutely god-tier, each frame could be a painting. It has a level of detail and vibrancy that you rarely see in anime. What I appreciated most was that as detailed as it was, it was aiming for something different than hyper-realism - it was very creatively stylised and illustrative. I just loved looking at it, evidenced by the fact that I've seen this short four times already. However, I can see that perhaps some people wouldn't like it since it's definitely different to the typical anime style.

In terms of story, I can't particularly comment a lot - it's a very short anime, it clocks in at around 3 minutes and it has no dialogue. There are several scenes shown in this anime but it's not made clear whether there is any through line or connection between them. There's a certain pensiveness in all the scenes and a sense of fantasy or supernatural in almost all of them but I'm not going to try to discern any deeper meaning or symbolism to try and avoid sounding pretentious.

I was completely transfixed as I watched Puparia. It has a hypnotic quality to it, largely due to the intricacy of the animation and the style of music used. I don't have much to say on the music except that it's fantastic and perfectly fitting for the visuals. Animation doesn't always have to be about complex plots or well-developed characters, that's not what Puparia is trying to do. What it does achieve is beautiful aesthetics, a great atmosphere and a mysterious vibe. The rest of it is up to you.

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This is my first review on this site. To be honest, I wasn't ever planning on writing a review, but after watching PUPARIA, I needed to say something.

Shingo Tamagawa effortlessly entices you within the first few seconds of this short film. From the earthy music that grounds you to the Junji Ito-Alice in Wonderland hybrid art style, you cannot help but watch over and over again to understand the deeper meaning of this piece of art.

You can immediately see the immense amount of love and care put into this 3 minute work. It's quite amazing, and though I don't feel like I understand all of it, I feel as if this is valid all the same. Maybe I'm not meant to understand all of it, maybe I need to forge ahead my own thoughts.

Go and watch it. You won't regret it.

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I have zero reasons why I am always late on these kinds of anime.

Visuals, visuals, visuals. For some reason, slap high-quality visuals into something and people will like it. Of course, it is obvious why, but it gets pretty biased in the community when that is the only aspect that is rated upon when watching anime. It is essentially a Konami code of rating things towards your way.

It is clear that Puparia may have a message within its duration, but that wooshed over my head, probably because of how implicitly intricate it is. It was kinda chilling though, paranormal distortions were present throughout, probably somewhere along these lines is where the meaning lies. But as said with the opening paragraph, the visuals hit the most. They are indeed amazing, and why I liked this quite a bit, like something out of a seinen manga, every detail is taken, piece by piece. No losses in the system. As much as I would like to give this a higher score because maybe it was intended to be an artistic work. I simply cannot do so since, well, it was just great art. Nothing more, nothing less.

This isn't for everyone. So I wouldn't recommend it to you if your tastes were leaning towards the mainstream. But I wouldn't skip over it if I were you either. Consider it. It is only 3 mins, and whilst you most likely won't get anything out of it, it is very pleasing to stare at, at the minimum.

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