Pupa | Manga - Reviews - MyAnimeList.net

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Japanese: pupa

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 5

Chapters: 34

Status: Finished

Published: Mar 12, 2011 to Jan 11, 2014

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Horror

Theme: Psychological

Serialization: Comic Earth☆Star

Authors: Mogi, Sayaka (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 5.86¹ (scored by 7,684 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #18803²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #820

Members: 22,066

Favorites: 228

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Mar 20, 2015

lou-from-belgium

Not Recommended

Preliminary (17/34 chp)

What could I say ? Well... Pupa is highly disturbing. The main themes are incest, violence and more violence. Im not saying that I could dislike violent mangas (I highly enjoy reading Berserk) but here, the universe is not clear and the story is quite hard to follow; it lacks detail and logic in its development. The characters are empty and lack of real personality. The art is the only real value here; I have to admit that some scenes were wonderfully drawn, with much details, but a positive point won't change my mind on this manga: it isn't really worth the read.

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May 4, 2015

Azi-chan

Not Recommended

If you enjoy incest, gore and a lack of story then you would probably enjoy this. However I don't think anyone enjoys the latter of those things which is probably why so many people hate it. Though it may be unfair to say there was no plot, it was just awful and hard to follow with practically no character development other than the brother and sister. And even they didn't have much depth to them. The only part of this manga that is simply "not shit" is the art, which is surprisingly good.

I am also very justified in my criticising of this manga as I ...

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Sep 14, 2013

MoleKing

Not Recommended

Preliminary (7/34 chp)

I have read only the 7 scanlated chapters so far, so, this review is based only off of them, but I do believe they are enough for me to judge the manga, because, based on the summary of the untranslated parts, there doesn't seem to be much more to it.

Pupa claims it's a lot of things - "Horror", "Drama", and, most ridiculously, "Psychological". It's none of those things.
Basically, it's a guro hentai manga without any sex or nudity.
Well, no, that might be a little unfair of me. I have read guro henti mangas with better story, characters and art.

The manga tries to handle a ... difficult subject right off the bad - domestic abuse. Of course, it fails to do so in any meaningful way, and uses domestic abuse just for shock value, and as a plot device. The father who abused the main characters is not presented as a complete person, but just as a psychopath, plain and simple, which is the easiest way out when you don't actually want to deal with the implications of domestic abuse.
So, the domestic abuse is used as a reason for the main character being so protective of his sister.

Oh, and his protectiveness clearly veers into incest territory. Of course, this is never addressed, and it's played for comedy/fetish, to the point where he even enjoys her eating his flesh. Now, I would have no problem with this at all, if it wasn't so fetishized. I don't find that gross or disturbing, I just find it kind of...boring, and tired. Uninspired, if you will. It's just there to appeal to people who like that, and it isn't adressed in the story at all. Thus, the comparison I made before to a guro hentai manga.
Also, I have no problems with incest...when it's handled properly. But here, it isn't even addressed - it's just there. Same as all the other stuff.

All of the characters are really...flat. None of them have any sort of depth. The main two characters sure as hell don't, and the side characters(specifically the classmates of the main characters) might as well not be there, as their presence doesn't make too much of a difference.
The main character is the typical shounen protagonist - not to smart, but full of determination and will - that's rather bad, but I've seen worse.
His siter is...well, the stereotypical little sister, that clings to her brother, depends on him for everything, and can't live without him...so, a character made for little-sister fetishists, basically.
The other characters are not even worth mentioning. I already did mention their father, who is just a psychopath and nothing else, really.

I usually dont' care much for the art, but since this is supposed to be a "horror" manga, I do have to mention it.
In short, it's rather bad. The majority of doujins I have seen have better art. The majority of the aforementioned guro hentai mangas have better art.
The gory scenes are, well, ok for what they are though. I have seen better, but if you like gore, you will probably find them to be fine, at best. But there's no horror here, just a lot of gore.

In conclusion...this is pretty weak manga. It's got gore, if you like that. It's got some little-sister/incest fetishism, and guro fetishism, if you're into that. But, that's about it. I would even say that reading a guro hentai manga might actually be better than reading Pupa, because at least you can masturbate to those. They might even have a better story and characters. In fact, they probably do.

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Jan 26, 2015

osharina

Not Recommended

Preliminary (17/34 chp)

The story starts off promising, since I enjoy incestious relationships, horror/gore, and demonic creatures. Yet the premise is pretty much the only good thing. The story went downhill due to unnecessary plot twists, which actually made the whole thing much less interesting.

The art wasn't pleasant. The artist has a unique style, which I appreciate, yet did not enjoy. Still, nothing too bad.

The characters are even worse than the wishy-washy plot. Utsutsu is the mediocre big brother, who's pretty much in love with his sister. Yume is the cutesy little sister, who returns his feelings. Doesn't sound that bad, yet the characters are unlikable to ...

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Oct 27, 2018

Paraturtle

Not Recommended

I'll admit, I went into this knowing I wouldn't like it. I'd watched the anime to boost some stats for achievements so here we are. Curiosity got the better of me.

Also, I won't be breaking this into a standard review. I think I'll limit this to one slate rather than breaking it into Story, Art, Character, etc. It's simply unnecessary.

With that said--

It's funny how a common discussion about the anime is that the convoluted and confusing nature of the story is likely due to the lack of actual content. Being a 5 or so minute show it's greatly limited by the amount of content it ... can actually cover. Yet, even with 34 chapter, Pupa never measures up to anything worthwhile. In fact, it's almost more confusing and more convoluted.

Characters seem to teleport, locations don't really have an identity, and the pacing is a mile a minute with the restraint of an elementary school student who just discovered Naruto (I'm not bad mouthing Nardo, just the theoretical person above which actually includes myself lol). Choices in the narrative are made simply because, "Well, that's cool! Let's do that!" and I get that, I really do. In fact, I agree that some concepts in this story are quite interesting, but that's because I'm thinking back to the conceptual stage and not engaging with the final presentation.

Which, by the way, is really bad. The art for this manga is janky and boring. The backgrounds are 90% white and the art that actually takes precedence is only fine. Sometimes I would see a panel or 2-page spread and be left wondering what's actually happening. This is alleviated later as the mangaka improves, but it doesn't save anything about this manga.

I haven't said much of anything about the actual story, just about the structure and presentation, so maybe I should get into that.

It's bad. Real bad. It's exploitative, extreme, vile, and I think the real sickening aspect of this narrative is that it brings to light a very dark and twisted heart that the author has. Now, this will sound so judgemental and inappropriate coming from me (as a huge fan of Berserk) but let me clarify before I head into my main thoughts.

Extreme content is like anything else in a story. With enough care and respect to the content itself, one can do anything with their story and I feel it will largely be acceptable. This does not open the floodgates to writing something pornographic, but it means that if someone were to write something sexual, there are certain stipulations that allow it to be functionally appropriate and respectable to the content, characters, and your intended audience. The same works for horrific acts of violence. In fact, this is more commonly used and often written better, but we've all experienced something that was either A) poorly written (like a bad death or unnecessary death that ruined a story) or B) read something that was far more gratuitous and bordered on snuff/exploitation.

I would argue that a story like Berserk respects this foundation (save for maybe 1 scene. And no, it's not the Eclipse). A story like Pupa, however, does not. With overly erotic scenes between perceived siblings, gore for the sake of gore, characters who do heinous acts with little reason, and certain plot points that make you go, "What the heck!?", you're ultimately stuck with a story whose author has a few screws loose.

To return to my first defining characteristic, the "Well, that's cool! Let's do that!" aspect of the mangaka, the issue comes in when you have certain acts within this story that, honestly, shouldn't be considered cool in the first place. And the reason I use a lame term like 'cool' is that I don't think she felt that it was anything other than cool. And I get that, some of these things have an edge to them that's shiny and reflective and I want to get so much closer but when you're writing like a child, someone has to tell you that you're running towards a knife. Don't do that.

I think this covers most, if not all, my thoughts on Pupa. There's some other stuff I could say specifically but I'm not here to rail on the story's specifics. I wanted to detail the failings of it's concepts because I feel like that hasn't been totally touched on in other reviews. So hopefully you found this educational. =3

But yeah, don't read it. It's boring and a waste of time.

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