Our story focuses on two teenagers, Utsutsu and his little sister, Yume. One day after school, Yume runs into a dog with a rather strange infection, and is then attacked by said dog. Utsutsu later finds Yume lying unconscious, but as soon as he approaches, her body starts to morph and change into that of a monster, and she ends up attacking Utsutsu as well. Both siblings have been infected by a virus called Pupa, which mutates its host into monsters with an insatiable appetite for human flesh, though, curiously, Utsutsu ends up taking on bizarre regenerative abilities rather than turning into a monster like his sister, and so he decides to lend his body to Yume for her to feed on.
While the story itself is important, I think it's almost just as important to learn the story behind how this anime came to be what it is now infamous for. Originally, Pupa was set to air in the Fall 2013 season as a regular, full-length TV series, and the hype that was being generated for it was pretty high, putting it at approximately 3rd place for most anticipated of the season, right after Kyoto Animation's Beyond the Boundary and Studio Trigger's Kill la Kill. However, as soon as the Fall season began, it was announced that the series would be pushed back to the Winter 2014 season. While there's not much information on why this is, the most often cited answer is that Studio Deen had problems finding a TV station that would air something that has as much gore as Pupa had. Another theory suggested that the series suffered significant budget problems and was forced to delay its premiere. Then, at the beginning of November 2013, it was announced that Pupa would only be a four-minute TV short series, rather than the usual 24 minutes. Regardless of the reasons for its setbacks, the result was both one of the most memorable failures and most abhorred anime of the season.
So, what exactly is wrong with Pupa? To go back to a point I brought up way back during my review of Tonari no Seki-kun (https://www.facebook.com/notes/ember-reviews/ember-reviews-tonari-no-seki-kun/1481071598788328), and more recently my review of Magica Wars (https://www.facebook.com/notes/ember-reviews/ember-reviews-magica-wars/1574541519441335), when creating a TV short, it's important to remember that a non-continuous, episodic format is most likely the only format that will actually work, and attempting to have a continuous, week-to-week story in four-minutes chunks is basically a death wish. To put it more simply, it's practically impossible to have any significant development happen in the span of four minutes (technically three since it also has two 30-second animations for its opening and ending), and any attempts at development miss the mark entirely. When taken as a whole, the series almost feels more like a recap movie rather than an original animation, with actions and plot devices happening without any buildup to them whatsoever.
The sad part, unfortunately, is that this actually had the makings of a really strong anime. If you actually sit back and look at the themes being presented, themes like cannibalism, family bonds, and parental abuse, you can clearly see that the original story for Pupa was incredibly strong, and it even seems to match my own strict requirements for a true horror series with its unbelievably dark plot events and intense reliance on psychological terror. I normally don't bring up the original source material in my anime reviews, but after the first time I dropped this series in around February, I decided to see if the manga was any better. Sure enough, it was actually fairly solid, and I plan on reading more of it. Unfortunately, all of the potential themes and plot points for this series could never amount to anything simply because there wasn't enough time for them to happen. To put the actual time in perspective, the entirety of Pupa, minus the opening and ending animations for each episode, adds up to 36 minutes (48 with the opening and ending still attached), making it about the same length as one and a half regular TV episodes. Now, 36 minutes is technically enough time to tell a story, as a regular episodic TV series can easily do it in 24, but when that story is divided up into twelve segments of plot, it simply becomes impossible.
I could go on to discuss character development and lack thereof, or how the plot jumps from scene to scene so fast it'll make your head spin, or the fact that there are at least two gigantic plot points left unresolved at the end of the series, but it's always going to come back to the fact that the episodes don't allow time for any of said developments to occur. I will say that, aside from this, the final episode was unbelievably disappointing. As it turns out, the actual main story of Pupa ends after episode 11, and episode 12 simply uses a flashback for a vain attempt at character development that should have happened halfway through the series, preferably right before the episode that spends all of its three minutes showing Yume eating a hole in Utsutsu's chest.
The animation was produced by Studio Deen, and considering their past works, you would not be at fault for thinking that it looks bad. However, this series, while not reaching the level of "insultingly good," is still leaps and bounds better than its story. The character designs and environments are very basic and simplistic, yet charming and effective, and there seems to be an overall fuzz or haze filter that creates this very unsettling atmosphere which, while completely unfitting for a full-length series, fits perfectly with its TV short format. I do have a few gripes about the gore however, as it is rather inconsistent. Sometimes the gore is hyper realistic and shows even the exact muscle structures and organs, and other times it's just a big purple-red mush. Additionally, as of today, October 31, 2014, the series is still heavily censored, but what really bugs me about it is there doesn't seem to be any central guideline for the censoring. Sometimes straight-up gore is censored, and sometimes it isn't, and somehow a naked breast is shown without any censorship at all. Someone pulling out a knife is censored, but showing them holding the knife isn't. It's honestly just one big giant mess.
The music was composed by MOKA☆ (Elfen Lied), and is even more impressive than the animation. Most of it is simple electronic swells and dissonances, but there are also a few occasional piano melodies, my favorite being the main theme whose happy and jaunty tune is always used ironically by being coupled with a scene of Yume eating Utsutsu. The opening them "pupa" was performed by Ibuki Kido & Erii Yamazaki and gives us a solid heavy rock/electronic track, while the ending theme "Dare yori Suki na no ni" was performed by Kusuma San Shimai and plays us out with a simple and uninteresting ballad-like piece.
Overall, despite possibly having the makings of a good, or even great series, Pupa is an unforgiving mess completely devoid of any development for its story or characters, but is this really the worst anime of 2014? Not at all, as that title still firmly rests with Magica Wars, and that's honestly why I wanted to do this review in the first place. Unlike Magica Wars, I can actually see a reason for Pupa to exist, as it does have a huge amount of potential, and I will remain hopeful that an OVA remake is resting somewhere in the minds of much better directors and animation studios.
If you still wish to partake in this near-atrocity, Pupa, while still unlicensed for DVD distribution, is currently available for streaming over on Crunchyroll.
