Revisiting Pupa: A Liveblog of Sorts (Part 1)

By Unknown - Friday, January 10, 2014 - No Comments

If you’ve been so nice as to follow the blog, you’ll recall that I read Pupa in order to do a pre-release article of its upcoming Anime helmed by Studio Deen. If you haven’t any idea in the slightest what I’m going on about, click here to read about how I’ve suffered for my craft.

That was in September. Long story cut short, Pupa was beautiful, a real masterpiece, it left me both wanting more and needing to hurl. I decided that I wasn’t prepared to follow up with subsequent chapter releases, and so I did not.

As of 9 January 2014, after a little bit of a tussle with the censors and a couple months of delay, the first episode of Pupa is finally out.

It’s been a good 4 months since September.

And I am going to watch this.

It’s 14 30 (2:30pm, if you’re not familiar with the 24-hour clock) and I’ll be hitting the play button right about now.

14 32

Awfully nice catchy-dissonant theme song, lovely style.

But that’s just the theme song.

14 33

I’m loving Yume’s voice, just the perfect kind of innocent. I can’t wait for it to spout the lines she spouts later in the story

Cute imouto. Enjoy her while she's like that, while you still can

14 34

The woman is creeping me out, so are the red butterflies. The BGM is lovely, for the record.

14 35

PUPPY. BURST. TENTACLES. PUPPY. TENTACLES

The visual in question

I’m not going near my stuffed toys anymore.

That is a very alarming shade of pink.

OF COURSE HE’S LOOKING AT YOU LIKE THAT. LOOK AT YOURSELF.

That is an eldritch abomination.

It is also hot pink.

Get it away from me.

-------

Under normal circumstances, I would apologise for being unprofessional. But this is Pupa. So I have a free pass to be terrified and incoherent.

You do too

I have the heavens to thank that each episode is only 4 minutes. The foreboding of what was to come really got to me, especially considering that I’ve read the Manga.

For the record, it was stifling and unpleasant. Waiting with bated breath for shit to go down is not my thing.

First Impressions.

That is a lot of content a mere four minute episode, kudos to Studio Deen for managing that. But this also meant that plenty of content and a lot of the nuanced horror buildup that I enjoyed in the manga was absent.

I find that tragic, because as anyone who’s read the source material can tell you, the Pupa manga was absolutely brilliant.

The music is beautiful and lends a lot to whatever little atmosphere the episode retains. The visuals were a tad bit disappointing though, it's clean and simple and just a little bit creepy it would have excelled if not for the fact that I had the manga's gritty illustration style as a point of comparison.

Scene composition remains true to the frames in the manga. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen but it’s just something I’ve noticed.

That was a little harsh. But what little dream sequence there was with the creepy teddy bear was done pretty well.

That makes two of us, owner. Come play with me, forever and ever

There is something about the image of a damaged soft toy addressing you that stays in your mind, there’s also something about the way the teddy bear looked at Yume. That stuck.

That and the bursting puppy

All in all, I can’t say anything much. Thus far it's nowhere near as raw and terrifying as it's manga counterpart. It’s a little bit watered down and vanilla, but then again, I’ve only seen four minutes of rushed backstory plus potentially censored video. I will certainly be watching, because there are bloodier, more puke-inducing bits ahead.

Continue following this? Definitely. I’m half looking forward to the gore, grit and brutality, but that’s not to say that I’m not concerned about my own rapidly slipping sanity.

Pupa does that to you. Robs your sanity.

Also, I’ll be trying to do this every week, a quick and dirty mini-review. So see you when I see you!

Also, wish me luck

Written by Ash