#125: Pupa (2014)

Director: Tomomi Mochizuki

Screenplay: Tomomi Mochizuki

Based on a manga by Sayaka Mogi

Voice Cast: Nobunaga Shimazaki as Utsutsu Hasegawa; Ibuki Kido as Yume Hasegawa; Mamiko Noto as Sachiko Hasegawa; Kōji Yusa as Shirō Onijima; Kyōko Narumi as Maria; Kenjiro Tsuda as Makoto Hotoki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Concerning previous "terrible" anime I have covered, Pupa is not as bad as its reputation suggests. Unlike, say, Mars of Destruction (2005), where for my enjoyment of it the result of a technical embarrassment, Pupa was a compelling premise, one which is grotesque and likely as much to have been dismissed by many due to its offensiveness. However, there is also the issue that Pupa was compromised by the worst case scenario of how a production shouldn't have ended up.

Pupa is pure ero-guro-nonsense, in the sense of the erotic (ero) in its transgressive incest themed content, grotesque (guro) in its gore and disturbing plot details, and nonsense for how over-the-top it is, in which a virus has left two siblings, Utsutsu Hasegawa the older brother and Yume Hasegawa his little sister, mutated. Yume, inside her stereotypical cute Moe schoolgirl form, is actually a human flesh eating monstrosity that'll devour anything that moves if she gets hungry but, watched over by a shady organisation, a compromise is found in that her brother Utsutsu can regenerate grievous bodily injuries, thus decided upon himself to be the Prometheus to her crow by letting her eat pieces of him when she feel the cravings. It's made inherently sexual just in the sounds the voice actors make during the few eating scenes, chomping on her brother's stomach in the gym during physical education classes, and is more disturbing as they're mere underage teenagers and related. One scene, where they are undressed and Yume's allowed to feed on him in one of their bedrooms just deliberately evokes an even more sordid air to already provocative content. I find in this case however it's an acceptable form of transgression, as its meant to provoke with a reason, deliberately set up to be freakish and yet perversely compelling, and its set up to.

Mainly, in spite of the huge production flaw of how Pupa's structured we'll get to, because there is enough set up in terms of complexity. That these are psychologically damaged figures whose symbiotic relationship comes from the older brother wishing to protect his little sister. Their father was abusive, and the mother even before birth outright rejected to her second child as a monster, forcing the siblings in a relationship of closed in isolation where they depend on each other. Incest is, frankly, a taboo subject for a reason, and its particularly an issue as it's a common theme to be found in anime and manga even in porn, which raises an issue of when it's used at all; it's gotten so pronounced in subculture that an increasing amount of "step-sibling" plots in Western porn may be an attempt to reach a fan base that's into those Japanese works originally. Here in Pupa, in this context, it feels acceptable as a deliberate provocation trying to be more dramatically richer, and one of the virtues of Japanese horror is that, even when it's nasty and gory, a surprising amount of it has a lot of potential for nuisance than much in the West. Pupa from its tone is inherently more nuisance and even when it leads to a darkly humoured tone with how their awkward feeding relationship plays out near the end, it's with reason with context.

Probably the biggest surprise is that Pupa was directed and written by Tomomi Mochizuki, who directed Ocean Waves (1993), a Studio Ghibli project, and one of their most obscure titles, in which they let younger talent create a TV animated movie, thus (as Ocean Waves was a high school drama) you have both the abrupt change of pace and a review that can quote Ghibli and body horror in the same sentence which also happen to both be about teenage angst. Unfortunately, when Pupa was originally meant to be a full length anime TV series, the production went through a drastic choice that proves a huge issue. First, this is a micro series, twelve episodes that are four minutes long each, which is a format I have covered and come to admired, but leaves Pupa with barely the surface in terms of its plotting. It does mean you have a full narrative here of interest, but details are lost to the side, such as the character of Maria, dressed as a Goth witch that looks out of place as a costume, the villainess who is involved in the experiments on the siblings and even willingly becomes the expecting mother of another flesh eater, a plot thread we never see as that closes out her story. Likewise, the show ends with another medical group, for unknown reasons, kidnapping the pair and taking a morally dubious stance that, just because he can regenerate even amputations, cutting Utsutsu up with anaesthetic is just pure evil no matter how much good you claim to be studying for.

From https://www.fandompost.com/wp-content/
uploads/2014/02/Pupa-Episode-7.jpg

Not helping was apparently, with full knowledge this is a nasty premise, this was released censored in a comically atrocious way, as in black obscuring blood to the point the screen's black, white bars covering sibling eating to the point of almost becoming more obscene looking, even the censorship of a knife being held aloft. It's an embarrassing result, as you can see comparisons between the censored and uncensored versions, and beggars the question of why adapting horror anime like this unless you have it PPV or on the equivalent (which exists) of cable where you can show stuff like this with more ease in Japan. In general, Pupa is not an example of dreadful anime, but an example of all the production choices that can mess up a compelling work.

Visually the show is okay, the generic character designs actually helping with the luridness of the premise if you aren't going to be more ambitious, especially as the whole stereotype of the innocent little sister-figure to protect, which is a common and a problem in terms of its fetishisation in this medium, is made more interesting here when the character looks and sounds as doe eyed and soft voiced as possible before she turns into a monster reptile creature eating your leg. The emphasis on this is also decided to depict the more real disturbing content, like the abuse background to their childhood, through the motif of teddy bears representing the family, innately the bright colours of animation useful for making bright cute things more disturbing when representing the worst in humanity. The show even ends on a sweet note as, rather than horror, it's a childhood flashback to a game Utsutsu tries to win as a small boy for his sister that emphasises his love and protectiveness to her.

So there was more ambition here than some of the bad or boring anime I have encountered would never have. There's enough in just thirty seven minutes or so altogether to redeem the work from its infamy, but of course the fragmented version in existence offers barely a slither of a work that could've been more interesting. I cannot imagine fans of the original manga, by Sayaka Mogi, would be happy when the work lasted over five volumes leaving a lot on the table left to potentially cover¹. It's a "what-if" instead, the chance likely to have been compromised permanently as this is an obscure work and, if Western reactions had any influence in the slightest, it's like angry peasants welding burning torches than defences for the most part. So the result is admiration for what is there, but a lot of disappointment too, which is a shame as in knowledge of how perverse, disgusting and adamant to many clichés Pupa is, I actually enjoyed it for what it was immensely.  

From https://moesucks.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/pupa-1102.jpg

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1) As of 2019, no English translation of this manga exists sadly, though if you can speak French, France with its healthy number of manga titles of intrigue being published there did get it.