Pupa Episode 02 - Sting

I think it goes without saying that I utterly abhor this show. It does so many things wrong all in spectacular fashion, how can I not go on at length about it? Fortunately, it's also very short, which makes it the perfect candidate for a nice little bonus every week.

After all, who can resist just a tiny helping of extra horrible in their lives?

Oh, everyone except me? Glad we got that cleared up.

Remember, you've been warned, I have no idea what's coming up so if you're squeamish, seriously. Stay away, for the love of god.
So remember what happened last week? That thing which was like three minutes and I'm sure you probably didn't miss airing because you were taking a bathroom break between shows? Yeah well, just in case, they've opened with a lovely little recap for us.

Teddy bears: Making everything okay!

So it's your typical abusive parent: Daddy beats mommy, and after the papa teddy bear comically kicks the mama bear which goes spinning around a few times before she cartoonishly lands on the ground in pure cutesy fashion, the camera zooms in on the kiddy bears while our narrator lets us know that dad would beat them too. All around terrible people doing terrible things. Hooray.

If this is reality then no wonder everything's f***ed.

And despite the horrendously dark and oppressive atmosphere, this scene continues to be as soft as possible while describing something that should be pretty horrible. Why are you trying so hard to make us laugh, when this is not something anybody should ever laugh at ever?

Cute things portraying horrifying situations through comedic
actions! Hooray familial violence!

Boy, it's so glad we've been given a whole three minutes prior to this episode to get a feel for these characters, or I might be horrified at this. Instead, I could really care less. Which is KIND OF THE F***ING PROBLEM HERE. This is a tiny excerpt out of a much larger piece without any real context or emotional connection or investment so how the hell are we even supposed to give two shits about any of this?

So then the parents finally get divorced and mom starts hanging around 'younger guys' and we are still stuck in bear land. Eventually their mom leaves too and then it is just two cute cuddly teddy bears sitting in the dark while the narrator tells us his sister would cry about being lonely. Oh look a title slide.

Right, so remember last week? Yeah well, we're finally back to that almost halfway through. Every second is precious here, so let's start with a witty one-liner!

God lady you are so clever, did anyone ever tell you that?

That lady with the weird cat shows up and is all like "welp this'll be hard to clean up, oh well" then asks him if he's got a minute to talk about the monster. See, her name is Maria, and an ambulance shows up with a cleaning crew to make sure everything is all hush-hush. But he'd better forget about his sister, because they'll just take care of her now. But nope, he can't do that, that's his sister! So Maria is all "oh, okay, cool, you go tell the big man-eating monstrosity that she's important to you."

So he goes to do exactly that. Meanwhile we get to see the little sister chowing down on, I dunno. Something. A cat? Someone's head? Not sure, don't care, not enough time to focus on that because she's busy inner monologuing about how embarrassing this would be if her brother saw and damn whatever this thing is happens to be incredibly tasty.

Oh, gee, guess he shows up to see she's eating something. How embarrassing!

Considering how her brother actually looks, I'm not entirely
surprised her reaction is abject horror.

So Yume turns around and is all like screaming in her head for him to keep away, and he just sorta calmly walks up as she cries, and he's all "man you are super import to me, I don't care what you look like". Then we get to see his naked little sister super-imposed on the creature and the music cuts out, which is usually an indicator that this is going to be the shortest anime series in all of human history.

Which is pretty much exactly what happens as she chows down on his... shoulder? Chest? I dunno the artwork here is so damned awkward it's hard to even make out that important detail. Then blood hits the camera and congraturation, you are winnar! By which I mean this episode is over.

Man, I'm so glad I stayed up to watch that, wasn't that completely worth your time and effort?

What was even the point of this? Why in the hell would you wind up wasting all of this time and effort into something that horribly fits what you are trying to do with it? This isn't compelling. It's an annoying distraction at best. Why didn't they instead just adapt it for a very short OVA series to test the waters? That would have gotten more viewers, and more importantly, it would have at least made some early DVD sales I bet. Hell this whole fetid pile of ass probably would have turned out a heck of a lot better. Albeit still relatively disgusting, but at least it would have turned out better.

In short: Another lovely waste of four minutes of your life. I'm sorry if you bothered to even watch this. Because I sure as hell am.