Pupa Episode 04 - Squirm

Another week, another episode of a completely terrible show that never should have seen the light of day. Seriously, releasing it in this format is the most idiotic thing they could have done. You have to be able to tell a full story in a very short amount of time, and these guys? They fail at it. Particularly since a big portion of this genre requires that you have time to let the horror of things set in.

But hey, I'm sure they don't give a shit, so why should we?

Of course we get to pick up where it left off last week with the siblings getting their flesh-eating zombie fetish on in the most technicolored public restroom ever while someone records all that sweet gory footage. After all, guro sells on the internets, for some stupid reason I have never understood.

Eventually, the little girl has had her fill or something, and is sitting in the forest all naked and bloody and shit while the owner of franken-cat gives her a towel to cover up. Some dude runs over and is all "yo, cleaners are here" and we get to see our boring-ass title slide, which is just words on a white background with a lovely gradient that makes the outer edges look slightly grayer.

It's around this time someone finally realizes what's going on.

Look on the bright side, at least there was enough left of him
to put into a body bag.

But lady there is all like "no worries, we'll deal with the body. You ate him, but he was all like "I love you sis" and you ate him." Oh but he didn't die, because she killed him, which is supposed to make this all even more okay. Uh, what?

So on her way back to the lab she's on the phone or something, telling people to keep watch over the boy, but hears some weird noise on the other end and... decides to investigate? Wait, if you were just outside the door, why in the hell were you even talking to those guys on the phone? What was even the point of this? Or were you in another building, and now you've just magically scene teleported to where you put your card in the reader and enter the room where, shock and horror, everybody is dead? What in the hell is going on in this show.

SOCOM? SODOM? What the hell does this thing even say?

Anyway she walks in incredibly surprised at what she finds.

Usually folks who die stay dead. Mind if we run some tests?

But of course he demands to know what happened to his sister, and she cuts his arm but then it immediately heals up, and she informs him that he's been infected by something. The same thing that infected his sister. People infected with this virus get super regenerative powers or something, but side effects include a bottomless craving for human flesh. I'm sure it's something they'll work out once they get to the beta testing stage - for now they're just calling it a 'feature'.

So what's the name of this virus, you may ask? Why, Pupa! Of course, how could I have not guessed that one. He wants to see his sister, but she's all "eh, I'll think about it" and he gets bent out of shape about how he won't let them experiment on his sister, so she asks if he'd be okay with letting his sister, y'know. Devour his flesh again. Because you know, regenerative powers and all that, why not.

Dude doesn't even think about it though. He just declares that he'll never be like his father, and how he's going to protect their teddy bear family through whatever means necessary. And if that means he needs to spend the rest of his life being devoured by his own sister, well heck, that's no big deal.

... yeah just no. Just simply, straight up no. The show ends and not a moment too soon, but I have to say that this is just a really poor format for this story. There's no way to build any sort of character or emotional attachments to the characters, which means we are never going to care about anything that happens to anybody. Because horror is horrifying in that we can usually empathize with the people going through whatever is happening - but in this case? We can't identify with anybody, so it winds up being just another giant pile of not giving a shit.

If they'd turned it into an OVA, took the time to flesh out the scenes a little better, and eliminate the scene teleporting, maybe this would have actually been a halfway decent show. Albeit a halfway decent show with horrifying visuals but halfway decent nonetheless. Instead what we get is a heartless husk, an empty cocoon, if you will.

See that? I made a joke about the show's title. I am so much more clever than these people.