Pupa Review

The manga is about a boy who regenerates and a sister who must eat him to stay human, and its whole effect depends on duration. The reader is held in a scene long enough for the arrangement between the siblings to become unbearable. The adaptation gives each episode about four minutes, which is not enough time to establish a room, and then covers the violence with black bars so wide that in several sequences the screen is mostly blank.

The result is a horror series with no horror in it and no story either. Events the manga builds toward arrive as single shots with no setup, characters appear and are gone before they are named, and the connective tissue between chapters is simply absent, so the series plays as a slideshow of endings. What does reach the screen is not well made. Backgrounds are flat, animation is largely held cels with camera moves over them, and the mix leaves scenes ringing in silence.

The one thing that survives is the central relationship in outline, the sister's hunger and the brother's decision to let her have it, and it survives because the premise is strong enough to register even at this length. Everything a production is responsible for was either not attempted or actively undone. It is the clearest modern case of an adaptation that would have been better left unmade.