Pupa Episode 5
What They Say:
The “life-and-death sibling” story follows Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa, a boy and his little sister who find themselves all alone. One day, Yume sees a mysterious red butterfly and her body undergoes a strange metamorphosis—into a creature that eats humans. Utsutsu struggles to find a way to restore his sister.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Maria pulling some strings as we saw in the last episode with how Utsutsu is being kept hidden and Yume believing she killed him, she’s starting to spiral emotionally under the weight of what she did. But what we get instead of following up on that is seeing the birth of Yume, whose mother knew she was giving birth to a real monster. And you get that completely when Yume was bon and looks at her mother. It didn’t take long for her to get teeth either compared to other kids and as a baby she just has a dangerous look about her, at least through her mother’s point of view. She’s fully in protecting Utsutsu mode, but as we see, Yume can’t be killed and that just leads to more disturbing ideas of what Yume really is, and what she was brought into by her husband.
In Summary:
Getting a glimpse of the past definitely changes your view of events as now instead of Yume simply being drawn into something, we discover that she’s always had a real darkness in her and was given life for a purpose, an experiment of some sort. That adds a much darker tone to an already disturbing series, but it’s the visuals and narrative in this episode that drives it home all the more as we see what the kids mother was doing to try and save Utsutsu from the darkness that she had given birth too. Curiouser and curiouser.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.