Pupa Episode 8
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)
Getting a little more background on Maria certainly helped in its own way in the previous episode, though the show is just filled with a lot of bizarre things. With this episode, the siblings are back at school where the weirdness of censoring comes into play as a knife is censored in one scene but not another as the two get accosted at school. With Utsutsu being taken advantage of here and stabbed heavily when the two are taken to a warehouse, you really keep waiting to see Yume transform and eat him alive. But this guy, who has been waiting to connect with these two for his own nefarious purpose, gets away with what he’s doing for quite awhile, cutting Utsutsu open with ease and seeing just how quickly he heals. It’s twisted and disturbing but made weird because of the inconsistent censoring that’s going on in Japan.
In Summary:
Of course, things only go so far before the potential real monster begins to show up here but the show is so all over the map in a way that it’s hard to tell who is really going to be who when you get down to it. The progress of course feels weird since we don’t know why the two would suddenly be going back to school, but seeing more of what Utsutsu is capable of is interesting as well as the fact that Yume will go only so far to defend her brother, making it clear that she may or may not be in control of her monstrous side depending on how you want to interpret it.
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.