I'll admit, I went into this knowing I wouldn't like it. I'd watched the anime to boost some stats for achievements so here we are. Curiosity got the better of me.

Also, I won't be breaking this into a standard review. I think I'll limit this to one slate rather than breaking it into Story, Art, Character, etc. It's simply unnecessary.

With that said--

It's funny how a common discussion about the anime is that the convoluted and confusing nature of the story is likely due to the lack of actual content. Being a 5 or so minute show it's greatly limited by the amount of content it can actually cover. Yet, even with 34 chapter, Pupa never measures up to anything worthwhile. In fact, it's almost more confusing and more convoluted.

Characters seem to teleport, locations don't really have an identity, and the pacing is a mile a minute with the restraint of an elementary school student who just discovered Naruto (I'm not bad mouthing Nardo, just the theoretical person above which actually includes myself lol). Choices in the narrative are made simply because, "Well, that's cool! Let's do that!" and I get that, I really do. In fact, I agree that some concepts in this story are quite interesting, but that's because I'm thinking back to the conceptual stage and not engaging with the final presentation.

Which, by the way, is really bad. The art for this manga is janky and boring. The backgrounds are 90% white and the art that actually takes precedence is only fine. Sometimes I would see a panel or 2-page spread and be left wondering what's actually happening. This is alleviated later as the mangaka improves, but it doesn't save anything about this manga.

I haven't said much of anything about the actual story, just about the structure and presentation, so maybe I should get into that.

It's bad. Real bad. It's exploitative, extreme, vile, and I think the real sickening aspect of this narrative is that it brings to light a very dark and twisted heart that the author has. Now, this will sound so judgemental and inappropriate coming from me (as a huge fan of Berserk) but let me clarify before I head into my main thoughts.

Extreme content is like anything else in a story. With enough care and respect to the content itself, one can do anything with their story and I feel it will largely be acceptable. This does not open the floodgates to writing something pornographic, but it means that if someone were to write something sexual, there are certain stipulations that allow it to be functionally appropriate and respectable to the content, characters, and your intended audience. The same works for horrific acts of violence. In fact, this is more commonly used and often written better, but we've all experienced something that was either A) poorly written (like a bad death or unnecessary death that ruined a story) or B) read something that was far more gratuitous and bordered on snuff/exploitation.

I would argue that a story like Berserk respects this foundation (save for maybe 1 scene. And no, it's not the Eclipse). A story like Pupa, however, does not. With overly erotic scenes between perceived siblings, gore for the sake of gore, characters who do heinous acts with little reason, and certain plot points that make you go, "What the heck!?", you're ultimately stuck with a story whose author has a few screws loose.

To return to my first defining characteristic, the "Well, that's cool! Let's do that!" aspect of the mangaka, the issue comes in when you have certain acts within this story that, honestly, shouldn't be considered cool in the first place. And the reason I use a lame term like 'cool' is that I don't think she felt that it was anything other than cool. And I get that, some of these things have an edge to them that's shiny and reflective and I want to get so much closer but when you're writing like a child, someone has to tell you that you're running towards a knife. Don't do that.

I think this covers most, if not all, my thoughts on Pupa. There's some other stuff I could say specifically but I'm not here to rail on the story's specifics. I wanted to detail the failings of it's concepts because I feel like that hasn't been totally touched on in other reviews. So hopefully you found this educational. =3

But yeah, don't read it. It's boring and a waste of time.