Puparia

I have zero reasons why I am always late on these kinds of anime.

Visuals, visuals, visuals. For some reason, slap high-quality visuals into something and people will like it. Of course, it is obvious why, but it gets pretty biased in the community when that is the only aspect that is rated upon when watching anime. It is essentially a Konami code of rating things towards your way.

It is clear that Puparia may have a message within its duration, but that wooshed over my head, probably because of how implicitly intricate it is. It was kinda chilling though, paranormal distortions were present throughout, probably somewhere ... along these lines is where the meaning lies. But as said with the opening paragraph, the visuals hit the most. They are indeed amazing, and why I liked this quite a bit, like something out of a seinen manga, every detail is taken, piece by piece. No losses in the system. As much as I would like to give this a higher score because maybe it was intended to be an artistic work. I simply cannot do so since, well, it was just great art. Nothing more, nothing less.

This isn't for everyone. So I wouldn't recommend it to you if your tastes were leaning towards the mainstream. But I wouldn't skip over it if I were you either. Consider it. It is only 3 mins, and whilst you most likely won't get anything out of it, it is very pleasing to stare at, at the minimum.

It's a bit of weird one.

First things first, this is brilliantly animated and the art style really stands out, the visuals alone are worth a watch, considering the very short run time.

Fundamentally though, this doesn't convey much more than visuals. Certainly they are quite striking but there isn't really much of a coherent narrative, or even any dialogue. It's very much a piece that aims to be high art but personally I don't think achieves much other than looking quite striking. I'm sure the creator had deeper meaning in mind with some of the shots, particularly the 2nd scene, but some of the others also ... seem relatively meaningless, such as the 1st, but maybe I just don't get it. In my opinion, I believe that communication is a 2-way street, there's no use putting out a message if no one can understand it and this short fails to really consider how the viewer could perhaps want to know more about what the intent is of the piece. Worst case scenario, it's a pretentious bit of flair with no real meaning that is intentionally vague to make something without committing to a coherent message. Best case scenario, it's a masterpiece of expressionist art. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder for this one.

Finally, I think the musical theme is fine for the intensity of the visuals but I think overall could be better, I think the repetitiveness works for visuals but also can see how they may come across as grating.

Far from a universally enjoyable piece, for sure.

Do you know why Puparia became somewhat known in the anime community from the flood of 10k+ 1-5 minute long animations? Because it looked pretty.

This review is more of a critic towards this type of stuff rather than Puparia itself. All of this applies to every one of you ''avant garde'' category ''animes'' that have the same issues.

First of all this is not an ''anime''. This shouldn't be in the ''anime'' category full of ''anime''. This is an experimental animation with visuals and symbolisms that only the author can understand because it came from HIS field of perspective and ... all we can do is ATTEMPT to deconstruct what we saw. This is not an ''anime''. I don't care if the pure definition is animation from Japan. When you think of an anime you think attack on titan , jjk , dragon ball so on so fort. STORY , CHARACTERS , NARRRATIVE and all sorts of stuff which is missable in all of these 3 minute long nothing burger acid tripping .....things.

I was looking through the Avant Garde category as I was a big fan of animes such as Lain , Texhnolyze and Penguindrum and was wondering what else I could watch that had the vagueness and creativity to add different abstract symbolism while having a narrative that you can follow and care about alongside with it. Only to realise that ALL OF THE PAGES in the ''Avant Garde'' category is full of crap. This is the honest definition of this style of production - pointless acid trip crap. You don't learn anythiing from these , you don't get attached in any way to these and you CAN'T even get the full grasp of what you are watching without being on 20 different substances at the end of the world. I REPEAT - this is NOT an anime.

Puparia too is a clear example that this style of ...... experimental animation as a failiure. Out of the TRILLIONS of these shorts Puparia is the highest rated. DO YOU WANNA KNOW WHYYYYYY? Because it looks the prettiest and the visuals are nice and wallpaper worthy. Hell you can even get a tiktok edit out of the clips. That's it. It perfectly showcases how no one gives a fuck what the ''anime'' had to convey or it's messages. It just looks pretty. That's why it became popular. There's nothing to understand behind this. Just vague imagery that you can use your OWN conscience to depict them in HOWEVER way you want. It's game that plays on your delusions. Visuals that in your own free time put random interpretations which only YOU will find as such through YOUR field of vision and how you percieve the world.

Lain will forever be timeless because it had time to be abstract and vague but also have time to tell a story. TO DO SOMETHING. You can be the DUMBEST person ever and still like Lain because it had a story to tell with characters that can be understood by many with clear goals and a narrative. It's an Avant Garde anime. Puparia and the other youtube shorts lenght animations are highschool projects done by a 44 year old man who's escaping the matrix. It has no right to be on anime websites when it is not an anime.
Realistically the only 2 people putting these on their list with a high score (or in general put them at all) are A) Really really wanting attention elitists or B) People I would most likely not want to ascosiate with.

It baffles me that MAL has the option ''Spoiler Warning (required)'' for making a review on this.
2/10 (+1 point for looking pretty :') )