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 eleven disturbing episodes behind us, and the previous one feeling like it offered a sense of closure, the final episode of the series has arrived and it’s strangely happy in its nature. Though with a title like Larva for it, you know it just means to pay attention to what comes later. What we get here for it is basically a cute form version of Yume and Utsutsu as the two of them are in the department store where Yume wants one of the really nice teddy bears that they have, but Utsutsu has only a little bit of money and not enough. Since her teddy bear is in bad shape, they get to try a few different things in order to try and get one, including the lottery form which works in a couple of different ways.
Essentially, Utsutsu is rather cute as he gets multiple tries to try and win a teddy bear for her as everyone ends up giving him their tickets. There are a few life lessons tossed into it as well as it goes on, which is hilarious when taken in context with the show itself and how it’s gone in prior episodes, but it also works to show the bonds between the two siblings and just how committed to making Yume he is. And getting something that’s just so happy and cute and utterly adorable, particularly when combined with the closing sequence, it’s just a hugely off-putting work in general that leaves you cringing because you know you shouldn’t be smiling along with it.
In Summary:
In a lot of ways, I’m still not sure how to take this series. With its short run time per episode, it crammed more story material into it than some other shows do in a twenty-minute run time. But it also worked a really haphazard kind of structure that, while it works as a whole when you look at it that way, makes for a difficult viewing experience. I love the designs of it since it didn’t go completely normal and even with the censoring it still did what it wanted to and you had to let your mind fill in the blanks, which was aided by the disturbing sounds that were used along the way. I’ll easily admit that this makes me want to see the manga to get the bigger picture, but I’m also game for another season if they can figure that out.
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.
