Boogiepop wa Warawanai

It's hard for me to review Boogiepop because by my own admission it's a hard show to follow. The story is told in non-linear fashion as the backgrounds and viewpoints of half-a-dozen characters intersect and are then analyzed independently and episodically. Individual episodes jump back and forth along the timeline as they fill in gaps regarding a supernatural incident that gave various people in a city special powers, or changed their lives permanently. However it's hard to argue with Boogiepop's lighting, ambiance, shot composition, or soundtrack, all of which are top-quality. It's the kind of laconic show that won't hold your hand and seems primarily ... concerned with identity in the digital age; it can certainly be seen as a companion piece with Serial Experiments Lain, and a foundational part of the Japanese "denpa" subgenre. I think it merits another watch or two before I can get into anything beyond its aesthetic qualities, but it makes for an amazing watch anyway.

I really enjoyed this as a light novel reader. The series is mostly a set of one-off episodes which culminate in the plotlines joining together. However, if you haven't read the light novels, things can be a bit confusing as to why you should care about characters. Events from the first novel serve as the starting point for all of the weird incidents in the story. This is because Boogiepop Phantom basically serves as a sequel to the live action adaptation for the first novel. Main character backstories from the 6th novel are also briefly referenced but in a way that will be confusing to ... most viewers. Volumes 1-6 are translated officially, while volumes 7 and 8 are fan translated/being translated. I went in with knowledge from Volumes 1-6, which are quite easily and cheaply available through the two "Boogiepop Omnibus" releases that are available as overstock from Amazon. I really enjoyed the atmosphere, story, characters, and other aspects of the show, but I can understand entirely why someone would be confused beyond what is normally expected for a viewer of this type of show (i.e. Twin Peaks). It's sort of like a "Tales from the World of Boogiepop" more than anything.

While watching Boogiepop Phantom a question kept popping up in my very confused (but pretty) noggin: “am I missing something?” Turns out that I was indeed missing something. Boogiepop Phantom bridges the gap between two light novels that haven’t been adapted into anime and also happen to be prohibitively expensive in my secluded homeland, the great white north. In a way it’s like jumping into a series during the second season without having watched the first. Unfortunately this doesn’t exactly make for great TV.

The situation isn’t helped by the non-linear structure the show adopts or the lack of distinctive characters. Everyone sort of has the ... same face which was a problem for me, as I couldn’t tell if I had seen certain characters in another episode or not. What I assume were big plot reveals were ruined because I didn’t know which character from 3 episodes prior was having their story concluded. Usually I’m fairly astute with this type of thing, but I’ll admit this might have occurred because I wasn’t invested enough in the series. But first time viewers can expect some (deliberate?) confusion.

In a way I respect how intentionally opaque Boogiepop is, the way it requires you to dig deeper into supplementary material to understand it. I just think it could have been executed better. It didn’t leave me wanting to hunt down the novels or read fan theories online the way other shows of this nature did. A lot of the time it just bored me.

It does have some good qualities though. Some of the visuals are quite nice; in one scene Boogiepop opens his/her cape and it appears as if a gate to the cosmos is contained within it which I thought was really neat. I liked the memory butterflies and some of the monster designs as well. The animation…fluctuates. The OST and sound design are phenomenal.

Overall I didn’t really enjoy Boogiepop Phantom which is a shame as I had pretty high expectations and liked the first few episodes a lot. It became pretty apparent about halfway through that the series was more interested in being pseudo-deep than being actual scary which disappointed me. It just doesn't stand on it's own as a satisfying story. I would only recommend it to fans of the novels or soundtrack aficionados.