Feb 19, 2019
Not worth watching as it doesn't make the most of the animated medium. You're probably better off reading the books.
Relies too heavily on dialogue for telling the plot and not showing the plot. If all the dialogue is poorly-hidden exposition for a plot that would otherwise be impossible to understand, you need to reconsider whether or not this story should be adapted into a visual medium such as anime. The story is probably good, but impossible to tell as it is all explained by characters whilst events seem to be occurring behind the scenes for uncertain reasons.
Between 12.50 and 14.08 in the second episode, you
...
will hear some of the laziest dialogue I think I have ever heard in an anime (bar Speed Racer). I transcribed it all and read it back to myself to get the full impression of how lazy it was. It sounded like bad fanfiction.
For example (I've edited to make it spoiler free):
“You mean we’ll be able to get those guys who’re trying to get me because I’m a X, right?”
This is a cheap shortcut. It's also just not how people talk to each other. If the person she was talking to already knew that she was being targetted because she was a "X", then a simple "Oh great, so we can get back at those guys?" would have sufficed. If Boogiepop is going for a naturalistic, magic-realism style, the dialogue too should fit this description. I actually thought that some of the characters were possibly androids/aliens because of their stunted and overly descriptive dialogue style.
The story has not been properly adapted into the animated format, so it succumbs to lazy storytelling through exposition, which in turn sacrifices the credibility and individuality of the characters. Again, should this have been made into an anime? Moreover, the characters all suffer with same-face. I was perpetually mixing up the two main female AND the two main male characters, and I watch anime regularly, I'm not a newbie (not to mention I work and research in this field). The main characters, even when all in uniform, should be distinct against one another.
On the topic of indistinguishable main characters, the animation is cheap, frequently making use of panning and zoom shots (of still images) to fill time. Additionally there is an overuse of boil animation to show trembling or emotion, in almost every scene, making all characters seem as though they are perpetually emotionally unsettled. Even if this is the case, there are many ways to show nervousness in a character without using a boil technique.
A good anime will always visually show the viewer important information instead of engineering it into poor dialogue for the purpose of explaining the plot - but this probably costs too much money. This isn't just in episode 2, it's across all three first episodes which I wasted my free time watching. Shame, I usually love MadHouse.
I'll try a few more episodes because it seems to be trying something new, but probably won't stick with it.
Three points for awesome music/foley sounds, voice actors, Boogiepop's character design, and opening sequence.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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