Boogiepop Phantom

James Newman (Member, 2004)

“Looking back at it now, at that encounter, It just might have been after-effects. The aftermath of something much bigger that happened earlier. Looking at the world as a whole, this incident was just a small piece of the big puzzle. But it’s the pieces of the puzzle that form the whole picture”

5 years ago a serial killer stalked the town. One day, they simply stopped and they were never caught.

1 month ago a strange light appeared above the school building. Ever since, an aurora has hung over the town.

Now the after-effects of these events are being felt all over town. Children are disappearing, other children blaming a local urban legend: the angel of death- Boogiepop.

This is not your ordinary anime. No exaggerated expressions, no crazy hair and nothing in the way of cuteness. A large number of the characters are insane, from obsesive-compulsive disorder to a split personality. So what is this? 12 episodes, most of them near-completely unrelated to each other. The episodes themselves jump around between the three time zones as well. But gradually, small pieces fit together, and the main plot can gradually be deduced.

This series has a definite visual style: the whole thing, apart from the final episode, is seen through a filter that deadens the colours and gives slight tunnel vision. This, combined with the chronological non-linearity, results in a dream-like feel.

The audio of this series is spectacular. The voice acting is all great, but it is the effects that run the show, from the audio distortion that occurs to voices during certain key lines, to sound effects that repeat later on to pass on clues to the eerie whistled tune that preceeds the appearance of the spooky Boogiepop Phantom- an inhuman, twisted form of the original Boogiepop with objectives unknown.

This is not an anime for the impatient. This is not an anime for those looking for happiness and cuteness. This is an intelligent, deep and thought-provoking anime that needs multiple re-watching and careful attention to completely understand. People who want to see something different from anything else they have ever seen (although some have said it is vaguely similar to ‘serial experiments Lain’, the emphasis is on ‘vaguely’) would do well to check it out.

For a few dead bodies and lots of unsettling events, such as descents into raving dementia and rampant bug eating during one episode (don’t ask), this gets 2.5/5 cute fluffy bunnies.

This series is available on 4 DVDs, each containing 3 episodes. Each DVD has previews, both of Boogepop Phantom itself and of other series’, as well as a directors/actors commentary for each of the episodes, which is mostly very interesting- a couple of the episodes are a bit dull or quiet, but it does help to point out many things the viewer may have missed. The English dub is in 5.1 format, the Japanese is in 2.0 and the commentary is in 1.0 format. There are 5 chapters per episode: intro music, end of intro, halfway point, ending music, next episode preview.

Individual breakdown:

15 and 30 second Boogiepop promos

Music video (Boogiepop visuals to ending music)

ADV previews (Zone of the Enders, Noir, Evangelion, Samurai X (looks like OAV 3, but unspecified) )

100 second Boogiepop promo

Disc 3 promo

Fruits video (this is a music video featuring non-anime (looks CG) visuals to semi-organic sounding dance music: ‘Happy End’ by Flare. Why this is on the DVD is unclear)

ADV previews (Noir, Dai-Guard, Gasaraki, Nadesico)

2 minute Boogiepop promo

Special edit ending (alternative end credit sequence, minus the credits)

Boogiepop episodes 1-6 promo

ADV previews (RahXephon, Dirty Pair Flash, Dragon Half, Dai-Guard)

Original art work

Producer and character notes

Boogiepop episodes 1-6 preview

ADV previews (King of Bandit Jing, Full Metal Panic, The Devil Lady, Voices of a Distant Star)

The best feature on the DVDs is on disk 4: Producer and character notes- this not only has details on the producer’s thoughts on the anime- why he liked it so much, thoughts on the themes raised etc, but also details on each of the characters, explaining many things much more clearly than the anime does, as well as giving information on background characters that don’t appear in this story, but do appear in the original japanese books on which this series is based, fleshing out the world considerably. It is worth noting, however that it would be best to watch the series at least a couple of times before reading them as they remove the best part of the series- working out what is happening for yourself.

5 out of 5