The Genre: Horror

The Format: 12 episodes @ 26mins each, across 4 DVDs

The plot: Everyone knows about the Boogiepop Phantom: meet her one dark night and you are taken. People tell each other the stories and laugh: no one believes that she exists in this day and age. Still, there are some strange things that appear to be going on just below the surface. Darkness takes many forms. Evil and good intermingle. The glass shatters. Time stands still. There is something in the darkness. You aren't alone. Are you safe?

Five years ago, there was a string of grisly murders that shook the cities to its core ... and in the present, psychic echoes reverberate.

The habit the Japanese have of sticking random English words together is often amusing. I mean, if you were asked to guess what something called Boogiepop phantom was all about, what would it be?

A soft drinks firm? Beethoven’s ghost? A particularly funky set of spirits who’ve formed a popular boogie band?

The last of these is closest to the truth, as Boogiepop phantom is all about, er, something or other. Confession time. I don’t really understand what it’s about. Honestly, beyond being essentially a horror story, I was none the wiser after several viewings.

In fact, visually Boogiepop is very good. Unfortunately, sonically it’s not. There’s very little music or background atmosphere, and the voices are just a little too flat at times for my liking. Interestingly then, this is one of those anime where the English ADR dub fits much better than the original Japanese track.

The most novel thing about Boogiepop is it’s structuring. Episodes are divided up into chapters, but these chapters do not follow any kind of fixed pattern - there can be 8 chapters in one episode and only 2 in another. They’re also not evenly divided, so a chapter can be 20 minutes long, or 20 seconds.

It makes for an interesting structural style and it’s something that I’ve often wondered why it isn't done more often. I can understand why it happens in live action series, as changing the structure would probably be expensive, but in animation it wouldn’t matter two-hoots, surely?

Another good thing about Boogiepop is the way it all weaves together. At the beginning it gives you the impression that the series will be a collection of short stories. However, as you continue to watch, you see some of the scenes and events recur, but from another characters perspective.

I should perhaps explain that the events in Boogiepop are centred on a high school and it’s students. Something odd happens involving a mysterious light that spouts up into the sky, and then all sorts of weird things happen, mainly centred on some particularly odd characters and some butterflies.

Therefore, since a lot of what takes place in the individual tales happens at the same time, many of the scenes overlap. So, in one episode we’ll be on one side of a classroom with one group, then in another we’ll be on the other side of the room with a second group. The effect of this does tend to tail off later, as it becomes more obvious and the overlapping scenes become more important and integral to the story, but it's still a nice touch.

However, despite all these plus points, I didn’t really like Boogiepop phantom. I really did try to like it, but it just didn’t really grab me. I found myself looking at my watch quite a bit, and I must admit I wasn’t exactly clamouring to get the next disk in the machine each time.

The trouble, though, is that I’m not really sure what it is I don’t like about it. I think the major problem may be with the story, since as I mentioned above, I don’t really understand it. I mean, I understand what happens, but I don’t really understand why. There also seems to be a whole element of it that never really gets enough screen time. This is to do with something called the manta core.

The manta core seems to be the “main bad guy” at some points, but is completely forgotten at others with a young girl becoming the antagonist. I didn’t see (or understand) any real link between these two. Also, the explanation of the light that kicks off most of the stories is unsatisfactory and confusing.

So as I say, it’s all good apart from the story at the core, and unfortunately telling a good story is what entertainment is fundamentally all about.

Boogiepop is a 12 episode series, which could therefore really fit on 1 or 2 DVDs, but is released by ADV in 4 parts. As such, by way of compensation for the meagre 3 episodes-per-disk there’s an ADR commentary track. This is unusual on a series like this, and I must admit it’s something of a success.

Although the commentary is billed as being the 'director', there’re contributions from quite a few of the cast and crew with varying degrees of success. The approach they general take is a light-hearted and frivolous one, so it scores more on an entertainment point of view than as an in-depth analysis, but it’s a nice addition none the less.

The Summary: Lots of innovation, lots of style, lots of clever, lots of not very good story.

The Score: 2/5

The Pictures:

(click for larger versions)