Boogiepop wa Warawanai (2019)

Hat Kid goes all "Society" on us. I knew from the OP that I was going to continue this. The opening is so good and really sets the tone with music, mood, and animation. I love these anime that seek out a cinematic approach like Eden of the East or something of the sort so the budget is of quality (as it should be since this is a reboot). Characters even start realizing they hear the cool music that plays whenever Boogiepop appears. It has style! Now surely the name "Boogiepop" doesn't sound too engaging and neither does the official premise of "person who takes girls away before they get ugly". And trust me, there's a meaning for it, perhaps even a better spelling. Now it IS weird, don't get me wrong. I mean this maneater eats people, kisses people to take possession of them (meaning a girl could kiss another girl but they explain it as the maneater being unisex and just switches by taking the appearance of who "it" eats.) and a bunch of other powered beings. It's a little bit like Durarara in the sense that they tell sort of interweaving stories taking places at different times. Same with Celty being a reaper of sorts with the headless rider and Boogiepop being a reaper of her own merit. Some of it feels like a euphemism displayed through supernatural elements and subliminal (or in some cases, not so subliminal) meanings but I also think that's if you choose to view it that way. For example, you could consider this anime to be about girls reaching puberty which can be an overall broad topic as it is but it's done like it's poetry, through metaphors. You could also say that it's about doing the right thing, helping those in need and weeding out the fakers. Or perhaps it's about overcoming your weaknesses and mixing reality with fantasy and accepting both. Even on different sides and different stories, they all have something in common, they're following a mystery. There are some really fine standout moments and I'm interested to see what the other content has to offer.

Haiku review: “Boogiepop” is the sound made when a snot bubble explodes in your face. Slightly longer review because we still haven’t standardized on the haiku version: Weirdly named a portmanteau of two genres of music, Boogiepop is the story of a shinigami – death spirit – that appears at times and for reasons that never become entirely clear. Well, that's part of it. The original light novel was released in the late 1990s, a time of economic and social hardship in Japan. This may go a long way to explain the novel’s and anime’s darkness and despair, though both are always available in both media. The original series and others of that era (“Serial Experiments Lain,” and, a few years later, “Ergo Proxy,” for example) begin from a position of crushing hopelessness. Japan is doing better now in many ways, and anime has long since climbed out of onerous anguish as the lone motivation for series in which there is little hope to be obtained. (Yes, there are still plenty of sad anime, but the oppressive overarching idea that all is lost and won’t be found, is no longer high on the list of selling points.) Can a new version of “Boogiepop” find relevance today? more specifically, “Boogiepop and Others” was written in 1998 – can it be tailored to the sensibilities found in the brighter period two decades hence? Yes and no. The 2019 anime seems almost to anticipate the paranoia that would hit the world the following year and the associated lack of preparation of government and science to deal with it, as well as the lingering suspicions that the world has not been told all it needs to know. This mortises nicely with the shadowy organization that figures into the story but that never gets fully explained. In fact, very little gets explained in “Boogiepop and Others,” which employs a little of this – strange spirits – a little of that – zombie clones – and a little of other things – a captured advanced human, evil big organizations, and garden-variety criminals – in its dystopian world building. Oh, and of course an evil genius. The result is a tangled mess, as if they don’t quite know what they’re doing or else they do know but are keeping it a secret from the rest of us, dropping the occasional hint here and there amid all the noise of things that aren’t hints but instead the trappings of the standard school-based anime. The series is brightly colored and well animated, which I suspect kept more people watching when they would otherwise have abandoned it. It is not without its moments, but over all it seems to me to be one of those shows that promises something profound but never delivers it. The one saving grace: After you’ve watched “Boogiepop and Others,” go back and watch 2000’s “Boogiepop Phantom” and learn how obscure and depressing anime sometimes used to be.