| |
|
So I sat down and watched Boogiepop Phantom last night. Whole series (12 episodes) in one sitting. Probably not the best way to watch it. Disk 4 includes notes from the US producer and in there he mentions that BP benifited from the weekly format, becuase it forced people to spend a week digesting the episode that they'd seen. I can definetly see his arguement.
Over all, it's a strong series. Though, it'll probably be better enjoyed by the series anime fan, as opposed to the passing fan. It's deffinetly worth a rent no matter what though. Style is VERY similiar to Serial Experiments Lain, but the style really fits, so that's not a bitch.
Basic story is a kind of twisted take on the good vs. evil motif. The good guys and bad guys are pretty well defined. The grey comes in with the children though. Esspecially the "evolved" children, and how they handle thier new "powers." There are strong under currents of the whole teen alienation themes.
The fun of the series though comes in with it's handling of time. It's not the simple "story told out of order" thing. It's much more thought out then that. And since memories play a significant role in the story, it works well. Also, it's not as easy to put back together as a lot of movies that use this ploy. This one needs to be thought about.
One quick thing though. The previous post said that the first three disks could be watched in any order. Personally, I reccomend watching them in order. disk 1 and 2 can probably be exchanged with out to much trouble, but things start to get explained in disk 3, and so 1 and 2 have a much higher "What the fuck?" factor when watched first.
The problems I do see people having are mostly two fold. One, the series suffers a little from Akira syndrome. Turns out the thing is based on a series of japanese novels. There also seems to be some manga, and a live action film in the canon, but I'm not sure if the anime predates the manga or the live action. So there's A LOT of information to the over all story, and a lot of it doesn't make it into the anime. The charecter notes on disk 4, give a glimpse into how much is left out. Key charecters from the books, that are only in one scene and things like that.
It's not as bad as Akira, but there are a lot of threads left dangling at the end of the series. If you don't mind stuff like that then it's not a problem. If stuff like that bugs the crap out of you, then it's really gonna bug he crap out of you.
The other main problem is for people who are new to anime, and are still in that phase when they have trouble telling charecters apart. There are a lot of charecters in this series. There's also a certain amount of the story told second hand ("did you hear what happened to so and so?") and so you need to be able to keep names straight as well. This was the main problem I had, but it just means I need to watch the series again. And I do plan on watching it again.
Very strong series. If you liked the style and feel of Lain, this will deffinetly impress you. I wish I could put more here about plot and what not. But, to be honest, I really need to see it a few more times before I try and describe what's happening.
If anyone feels like starting up a thread for discussing this (a film club thread, to counter the book club?) I'm all for it. And if anyone knows how I can get english translations of the rest of the canon, I'd be your best friend for ever and ever. |
|
|
