(Another was originally a book by Yukito Ayatsuji. With news of a translation yet to appear, I'm trying to reconstruct the novel from the first three episodes of the anime series)
I woke up in the hospital. It felt like I had been dreaming, but there was clichéd narration and an awful, terrible song playing. It was still 1998 so I was slightly disappointed I hadn't time travelled to a future where ALI Project had been outlawed.
Outside the sun was setting and the backwater town I had moved to seemed ready to sleep. My Grandma and Aunt were chilling with me on dialysis. At least I assume it was dialysis, I wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with tubes in my chest but they had said it was medically relevant. We chatted about my father and late mother, and where I was going to school. Some students came to visit me with all the cheer of a funeral procession. Must be depressants in the drinking water.
Boogiepop Phantom is a series which immediately makes one wonder whether their television is functioning correctly. Shortly after the melancholy opening it adds the speakers to that list. By the end of the first episode it adds the viewer's brain. It is a reverie of madness, murder, altered states and narrative intrigue: each episode teasing an explanation but rarely delivering in full, each appearance of the titular Boogiepop - or is it the Manticore? - promising a new thread to tie in with the myriad others. Existing in a microcosm of light novels, manga and a live-action movie as well as sharing idiosyncrasies and the brutally obtuse style of its spiritual predecessor, Serial Experiments Lain, the question the series' lineage poses is whether it can stand by itself or whether it relies too much on its forebears and source material to support itself.
some of the darkest aspects of humanity are explored with obsession, madness and memories playing a key role
A month before the opening of the series, a pillar of light erupts in a nameless cityscape, dragging it into darkness. Those who witness the light began to change, much like the city itself, now with a permanent aurora in the sky and a magnetic field that makes compasses useless and corrodes metal at a frightening rate. Those who changed exhibit strange powers: the ability to see and consume insects clutching peoples' chests, the power to separate composite objects like coffee or humans even the capability to show people scenes of their pasts. All the while they are stalked by the urban legend Boogiepop, supposedly the personification of death, who appears without warning to rid the world of the deviations that have sprung up. Clandestine talk of impossibly powerful corporations and unnatural evolution ensure that understanding the circumstances behind all of the strange occurrences will not be straightforward.
