Boogiepop Phantom might not be your ideal horror anime to watch on hallowen night. The show only candidate for something that can be called as "ghost" does not appear to be threatening, the soundtrack while atmospheric was used to amplify the mystery and not the horror, and the scenes that can be called as jumpscares wont haunt you on your dreams.
No, Boogiepop Phantom wont offer that experience. It's not chasing for the amusement of momentarily horror, its more interested to haunt and play with your mind.
Boogiepop Phantom is a non canon spin off of Kouhei Kadono's long running Boogiepop series. It's an original anime story that was supposed to be a "sequel" to the unsurprisingly mediocre live action adaptation of the first book.
Animated by Madhouse, it offers a bleak, dark sepia visual that may turn some potential viewers off. While it serve a purpose to make the show looks bleak and gritty and is a symbolism of human mental illness, it generally looks blurry, some scenes are too dark that sometimes I can't see anything but darkness, seconds of frames without any animation at all is not a rarity and sometimes it use heavily edited real life footage that shows even on the opening and the ad break, It is clear that Boogiepop Phantom does not have the best budget in Madhouse anime production history.
The characters use the original design by Kouji Ogata. They looks realistic, with more grounded hair color and hair style, more normal looking uniforms that aren’t made for skimpy fan service. but they are admittedly looks too similar to each other that the only thing that separate them is their clothings. I won’t blame anyone if they don’t know the differences between Boogiepop Phantom and Kirima Nagi if they wear the same outfit.
Boogiepop Phantom visual is stylish, but its admittedly looks cheap and made with minimum budget in mind. The same however cant be said about its direction, sound design, and superb writing. Scenes structures and how it handled timeline is something to praise, it constantly juggle between the past and the present to give more depth to the characters and their emotions when necessary while still keeping the flow going. Transition of scenes while looks cheap is fitting with the show theme and atmosphere they are going for with musics and ambience that flows together with the darkness.
Having Tsuruoka Youta on board, the sound design in Phantom may sounds familiar, his signature style of playing with electronic sounds and ambience is making a return in Phantom giving it industrial vibes. The iconic wavy dialogue unfortunately does not translated well to the English dub audio, it does retain the reverbs but other effects that are on the Japanese audio is not existent. Unfortunate because the Japanese audio is superb.
The good audio doesn’t stop there because the soundtrack is something to be praise, electronic musics might not be the best genre to accompany a horror anime, but it works well here. And really helps with the industrial feels that the direction take Phantom to.
And now, the story.
Don’t mind? Okay let’s go.
Boogiepop Phantom pick up right after the event of the first book, Echoes beam of light has kickstarted the evolution of some MPLS, evolved humans that has special abilities. Gone is the typical take over the world trope of the main series. The Manticore--or the man eater--itself is making a return in Phantom, but its not playing the role of the big baddie villain like it did in the first book. Manticore is only there to accentuate things, Because now is the time for a new set of enemy of the world to shine.
What we get instead is a more grounded cast of characters with their own motives and state of mentality. The 12 episodes Boogiepop Phantom offered follow these characters and their story, that while can stand on their own, share some similarities and connection with the others. Most notably, their themes.
There is two types of horror media, the first one is the fear of creatures that you don’t know, they’re scary because they’re powerful, can easily mess you up with a single hit, and they’re scary because you don’t know what they really are.
The second one is the fear of human nature itself, the fear of rejection, the fear of own past is something that we might experience but never really realize. Boogiepop Phantom is the latter, Manaka power to draw people past opens up a lot of interesting plot points, the “You can never be young twice.” is the main showcase of this approach of horror, and it works wonderfully.
Memories of the past, the fear of future, and most notably, escapism took a huge chunk of Boogiepop Phantom, there is an interesting dynamic between the character stories that might contradict the one that has been told in the previous episodes. The last episode does not really fit with the rest of the show, it serves its purpose of a conclusion of the gritty horror we have been through for 11 episodes and the exclusion of its iconic sepia filter is a really great symbolism of that the mental insanity, is finally over. Its so different that it feels out of place, and comparing manticore story conclusion to the super satisfying Manaka resolution make it really weak in comparison.
The Boogiepop series villains are always likable, sometimes they’re a really by the book villains, sometimes they are “good” people with a relatable vision but approached things in the wrong way, Boogiepop Phantom villains falls into the latter category, they’re well written, give you enough impressions to sympathize with them but they’re somehow, forgettable.
It might be because of their appearance that looks too similar to each other, but even after my second rewatch, I still cant name most of the character names, what happened to them is really memorable, their motives and themes blown me away in some of the episodes, but remembering their names or even their personality traits proved to be difficult, the writing is not bad by any means, no. The 20 minutes-ish I get to spend with each character was an enjoyable ride. But the storytelling format they choose make the characters feels like they are not fleshed out enough.
The cast are like nameless shells that happened to do bad things, nobody know who they really are, where they are coming from, their origins, but everybody know what they did.
Boogiepop Phantom deserves its cult classic status. The superb music, writing, direction and sound was held back by the visuals, but that shouldn’t stop anyone to enjoy the escapism journey.