Directed by Watanabe Takashi
Character Designs by Suga Shigeyuki
Original Character Designs by Ogata Kouji
Produced at Mad House
Copyright © 2000 Kadono Kouhei / Mediaworks / Project Boogiepop

The horror genre is not uncommon in anime. Usually such stories, although labeled horror, really are action/thriller stories. ICZER-1 for instance is more of an action story with some horror elements thrown in to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. A new milestone was set with the original VAMPIRE PRINCESS MIYU OVAs. It had a small share of action but what chilled the viewers were the undertones behind each episode and the revelation at the end of the series.
BOOGIEPOP WA WARAWANAI is a series in the same vein as MIYU. In some ways it seems like a mix between ICZER-1 and LAIN with some of its monsters and the vague confusion called a story. The very premise we are led to from advertisements for the series are disquieting: People are food, but not in an ordinary sense. Intertwined with our world is another world and how they overlap is not at all clear.
This story is a multifaceted thing. For a twelve episode series there is a lot less actual story than you might think—even after watching it. As you try to piece it together you realize the story world is a rather small place extremely overlapped with itself. It is seen from many different angles. Sometimes the same scene is shown more than once, but changed. The anime is based on the novels written by Kadono Kouhei.
The story starts fairly suddenly. It is evening. Suddenly a moaning and screaming fills the night. A bolt of light shoots towards the heavens from the roof of a school building. We see blood flung against a wall and glass shatters. Suddenly in a wave centering on the school building lights go out. Shortly the lights stutter back to life.
Time moves forward a couple of months and we change to a washroom where a bunch of girls are talking about the appearance of the death-god Boogiepop. One girl is still in the washroom after all the others finish up. Meet Tonomura Moto.
"This was at the time when I hated myself..." Moto tells us. As Moto returns to her classroom we see that she has this almost pathetic fear of being touched. Moto had promised her friend Yasuko that she would go with her to karaoke but at the last minute tries to decline. Yasuko is able to convince Moto to come along. At the karaoke bar Moto sits there shrinking in to herself. The three guys who are there with Moto, Yasuko, and Yasuko's other friend start talking about rumors. They ask Yasuko if she knew Saotome. Apparently Saotome had vanished and recently was seen again as a ghost. Yasuko claims to have not really known him, despite that he went to the same middle school as Yasuko and Moto. In the bathroom of the karaoke place Moto is washing her hands again. Yasuko comes in and asks Moto to keep it a secret from Satoshi, the guy she is seeing and is at karaoke with them, that she used to go out with Saotome.
Back in middle school Moto had a crush on Saotome but could not tell him even after he and Yasuko broke up. After that he went to a different school and now he has vanished. On the way back from the karaoke bar Moto feels sick and stops in an alley. Suddenly an apparition forms out of light... it is Saotome! As he glides toward her she screams. The next day Yasuko asks Moto if she is okay. They were worried about her when she screamed like that last night. Yasuko tells Moto that she heard that Saotome went out with a girl named Kirima Nagi.
This story is actually very difficult to follow. Even though you do get introduced to several key characters in the show, all of them except for two are seen as secondary characters in this episode. Even the introduction of Boogiepop tells you nothing about her motivations. Moreover the episodes are shown in this sepia-tone colored tunnel vision—as if each episode was all flashbacks. Between two episodes there is usually at least one scene that is the same in both episodes—just seen from a different point of view. For example when Johnouchi confronts Moto in the nurse's office, the difference in the context of the scene between episode one and episode two is striking and unsettling. The whole series is like this, a bunch of vignettes that jar your sense of what happens when and what your perception of a character's role is. Are they someone you want to trust or someone you want to tell the other characters to flee from?
One problem is that the character designs, although quite nice, are similar to each other enough that it gets difficult to tell who is who even if you remember all the names. The sheer confusion of the ordering of events makes it extremely difficult to keep track of things. We hope that the story at the end will finally pull itself together to at least a semi-coherent whole, instead of just filling us with a bunch of scenes showing a mysterious set of monsters playing with humanity.
If you want more out of your horror anime than just a quick thrill, and if you like that delicious feeling that nothing is quite what it seems until the second or third revelation, then you may enjoy BOOGIEPOP WA WARAWANAI. If you want something straightforward and simple that resolves itself quickly you probably won't be happy with this series.

Released by VAP
12 episode TV series (being released as 6 volumes, approx. 50 min each)

evolution 1
LD - VPLY-70754
DVD - VPBY-11047
VHS - VPVY-65178
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available now in Japan

evolution 2
LD - VPLY-70755
DVD - VPBY-11048
VHS - VPVY-65179
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available now in Japan

evolution 3
LD - VPLY-70756
DVD - VPBY-11049
VHS - VPVY-65180
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available 5-24-2000 in Japan

evolution 4
LD - VPLY-70757
DVD - VPBY-11050
VHS - VPVY-65181
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available 6-21-200 in Japan

evolution 5
LD - VPLY-70758
DVD - VPBY-11051
VHS - VPVY-65182
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available 7-21-200 in Japan

evolution 6
LD - VPLY-70759
DVD - VPBY-11052
VHS - VPVY-65183
Price: VHS ¥4800, LD/DVD ¥5800
Available 8-23-2000 in Japan
Where to buy