Boogiepop Phantom #3

85 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
12/04/2001

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Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a girl whose name I don't quite recall. For the sake of ease, let's call her Ashley. She was a cute enough girl, I suppose, but short... which is something I don't particularly care for. Fortunately this was not a deal breaker and the two of us maintained a fairly steady relationship for my standard cycle of 2-3 weeks. During the end of our term together my erstwhile dorm mate and qualified genius Adam Bare waxed nostalgic about a sexual maneuver his father had informed him of some many years ago, the "Brumski". I won't go into the details, as I'd like to maintain some semblance of being family friendly, I'll just leave it at this... it was quite loud and potentially very embarrassing (though not physically painful) for the girl in question. As I was the only one in the suite dating a girl at the time, I somehow became the de facto man who would perform this while his friends waited on the other side of the wall to hear its climactic results.

Now, I am widely known as quite a jerk to the women unfortunate enough to date me, but I guess I hit a threshold that night that even a guy like me just wasn't comfortable passing. When it came down to the moment of coitus I reneged on the shakey promise I had made my mates. Despite the fact that we'd been arguing about pointless crap, as any girl and I are wont to do after some time together, I just couldn't bring myself to hurt a lady's feelings like that. It was with a heavy heart that I later informed my friends of the outcome. They were crushed, I'm sure, but time heals all wounds.
Boogiepop and I have had out disagreements too. I am in love with its statuesque figure, its mysteries upon mysteries, the exposition it piles on like gourmet gravy just to finish it off. Hiding behind all that is crap that I just can't understand, and crap that I don't want to understand. I've been over the title character's ridiculous design, I've talked about Peter Pan and the six foot tall five year old who parrots everything everyone says. I do not like these things, and they are more than prevalent in the show. These are not side features, at least one of them is guaranteed to show up every episode. If we're really unlucky we'll get hit with two or three at a time.

What charms me so much about Boogiepop is how much it squeezes into the show that is good, how remarkably benign it can make these incredibly annoying factors. Something about it forces me to take it on the cheek where in other shows I might be climbing up the wall. The characterization and the exposition and the dour, high school moodiness of it all supersedes whatever tiny problems might make me want to rail it out for the affection of an internet audience. There's things that Boogiepop does remarkably well. People in high school have problems. It might treat some of these problems a bit too heavy -- being used by people you think are your friends really sucks, but it's not the end of the world -- but it's a damn sight better than all the shows out there that act like the only problem you can experience as a guy aged 13-19 is too much ready-and-willing poontang overwhelming him. Ha! As if a high school kid would consider that a problem.
Also I like this, and this, and this.

Nagi Kirima is a delightfully tasty contradiction. A perfectly normal high school student by day, at night she dresses up in crazy leather biker gear and attempts to dissolve electromagnetic fields with her Macgyver-like control of perfectly ordinary cellphone batteries. In any other show trying to pull garbage like this would have me calling wolf faster than you could raise your head, but here I just find it endearing. Though we don't know a lot about her, the Nagi character has more weight than a thousand mysterious strangers in a thousand Clamp mangas. But what, exactly, endears me to her I could not tell you.
Some time ago I don't think I would've been comfortable liking something, but not knowing why. I guess I've grown up in the past three years... though that seems a little tough to believe. Just like poor Ashley, there's something inexplicable about Boogiepop Phantom that makes me want to stick around it even when it's being weird or annoying. 'cause I just know that there's something good just around the corner. Dissolving a relationship in a spectacularly explosive moment might be fun, but it won't get you a whole lot of nookie on a Friday night.