Boogiepop and others

Title - Boogiepop and Others
Language - Japanese
Genre - Sci- Fi

Boogiepop and others it the live action movie based on the  manga of the same name.  There is also an anime called Boogiepop Phantom..

Boogiepop and others is split into four parts all of which are set on the same day and follows a group of high school students as a number of interlocking strange events happen.

We start by seeing a few short scenes that act as an introduction to some of the characters, the scenes are unrelated to each other and show us little, they are expanded on as the stories unfold.

The first couple of parts start the fim off quite slowly.  In part one we hear rumors around the school of the Boogiepop Phantom, an urban legend about a strange person that keeps appearing.  Boogiepop is possibly a shinigami (a Japanese death god) and attributed to the disappearance of a number of local runaways.  The first part focuses on Keiji Takeda and his girlfriend Toka Misyashita.  We see that Misyashita is becoming distant to Takeda and he doesn’t know why.  Not much really happens, there are a few bits that are related to events in the following parts.  Then Takeda is around when an injured, homeless looking man staggers out of the subway.  Everyone moves out of the mans way and Takeda just stares at him.  A masked girl approaches the man, says something to him and then she looks at Takeda and asked why he just looked on.  Takeda believes that the women is Misyashita but she says that she is Boogiepop and Misyashita doesn’t seem to know anything about Boogiepop.  Takeda keeps looking for Boogiepop, trying to prove that she is Misyashita and he eventually finds her.  Takeda and Boogiepop meet up a few times but don’t do much except talk. There is a strange event which sets off everyones phones and all the street lights followed by a shooting star.  Takeda meets Boogiepop for the last time, he feels that he knows Misyashita better for knowing her.  Boogiepop leaves saying she has defeated the monster she came to kill and Misyashita & Takeda’s relationship improve.

The second part follows Naoko a girl who has two boyfriends and claims to love too much.  Most of this story revolves around Naoko and a man she met called Echos.  Echos claims that he is looking for a clone of himself that is an evil monster and when he has killed it he will return to the stars.  Echos can not speak but can communicate with Naoko via a kind of telepathy.  We also see Saotome a boy who is selling drugs which he gets from the eyes of Minako a girl who is killing and eating people who Saotome is bringing to her.  At the end of this part both Naoko and Echos have disappeared, not together.

Part three follows  Kazuko as she tries to find out what is happening with her friend Kirima who has been acting strange and has been suspended from the school.

The Fourth part fills in the missing parts and find out more about Echos and his clone which has now become known as manticore and looks nothing like him.

Boogiepop and others is an interesting film.  Parts one and three only fill in a little of the information and the main characters don't know of any of the main events that are happening around them to the point that  Takida thinks that the monster Boogiepop has defeated is anxiety.  Takida doesn't think that Boogiepop is anything more that Miyashita’s mental breakdown.

In part three Kazuko knows that there is more going on than Kirima trying to find out about the source of the drug  but, by the end of the section she seems resigned to the fact that things happen around her and she will never know what they are.  kazuko is just happy knowing that Kirima is safe.

These two parts make an interesting change to traditional narrative, in almost every film (and in real life) there will be people who don't know what is going on around them.  Most people are like Takida, they treat the events that affect them as the most important and ignore anything that doesn’t include them and for the most part this is ok the events in someones life are more important because they are affecting that person and so that is what we have to react to.  If there is some unknown event that is happening to someone we know then we have two choices either get ourselves involved which may get in the way of the other person or get on with our own lives and look out for our friend when we can.  Kazuko tries, with the best intentions to help out Kirima but becomes aware that whatever is happening is not really anything to do with her and that not everything that happens will always involve her.

It is clever how, even though parts one and three are removed form the main action they still contribute by adding little bits of information and developing some of the characters.

The film is clever in the way it builds up the plot giving clues here and there to what is happening.  It starts off slow but also tells us a lot about the nature of Boogiepop right at the start

Boogiepop and others is quite a long film a 2 hours but it uses it time well  introducing the characters and plotlines slowly so there is not too much happening at once.  Some films try to put everything into the shortest possible time to get in more action and this can lead to confusion especially if the film is not linear with it’s story telling.

Boogiepop and others comes across as slightly ‘low budget’ but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the film concentrates on story instead of action and effects.

So give it watch if you want more than just explosions and CGI.