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Boogiepop Phantom (TV).

The characters themselves are trite ciphers to reference real-life problems, but nothing of consequence is really done with them. The episode about the otaku is particularly threadbare, and pale's in comparison to what Kon has to say on the issue in Paranoia Agent and Paprika. (I really dislike the word pretentiousness, as it's misused and abused so often nowadays, but this series isn't free of such a criticism.)

And, well, as far as low-budget shows go, it's not really visually interesting.

I'm thinking of watching Boogiepop Phantom but my main concern is that I really don't like most human psyche. Basically I hope this anime isn't like scene like the one's near the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Well, if you want pretentiousness and cipher characters, Kon is your man IMHO!

I found the stories in Phantom emotionally convincing, and the characters believable, though obviously they couldn't be developed much over the course of one episode.

Not sure what you mean by otaku episode - do you mean spoiler[the Slave addict who came to believe his computer dating game was real?]

Are we talking about the same show?

Aside from the opening batch of Paranoia Agent, I hardly see how any of Kon's characters are ciphers. And pretentious? How?

It's not a matter of development -- it's a matter of giving them human traits to identify them more than "oh they represent this shallow message."

The chief problem of Boogiepop Phantom, above all else, is that it comes across as teenage armchair philosophy that parades itself as being something more than it actually is. There's no substantial commentary offered on these themes, which more or less amount to, "People trying to hold onto childhood and its innocence and memories." The novels don't devolve into that kind of unsupported self-importance, and it's disappointing that the anime series has to.

The washed-out effect doesn't really add anything. Art direction is occasionally interesting, but doesn't really do anything besides add a forseeable "bright/dark" contrast. And there's a lack of compositionally interesting "shots" (what would these be called in animation?), to my memory.

Aside from the opening batch of Paranoia Agent, I hardly see how any of Kon's characters are ciphers. And pretentious? How?

It's not a matter of development -- it's a matter of giving them human traits to identify them more than "oh they represent this shallow message."

The chief problem of Boogiepop Phantom, above all else, is that it comes across as teenage armchair philosophy that parades itself as being something more than it actually is. There's no substantial commentary offered on these themes, which more or less amount to, "People trying to hold onto childhood and its innocence and memories." The novels don't devolve into that kind of unsupported self-importance, and it's disappointing that the anime series has to.

Well, if Boogiepop Phantom is pretentious, then surely Satoshi Kon is pretentious as well. Boogiepop Phantom shares many themes with Kon's work, such as escapism (Paprika), memory (Perfect Blue), and being stuck in childhood (Paprika), and is just as equally qualified to be philosophical and psychological as anything Kon has done.

Many of the characters do represent some kind of theme, but at the same time during their brief appearance in the series, their character's are developed and they are given human traits. The fact that they might not have as much emotional complexity as some other character's in other series I found irrelevant to the fact that we are viewing these characters at a very specific point in their lives when they are dealing with one particular issue which happens to change their life.

The novels do have their own moments of self-importance, particularly revolving around the character of Seiichi Kirima, who is apparantly the author represented within the universe. There's also Boogiepop VS Imaginator, which is almost an entire philosophical battle between the two title characters.

I don't entirely understand what you mean by commentary?

And I think it's all too easy to criticize Boogiepop Phantom for being teenage armchair philosophy just because the cast consists primarily of teenagers.

Most philosophical and psychological works could learn a lot from Boogiepop Phantom I think (I'm looking at you Lain).

And what do you mean by compositionally interesting shots?

Addendum: I've just looked at your favourites list. I'm struggling to understand the context of your statements when Mushi-Shi is on your list, labelled as a masterpiece, while Boogiepop Phantom is labelled as so-so. The art direction, character designs, and colour palette could just have been ripped straight from Boogiepop Phantom and given a few minor tweaks for all the differences there are between them.

The dark dreary overtones, the sense of emotional/physical sickness, and the mysterious plot are just a case study in what Boogiepop Phantom did and what Mushi-Shi is striving to be.

Mushi-shi probably has the lowest fram rate, simplest animation and greatest degree of minimalism of any anime I've ever seen.

A work of this kind can not and does not have any degree of compositionally interesting shots.

If you want a more interesting directing style, look towards Hellsing (OVA) or Ninja Scroll (film), both of which you rated down.

Well, at the risk of turning this into the Kon thread (!), in Millenium Actress, [spoiler/]the mixing of the actress's film roles with her IRL memories[/spoiler] didn't serve any purpose other than the appearance of "cool"ness (in fact, Kon said he was asked by the producer to use his style to fancy up what was otherwise a very conventional story), which I would call pretentious.

The cop characters were cardboard cutouts from Japanese cop shows, though I admit they got some interesting twists later on.

For instance, what's the "shallow message" of the story of the girl spoiler[who commits suicide because she can't live up to her parents' expectation as a piano player]?

As for the "trying to hold onto childhood" theme, I think that is in the Poom Poom story thread, but not in the Phantom, Manticore, or the Towa conspiracy threads.

Wait, if I'm not misunderstanding you: if something is psychologically and/or philosophically-charged, that's pretentious?

That doesn't make any sense.

Like I said, it's not a matter of development. The main characters lifted from the novels are fine -- it's the anime-original ones that suffer because they aren't given any humanistic traits. Throw on some posturing and gritty, "controversial" ideas and you have those cipher characters.

Those just serve as a backdrop -- hardly the driving purpose of the narrative. The original novels are action thrillers with mystery elements first and foremost, not some J-horror expressiong juevenile dissatisfaction with Japan being filled with a bunch of child-like adults.

I want writers who want to tackle such themes to actually give the necessarry weight to support them. I want them to explore those themes, give actual, real-world examples that don't come across as though a it's coming from a teenager that just realized that everyone has their own problems and some of them live on nostalgia and lost innocence. If the characters aren't particularly complex or don't develop, I don't care as long as they aren't just there for some forgettable ethics lesson.

It's the other way around. (Check out this thread if you have the curiosity.)

Loneliness, if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent through Lain.[4] Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely-apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time".[5] Friendships turn on the first rumor;[32][4] and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru, literally "signal of loneliness".[33]

Theology plays its part in the development of the story too. Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body.[37] From self-realization as a goddess to deicide,[24] religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part of Lain 's background.[37]

There's not much thought put into the individual shots themselves. Part of the visual make-up for such a work is how you frame the shot, the level and angle, how many different layers (foreground, background) are in it, etc. Boogiepop Phantom isn't different than most anime series in this aspect.

... No. You're really reaching if you think that they have a comparable design and tone. Aside from the traditional BESM, I hardly see how the characters look alike (and I've never complained about the actual character designs in Boogiepop PHantom to begin with?).

That's factually, objectively incorrect. Mushi-shi is animated largely in 2s, save for the lip flaps, which are animated in 3s, and the mushi, which are animated in 1s (something truly astounding, considering that full 24 fps is a rarity outside of theatrical productions).

Mushi-shi has arguably the most consistently highest level of animation that any anime television series has ever seen (the only other two that come to mind are Denno Coil and Kaiba).

The former is the basis for the show (people holding onto childhood and fantasy, not wanting society to push expectations on them), and purely within the realms of the anime. The latter are carryovers from the original novels -- why they didn't adapt those, I'll never figure out why.

I was comparing the psychology and philosophy of Boogiepop Phantom to the works of Kon, which are nearly identical in thematic concepts in several respects. If Boogiepop Phantom is pretentious because of it's psychological slant and direction, then logically Kon must be pretentious as well.

The question still remains: What exactly are you defining as a humanistic trait? The characters acted like humans, therefore they have humanistic traits. Or at least that's what I would have thought possessing a humanistic trait entailed.

But still, teenage angst is a major aspect of the first three Boogiepop novels which drives the characters and the plot onwards. So I don't distinguish between the angst in the novels and the anime, with the exception that the anime contains more of it since it has more characters.

I read your links, and still don't follow you. I fail to see how the characters in Boogiepop Phantom aren't real world examples of psychological states while those in Watchmen are. And the exlporation of those themes is given throughout the series by the actions of the characters and the consequences of their actions.

I mean, jeez, I could write a story that involves a young girl being abused by her father, string it out for a few episodes with mawkish, moe-inducing scenarios, and then have her take revenge by shooting him with one of his guns that she found in the heat of another abusive session. There's absolutely no commentary there, no insight at all, and yet some anime fans would lap it up because they think that emotional vicariousness/tragedy porn somehow makes a work "deep."

I refer to your other points about humanistic traits and teenage angst in stories as other examples when I feel you are being entirely arbitrary in your judgement. If you are going to mention the mistakes of anime fans in deciding what has depth in your Death Note posts, then I'll point out a far bigger problem with entertainment consumers in general: randomness - the apparant ability to like something for one reason and dislike something else for the exact same reason.

I'll read the entirety of that thread at some point. Lain is not particularly deep, consisting primarily of one theme (being connected to others) stretched over 12 episodes. To fill in the intellectual vacuum, Lain bombards the viewer with science and science fiction concepts such as Schuman resonance to confuse the viewer enough to fool them into thinking the script is clever.

"the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self: the relationship between the self and the world"

This is what I'm talking about. What the hell is a multidimensional wavelength? I bet he just invented that term to make himself sound smart. He just comes across as a self-obsessed twat to someone who actually does real science (me).

In this respect, you're confusing effectiveness with uniqueness/originality.

Secondly, the number of layers in a shot is entirely determined by financial constraints. OVA's and films nearly always have more simultaneous moving objects because they have the time and money to have them unlike TV series where everything is made as static as possible, animation is recycled, and framing movement is avoided. Therefore, you are confusing complexity of animation with quality of animation.

I always felt that, apart from Ginko, many of the character shared a similar design ethic.

I personally think this works for something like Mushi-shi, which I do enjoy by the way, but again by comparing to Boogiepop Phantom I'm trying show that yit doesn't make much sense to rate highly the animation of Mushi-shi while rating the animation of Boogiepop Phantom low when they are extremely similar in quality terms.

I sincerely hope they do animate the original novels in OVA/Film quality. I pray for the day...

There are similar themes, yeah, but certainly not in execution -- that's where the difference lies, for me.

I find Kon to be preachy and heavy-handed at times, but not pretentious as eyeresist suggests.

Something that doesn't easily allow exaggeration and placing the character in a box -- that is, if it's a Very Serious Story (as opposed to a Very Fun Story; it'd be ridiculous to criticize Baccano! for jumbling such a massive and entertaining cast for 13 episodes) I don't really have a problem with multiple characters being defined and exaggerated by one trait, so long as they're not predoimantly focused on. Yet with Boogiepop Phantom, most of the anime-characters only serve as story pieces (Moto in episode one is one of the few exceptions, having a more naturalistic persona), and take up far more screentime than what should be the main characters (Touka, Nagi, et cetera), who actually have defined personalities.

Yeah, but the angst is the novels is simply what it is. In the anime it serves as an outlet for social and philosophical musings.

Given the slight tweaking and padding, a person can ring out child abuse and possibly gun control out of my described scenario. But the actual themes are just referred to, not examined.

Taking it on a case-by-case basis and apply a similar criteria much of the time aren't always incompatible. (Basically, while I wouldn't judge the merits of 2001: A Space Odyseey and Baccano! in the same way, there are still general traits that one can measure them by.) Boogiepop Phantom, lain, Mind Game, Ergo Proxy, Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, Pale Coocon, etc. are unconventional stories of Japanese animation and deal with somewhat esoteric subject matter, but what they set out to accomplish and HOW they do it are distinctively different.

Uh, no. That's not the case at all. It goes well beyond that scope, and the real-world concepts are introduced to viewers (reinforced to others) as a means to further support its ideas and plot developments.

Aside from the fact that we don't know what the original Japanese is, I don't see how criticizing an abstract description of a theme by the director is the same as actually showing that the story is deserving of the same criticism. (Plus, a lot of that Wikipedia entry is drawn from magazines and reviews.)

Hell, Hideaki Anno is certainly full of himself, and frankly I don't trust him much as a director -- certainly not when looking back on Evangelion. At the same time, that doesn't take away from what's presented in that story -- criticize the story, not the creator(s).

True, but visual composition is not the same as animation. Productions with better budgets have more freedom to pick and choose different "shots," but it's still ultimately on the director's shoulders -- give a hack a $15 million animated film, and it'd still look conventional; give an auteur a series on a shoe-string budget, and you still might have something that's visually interesting.

That's one of the more bizzarre complaints that I've seen leveled at Boogiepop Phantom. It's one thing to be completely homogenous (oh hey droopy-eyed dating-sim Kyoto Animation heroines), but I never had trouble telling characters apart during my two watches of BP.

Just because it doesn't draw attention to itself doesn't mean that there isn't attention to body language or smooth animation. Such movement in anime is stilted to begin with, so assertions of minimalism against Mushi-shi have always struck me as weird.

Dunno if the novels are popular enough to warrant another anime. There is a growing trend for light novel adaptions, but they seemed more squarely aimed at a romcom and/or moe-loving audience than something like Boogiepop.

I think I understand what you're talking about - you don't like constrained characters. The problem with this I feel is that in reality some people, in fact most people, are indeed constrained, and that people tend to have one or more defining traits that make them who they are. The more "mentally ill" a person is, the more a person is constrained, but what divides mental illness from "normal" behaviour is always very arbitrary and subjective. I think the appearance of monotony among characters solely derives from expectations about human behaviour, that people should feel a variety of emotions and do a variety of things for them to be normal.

[Examples given in Boogiepop Phantom.]

The characters from Watchmen are no different. To what extent is not Rorschach not constrained as a character by his fanatical vigilantism and absolutism? What about Adrain? When does he take a break from his egotism and god-complex to become a truly 3D character?

Again, there is a heavy dose of that in the books as well. The first novel is basically all about how people in school don't understand one another and how teenagers are lost. The second novel takes a swing at Japan's sexual attitudes with the character of Anou, and angst serves as the means by which Imaginator takes root in their hearts.

I've watched the series 10 times, and I wrote most of the Boogiepop Phantom article on Wikipedia, including the themes section.

Boogiepop Phantom is a psychological, philosophical, and social commentary, that has more depth and thematic exploration in its 12 20 minute episodes than all of Kon's films strung together.

But complaining about what Boogiepop Phantom does while lauding Kon for doing the exact same thing is hypocritical.

Let me ask you something? If Lain is essentially about people being connected/disconnected, why does Lain have to portray this theme in such a manner when the 30 minute Voices of a Distant Star does the same thing without including any references to obscure philosophical and scientific phenomenon?

The mindset of the creator is in his works. If the creator considers himself so intellectual in a fabricated manner, then Lain will portray this mindset, which it does.

I love Evangelion, and considering the budget constraints, I don't see what was wrong with his direction.

There is an uneven distribution to consider however. Because Mushi-shi spends little time using any new animation (many pan shots) and the backgrounds often use recycled animation, they have more time to concentrate on character movement and body language.

But on average, I would say that Mushi-shi doesn't have terribly good animation quality.

However, they always seem to be adapting some random manga that nobody has ever heard of into an anime, and companies always revisit a franchise at some point. It's just a matter of time I think.