One of the benchmarks I use to define a series is how my opinion of an episode changes after the fact. I’m not falling back on the appeal to authority fallacy here, because anyone who wanted to could do it, but writing about a show changes the way we think about it. A very interesting question for me is this: after I’ve written an analysis of an episode, do I like it more or less than I did when I finished watching the episode? Some of it is just the passage of time, true, but the act of writing forces me to think about a series in a more analytical and critical way. Some shows tend to rise in my esteem in this fashion, and some fall.
After that buildup, it won’t surprise anyone to know that Boogiepop wa Warawanai is a series than tends to fall into the former camp. It demands both introspection and retrospection from the viewer (which may be one reason why it’s flopping among a modern anime audience unused to such things), and mostly denies us the gratifications we would normally expect from the viewing experience. I would go so far as to say there are lots of things in Boogiepop that only make sense after you step back and ponder them (and not always even then, at least not right away).
As usual, “Warawanai” tends to make me think in metaphor, and this episode was certainly no exception. I wonder if, in a sense, we the viewers are not the people trapped inside the Moon Temple, and Teratsuki-san isn’t Kadono Kouhei. He’s effectively lured us into this story and then intentionally confused us, trying to get us to think about things he wants us to think about. Is it really so different? Hell, they both even use rock music to help get their message across…
For all the obfuscation, we certainly do seem to know a lot more than we did when this episode started. Teratsuki finally speaks – once Shirou and Kentarou find the hidden bonus level beneath the hatch – and among the bombs he drops is that he’s closed the air ducts, cutting off the oxygen supply to those trapped inside the temple. Shirou immediately sees this as BS (he seems to have a lot of insight) and he and Kentarou-kun have no choice but to keep moving forward after Sakiko locks the hatch behind them, determined to go back to her distortion and set things right.
The episode is framed around a couple of set pieces, the first being the meeting between Sakiko and Boogiepop. Sakiko, it’s clear, has determined that she deserves to die for what she did to Hinako, and perhaps even convinced herself that the distortion can allow them to switch fates. There’s a lot of fairly heavy philosophical stuff in this conversation, mostly from Boogiepop’s side. Can you die unless you’ve truly lived? Does being a bad person make it justifiable for someone to kill you? Sakiko sees this quite simplistically – less bad people = better world – but Boogiepop puts the lie to that quickly enough. He notes quite rightly that the kind Hinako she saw in her distortion was a fragment of Sakiko herself, which mean’s she’s kind. One thing that’s notable here is just how little Boogiepop really seems to understand about who and what he is. He just reacts and does what he’s programmed to do, more or less (I could have said “designed” too, but either one is a loaded word).
The main event, though, comes when Kentarou and Shirou trigger Teratsuki’s message, because it finally gets us a nugget of what seems like the truth. Some of this is more or less as expected – Teratsuki was an artificial human, and was killed by the Touwa organization. He lured everyone to the Moon Temple intentionally. We get into some pretty deep navel-gazing here again – the matter of evolution having a “flow”, and the seemingly paradoxical notion of man becoming so evolved that he’s able to directly influence evolution itself, the existence of God. We also get the way to unlock the temple and free the trapped – type “Stairway to Heaven” into the console.
The really important part of this, though, is Teratsuki sharing the reason why he’s done this – to “mess with” the Touwa group. To identify someone who’s a potential enemy to them, and both clue them in and warn them. He does all this in the video he records, seemingly, in the moments just before he’s eliminated by “Eugene”. And it seems as if Tanaka Shirou is the one Teratsuki is most directly speaking to. Not only does Shirou appear to be the King of Distortion, I’m not even sure the whole King of Distortion event was part of Teratsuki’s plans at all. It may be that he simply wanted to lure a super-evolved human in, and Shirou is the one who ended up fitting the bill.
As usual, it’s no easy task to make sense of all this – and I’m not sure we’re supposed to, yet. I’m interested in the idea of Shirou and his relationship to the KoD, which seems to have some parallels to Miyashita Touka’s with Boogiepop. If indeed the King exists either as a second personality or as in the case of Boogiepop someone “possessing” Shirou, is he – rather than a product of Shirou being super-evolved – some sort of “external” being, like Boogiepop? And if so, what is his purpose here? As always with Boogiepop wa Warawanai every question answered raises new questions, but with only one episode left in this edition I have to think we’re going to get some at least nominally definitive resolutions next week.
Lin
March 24, 2019 at 7:58 pmI always enjoy your posts on this show immensely. You’re basically the only reviewer willing to actually think about the show. Most people just seem to dismiss it as confusing.
By the way, I noticed you’re working under the assumption Boogiepop is an external entity that possessed Touka. But Boogiepop himself has said he does not know what he is or how he came to be. He doesn’t know whether he’s a part of Touka or something external. It could be that he really is just a alternate personality that Touka created to channel her super evolved powers without having to affect her normal life as average high-school girl. I think that’s also a reasonable explanation, specially after this arc and all the talk about hidden desires and such.
Anyway, great review as always. Just one more episode. Keep it up.
Guardian Enzo
March 24, 2019 at 8:13 pmWell, I could counter than Boogiepop specifically said this week that he didn’t have a body, except that was really a mistranslation and what he actually said would be something more like “distinct existence”.
I can’t rule out that what you say is true, but there are elements that don’t add up for me if in fact Boogiepop is nothing more than an extension of Touka’s subconscious. I think the Occam’s Razor test supports the idea that he is some sort of entity that’s separate from Touka’s identity.
Lin
March 24, 2019 at 10:21 pmI think the interpretation that he’s an external force is valid as well. My point is simply that it’s open to interpretation. For example, remember how when the King of Distortion arc started, Makoto met the King outside the building and the King said he had just been born? That got me thinking. Back in episode 10 when Touka met the Scarecrow who was dying and Boogiepop manifested to him, I got the feeling Boogiepop had just been born at that moment. It was just my impression. They never really said that. But think about it. Back then Boogiepop didn’t even have a name. Boogie named himself “Boogiepop” because Scarecrow referred to him as “creepy bubble.” And it wasn’t just the name. You may notice how Boogiepop’s signature smirk is very similar to Scarecrow’s dying smile. And even his clothes is a sort of re-imagination of Scarecrow’s clothes. And the last piece of the puzzle, Boogiepop’s mission of fighting enemies of the world might have been inspired by Scarecrow’s desire to be a hero!! They never really said that, but it could be.
Also, in episode 10 when Touka and Scarecrow met, the latter pointed out they were close to a crematory. I always wondered what the hell was Touka doing in a crematory so I asked around. Someone told me a relative of Touka was being cremated. That’s why she was there. Now imagine this. Imagine a little Touka (around 12 years old) emotionally unstable from the death of a relative. She wonders around and finds a dying Scarecrow. Death upon death. If there was the potential for evolution in Touka, this would be the perfect situation to awaken such power. And Boogiepop is born, and as a new born he has no name, no identity or mission of any kind. So he takes his identity from whatever Scarecrow says to him.
That’s how I imagined. But maybe I’m just thinking too much. In any case, I think not being able to pin-point a clear answer is part of the charm of this show.
Alejandra
March 25, 2019 at 5:40 amI’m starting to guess that the real king of distortion is Shirou as you thought too, I don’t know how I could explain but it fits, I mean, it’s just that after the beginning and how everything has been going on around the characters, Kentarou is logical but wants to find a way out; Sakiko wants to die but Boogiepop manages to show her that all her doubts are a result of feeling guilty (I mean, yeah she might have fought with her best friend and that best friend died but that guilt started to consume her day by day).
Now, with each episode, Boogiepop has been saving people, but there are some who are way more relevant, those relevant characters were saved. For example, Sakiko she was saved in the current episode; Makoto was saved as well in the previous episode, Kei was saved in episode 14.
For Kentarou’s case, he managed to pull out of everything, he seemed to not have remorses on his heart; but for Shirou’s case, he was more likely asleep instead of trapped, besides, the whole episode looked more like if Shirou was guiding Kentarou instead of looking like they were trying to find a way out.
What surprised me a little was seeing Keiji along his king of distortion being Touka but it’s logical, he seems like both presences, Boogiepop and Touka but it’s more like if he wanted to see both as one, instead of a division. But who knows, only the last episode will tell everything.
Honestly, it saddens me that next week the last episode will air…I wish they could keep adapting the other light novels or so…but anyways, MYTH & ROID did an awesome job, same with Riko Azuna and the OST, I can’t recall who was the compositor but everything fitted.