We’re starting to get to that point where musings on series start to become a little more pointed, where bubbles start to form (and burst).  Winter seems to have a good number of those series, in fact, and Boogiepop wa Warawanai is definitely one of them for me.  I was very much on the fence about this series after two weeks and three episodes, but this one represented a sizeable step in the right direction.  It was good, damn good – somehow more visceral and urgent than the first three.

Did Boogiepop step back a bit on the icy detach that so marks it as a turn-of-the-century product?  Perhaps just a bit, but I think the change was more a case of the story being more approachable.  There was a hint of Ghost in the Shell here, even Satoshi Kon – high praise, and that’s certainly the broad style that the Boogiepop franchise embraces.  The episode starts off in striking fashion with a high school girl on a ledge, and never really lets go after that – it’s an immediate hook to pull you into the setting.

On the other hand, I don’t think the series did itself any favors casting Hanazawa Kana in the role of the “Imaginator” Minahoshi Suiko, because she really only has one type of performance in her arsenal and it pulls you out of the moment every time Minahoshi speaks – it strikes me as very much at odds with the mood of the episode (and the series).  Hosoya Yoshimasa wouldn’t have been my first choice for the school counselor Asukai Jin either, because he too basically has one voice and it’s instantly recognizable (though it does fit a little better than Hanazawa’s, I think).

Be that as it may, those aren’t deal-breakers – things still move along nicely and a rather gripping story plays out that allows us inside it just a bit more than before.  Just what the Imaginator is isn’t exactly clear, true, but it’s clear that Boogiepop knows it well.  Boogiepop says it’s “automatic”, Asukai asks it if it’s a ghost and it counters with “a future that’s taken form in the present, or a hypothetical possibility given substance”.  Whatever it is it possesses girls (it’s inside his sister as the above conversation takes place) even after their dead, and Boogiepop clearly considers it a threat to the world.

As for Asukai, he’s been cursed with an ability to “see what’s missing from people’s hearts” – which he sees in the form of flowers.  When we meet him he’s still trying to be a kind and helpful person, but even before Imaginator shows up (in Minohashi’s body) to seduce him to do her bidding it’s pretty clear he’s starting to go around the bend.  The straw that breaks the camel’s back seems to be when Imaginator possesses a former student of Asukai’s who’s now a dying drug addict trying to rob him, and causes her to slit her throat in front of him.

As for Boogiepop, it (at this point I honestly don’t know what gender pronoun to use) continues to be mostly a framer of events, but a minimal participant in them.  Bookending the episode, it prevents one of Minohashi’s friends from “joining” her while describing itself as a Shinigami. And that’s that.  Superficially this all seems very similar to the first three episodes – dead girls, cryptic koans from Boogiepop, non-human enemies threatening the world.  But somehow it just works better this time – these events feel less abstract and more personal.  I suppose it’s the nature of a series like this that it defies easy qualitative analysis, but my reaction is what it is, whatever the reason for it, and I’m more hopeful about things than I was a week ago.