minus-one

Intoduction by Chris Collette

The following article was originally published on Animeondvd.com. At the very end of the essay, after the sources are listed, I have added a response that I had written on the aodvd’s message board shortly after this was first printed.

This article has been reprinted with the permission of its author, Robert Stanton.

Boogiepop Phantom is an animated series based upon the acclaimed written work of Kouhei Kadono. Set somewhere in common, urban, contemporary Japan, the dark science fiction premises of the show quickly take over and distort any traditional elements of culture or knowledge. In fact, one of the series’ mantras is “In this world, anything can happen, and everything does happen all the time,” indicating the bizarre twists and turns of fate that will happen to the characters and the world they reside in during a certain amount of time. Over the course of twelve episodes, the viewer witnesses not only the biographical development of a wide cast of characters, but also the way that each of their individual lives manages to effect or coincide with others’. This is successfully accomplished by the use of straightforward character narratives and flashback sequences that force the viewer to make sense out of the series’ use of time in order to piece together what actually happened. The show stresses that flashbacks are concepts of memory and not necessarily truth, and that time is a relative concept dependent in which order sequences are experienced or viewed. (more…)