Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Boogiepop Phantom ::
by William the Bloody
One night a column of light appears out of no where and all electricity in the city goes down. In that moment, in a flash, chaos explodes and ripples across the city both subtly and not so. Some people are now suddenly developing strange abilities and some one is hunting them. But, what does this column of light have to do with the brutal murders of five years ago, the angel of Death, a detective, high school students and a young girl with glowing butterflies? Little by little, character by character and episode by episode, tiny tidbits are revealed into a dark, strange and twisted tapestry you can't even begin to understand.
The Good: The animation is pretty good for five years ago. The art direction is also top notch giving us moods and elements not often found in any animated genre. One of which that I found most appealing was their use of ambient sound and music to really pull a scene or moment together. If David Lynch directed cartoons, I have a feeling it would look and feel something like this. There were quite a few concepts and ideas in this series that were unique and I liked them very much. There is a lot of continuity that I have to give them props on being consistent with and how they used certain events to notify you of the timeline. My favourite episode was definitely #4, "My Fair Lady," where a high school boy obsessed with dating sim games lets his obsession spill out into real life and a real girl. It was delightfully creepy. And I liked the way the "next time on Boogiepop Phantom" teasers at the end of each episode were done.
The Bad: Sadly, a David Lynchian show that has wonderful artistic quality also gets his infamous not-making-much-sense flip side. Yes, with the light in the sky came an electromagnetic pulse which caused many of the strange abilities, but what was the deal with the "manticore" again and just why is Boogiepop after him and why exactly are there TWO Boogiepops occasionally and why did Poom Poom (the eerie pied piper kid) want to recruit so many friends and what was it that happened to the butterfly girl that made her "echo" and what happened with that designer drug Sinnamon? Could you repeat it straight out please because I think I lost it when I had my stroke trying to grasp all these concepts on the first go.
Overall, I liked the ride but was lost on the country road to nowhere when it ended. The episodes are artistically great, but lacking in substance. There is just SO MUCH information that you have to keep straight in order for ANY of it to make complete sense that it's easy to wind up with no clue at all. This could be my own fault, because I was renting this series one disc at a time and sometimes the viewings were separated by a few days so I may have forgotten some crucial details during the in between time. Perhaps if I had strapped myself to a chair with a Clockwork Orange type viewing device prying my eyelids open and watched it all continuously straight through, I wouldn't have lost any necessary information. It is only 12 episodes long so if you're looking to experiment with an animated mini series that doesn't have giant robots or ninja fights, but instead artistically framed shots, gothic violence and an overly thought provoking plot, check it out. If you're afraid of thinking too hard on the other hand, this probably isn't for you.
B-
