Boogiepop Phantom Produced by: VAP, Right Stuff International Rating: Suggested 15+ Opening Song: Evening Shower Ending Theme: Future Century Aki Club Review by: Vid~Kid

Boogiepop Phantom is set up like the Twilight Zone. Only, unlike the ZONE it's not an area between conciseness, but a period of time touching a group of very different people. Check out each Episode and see if you can find the ties that bind and perhaps, strangle.

Apparently, Boogiepop Phantom is not one ghost but a number of characters who happen to share some characteristics. Many of the Boogiepop Phantoms (BP) are only a background character. After a while the BP characters will make themselves known. However, their purpose still remains a mystery.

A beam of light appears over a local school causing a black out throughout the city. After that, for months later, several students start disappearing. Several of the students starts hunting down the entity called Boogiepop for their own reasons. The kicker is, that while most of the Boogiepops seem to be behind the deaths and disappearances, some of the Boogiepop seem to want to help mankind while others view mankind as a toy to be played with and discarded.

The series is a typical 12 episode series. Yet, it will take at least 3 episodes (maybe two) to get the gist of the story techniques used and even then, there's a lot not explained (at least not in the six episodes I've seen so far). I love this series. The surrealness, the suspense and how well the series was planned out and written. If you love blood and gore or action with big mecha or fight scenes, you will be disappointed. The strengths for this series is it's well written stories. I have always maintained that the Japanese writers can make a Psychological Horror without the presence of gallons of blood and gore. If you loved Perfect Blue or any of the many Japanese Ghost stories, you'll want to ad this to your collection.

-- Vid~Kid