Sorry guys, I know the schedule is a bit off this week but to be fair BoogiePop started it! Just randomly dropping 4 episodes at once. That’s rude to us reviewers. Ok Ok, discussers and occasional screencap takers…
Anywho Shania and I are back, braving snow and lack of sleep to bring you this now slightly outdated BoogiePop review. There was a pretty steep drop off in reviews this week so we thought it was important that we do our part. But I can’t say I’m thrilled about it.
Shania was a bit too busy to host this week so I get a second round. I wanted to make sure I gave Shania plenty of room. Sometimes I have a bad habit of taking over when I do these things because I just throw everything I can think of down on the page and there isn’t much left for the other person to comment on.
So the post is split in two, the first half is just an outline for Shania to let us know what she thought of this week’s BoogiePop and Others and I put my blathering at the end where you can conveniently skip it if you like. Kind of like a timestamp on a YouTube video!
Let me know if you guys like this format better!
What did you think of this week’s episode Shania?
I must say after the last episode, I was expecting more. I’m sadly disappointed.
How about that shrink?
Not a fan of ‘em, but they were interesting–a lot of other words too, but I’ll just use interesting.
No – please use the other words! It’s what we’re here for!
You know I am an enormous coward as well. Maybe I should take a few classes and get a psychiatry degree!
I always hated animal testing in school and disliked seeing it in anime.
Same. I nearly turned off the show when I saw it cause its quite unpleasant to me. Plus theres no real reason to test on them. But that’s a rant for another day.
Do you think human evolution would lead to apparent invulnerability?
I knew it would cause something to happen. When people try to evolve into something better or stronger, there’s always going to be drawbacks. For example in Tokyo Ghoul with the Doves.
What was your favourite part?
To be perfectly honest I didn’t exactly have a favorite part. It was pretty even keel.
Fair enough, although to me there was a big difference between the first and second half.
Apparently, this storyline is going to continue into at least one more episode. Are you happy about that?
I kinda wish it would stretch a little longer because I feel like they could do more with it.
How do you figure this is going to go?
Heh. Its Boogiepop Irina, no one knows for sure.
Truer words!
As for me, I found last week’s episode a lot more compelling and just more satisfying. Scarecrow was an interesting character and his connection to the organization made them a much more interesting villain than in the previous arc.
By contrast, eveil shrink lady might as well have been twirling a curly mustache for how much of a flat stereotypical villain she was. And gross out scares doesn’t fit the atmosphere of the show very well at all.
As far as I’m concerned the first half of the episode kept going from boring to unpleasant and back again with very little to keep me watching. Also, I’m quite unclear as to why a further step in human evolution would make us seemingly immune to physical harm. Yes, we have gain a lot of longevity but that is mostly due to advances in medicine, technology and lifestyle. As far as just plain physical resilience goes I think we may have taken a step back. Peanuts kill us now… At this point, nit picking at this particular plot element seems very silly but as it’s the motivation for both the organization and he shrink (yes I forgot her name), I believe it deserves a bit more context.
However, despite everything, BoogiePop itself remains an interesting character and I thought the episode really picked up as soon as it made its appearance.
The unsaid implications that young Miyashita has been carrying BoogiePop for a while and the consequences it has had on her life were in fact one of the more interesting revelations of the series. For some reason I had always figured that BoogiePop could make people forget about it whenever convenient. The idea that it created a rift between the girl and her mother, to the point where she was brought to seek out psychiatric help, really makes me consider the situation in a new light.
It might be because I found the new characters particularly weak, but I thought BoogiePop really commanded the scene. I honestly would have liked their discussion to have gone on a little longer despite desperately wanting the episode to end just five minutes earlier. And that’s a tribute to…something…
I can’t say the characterisation is particularly good or the pacin. The narrative is still a holey mess but it manages to make me want o know what happens next, nevertheless. For reasons I can’t quite explain, I don’t’ believe the series to be all that good, but I also really want it to be good. Such are the mysteries of BoogiePop, I guess! What did you guys think?
Instead of confusing you even more with my words, here are some nice clear pictures!
Well… I LIKE the “X-Men plus existentialism” aspect. For me, it makes the show unique and memorable and not just another mindless action shounen.
What the show is postulating is that we all have these latent powers and “evolution” is just opening the gate that holds them back. You aren’t suddenly developing something that was never there. That allows a big leap in evolution with a very small change. Kind of like opening a large gate with a tiny key. Not any different than X-Men at all. We all loved X-Men, didn’t we?
A lot of the discussion is about some pretty heavy philosophy, such as the illusions of free will and choice. We like to think they play a very large part in our lives when in reality it is fairly small. The was the whole point of Boogie’s lecture to Masaki Taniguchi at the end of the Imaginator arc. Another great philosophical ramble was the anti-suicide talk Kazuko made to Aya Orihata earlier in the arc. I love this stuff.
Peanuts kill us now only because we have become afraid of them and no longer feed them to very young children. That caused *more* people to be allergic. The same thing applies to many other foods. We evolved so that our immune system needs to be stimulated by lots of things as an infant and very young child in order to learn what is good and what is bad. For example, children who are raised in contact with pets are far less likely to be allergic to pets and the outdoor allergens carried in on a pet’s fur. Also less likely to develop asthma later on. It also helps to play in natural mud and grass and get very very dirty.
Very many immunologists associate the sharp rise of both minor and dangerous allergies in general with excessively clean childhoods.
Can’t say I loved X-man for the science….and the movies were of varying quality. wouldn’t watch them again.
The development of allergies further to imposed aseptic environment is one theory but we do know our immune system has physically changed throughout the years to be a lot more sensitive to potentially justified. The rise of autoimmune disorders is a lo less clear cut than that.
We also evolve to suit our environment which is less physically strenuous so if we keep involving in the same sense being capable of incredible feats of physical prowess seems less likely than being able to metabolise cholesterol and sugar in an healthy way.
I doubt the show actually cares about the sci fi details though. You read the manga, you know where this is going
X-men was never my favorite show either. Especially not to learn about science. They might have SOME scientific facts but there’s not much.
I have a hard time remembering what was in this episode and what is yet to come. I take it Boogiepop talking to psychiatrist was in this one based on what you say? Since I watched all the episodes in a row, I sort of remember the entire arc as a unit.
The evolution thing was… silly, IMO, but it’s silly enough that I have no trouble taking it at face value for the sake of enjoying the show. It feels like X-Men + existentialism, or something like that. Also, some sort of humanist substratus I don’t share. Luckily I’m exceedingly weak. Otherwise I’d probably an “enemy of the world”. Well, who knows?
Mentally, I’m already in the new arc, or so I would say, but I can’t remember right now what it’s about. It’ll come back to me when the episode starts I suspect (as it always does).
What all this demonstrates: Whether I enjoy it or not, Boogiepop is not the most memorable show.
I have to look up who’s who if I haven’t watched an episode in the past hour…
Fun! Hey, I thinks my stomach pain stopped throbbing for now! Thank you Ms. Strunk! Ms. Strunk’s my Advisory teacher as well as my Algebra Teacher and my ROAR teacher.