Boogiepop and Others
2019
Original language: Japanese
- animation
- mystery
- drama
The story
There is an urban legend that tells of a shinigami that can release people from the pain they are suffering. This "Angel of Death" has a name—Boogiepop. And the legends are true. Boogiepop is real. When a rash of disappearances involving female students breaks out at Shinyo Academy, the police and faculty assume they just have a bunch of runaways on their hands. Yet some students know better. Something mysterious and foul is afoot. Is it Boogiepop or something even more sinister...?
What it’s like
Hazy, saturated school corridors and rain-slick streets, with sudden hard cuts into stark white or blood-red frames, give this anime a fractured, unsettling look. Its palette shifts between washed-out daylight and deep nighttime blues, and its camera lingers on quiet, ordinary spaces before a jolt of stylized horror breaks the calm. The sound leans on eerie, tense ambience and sparse, pulsing score, with long pauses that make each sudden noise land. The pacing is deliberately disjointed: time jumps, overlapping perspectives, and scenes that return in new light, so the mood stays slippery rather than steadily building. Its emotional register is cold, melancholic, and anxious, with adolescent alienation running beneath a supernatural mystery. The intensity is high. Expect graphic gore and bodily mutilation, grim violence, and disturbing scenes touching on mental decline, with dread and sudden shock more constant than relief. It suits a late night alone with headphones, or a viewer who wants an uneasy, puzzle-like seinen thriller rather than anything gentle. It is for people who enjoy fragmented storytelling, eerie atmosphere, and horror that unsettles more than it reassures.
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