English Dub Review: Boogiepop and Friends “Vs Imaginator 3”

Dying solves nothing.

Overview:

Orihata ends up feeling overwhelmed.

Our Take:

This episode is all about both Suema and Orihata, who end up being unexpectedly tangled together. Orihata, aka Camile, knows the artificial human Spooky E, and seems to be working for him and Towa, for some reason. She craves death, so in a fit of worry, she asks Masaki to become Boogiepop. Suema, on the other hand, is asked to look into Asukai.

The scene where Suema confronts Orihata about committing suicide is a genuinely touching one. It’s extremely thoughtful and even lends a lot into why teenagers are so fascinated by death and dark things. It isn’t really that teenagers want everything to be destroyed, but because they have so many worries, and extreme solution such as death seems like Suema proposes that Boogiepop being a reaper isn’t necessarily an actual figment of death, but something to ease people’s anxieties and fears. It’s only fitting that Boogiepop mostly appears to girls, who have to keep their anxieties hidden in the face of society.

‘When you die, the things that caused you pain won’t go away’, is a haunting but in the end, true phrase. Most people who attempt suicide see death as an escape, the only way to escape their problems, but that is only an escape for them. That doesn’t stop the problems from existing back in life, just puts an end to them experiencing it. Death might seem like an end-all, but it isn’t.

Suema’s advice of ‘you can only die after you’ve fought against what’s hurting you, against the thing trying to define you and hold you back’, is just good advice, and it rings true with Orihata. Of course, what Orihata is fighting against is Boogiepop, both physically and metaphorically. Still, despite this, Suema says that it’s still a fight worth taking on. It doesn’t matter if the fight seems impossible or not, because it’s still something worth doing.

Orihata has wanted to die this entire time, but she goes out of the situation much calmer than before. For once, she genuinely smiles and feels a lot more confident. This might either be a good or bad thing, in the long run, depending on what Orihata’s endgame is, but in the meantime, it’s good to see that she truly cares for Masaki, and that she is slowly gaining a spark back into her life.