English Dub Review: Boogiepop and Others “Overdrive: The King of Distortion 2”

It’s only a dream.

Overview:

The King starts showing up in people’s dreams.

Our Take:

With this comes the last and final arc of Boogiepop; the distortion arc.

A giant building has been erected called the Moon Temple, which is a giant structure that you can walk inside. While it was created by a private company and person, it is designed to be open to the public to enter and experience, similar to the Tower of the Suns. It is featured as a major attraction in the city, bringing forth giant crowds that flock to it on its opening day. At the same time, people feel that it’s rather ominous, no doubt an architectural and technological marvel, but something out of place.

The Temple was constructed by an eccentric billionaire, Teratsuki, who had made this his passion project before dying young. While he was no doubt extremely successful, he’s almost distant and eerie to people around him. When we see him in the mother’s flashback, he is self-aware but also very uncanny, giving him a very strange air. Why he constructed the Temple is at this point unknown, but there’s definitely some larger purpose to it that we haven’t seen yet. Most importantly, who Teratsuki truly is would likely also shed some light on the truth. He says to the mother that the child that she’d have isn’t his, because he can’t make children. While this could just be infertility, there’s no way that this series would just throw that in as a coincidence. It’s possible that he’s some kind of artificial human, a usual response to strange people in this series, which could mean that Towa is behind the Temple as well.

Most importantly, the Temple seems to draw people in who are dissatisfied with their lives, or rather, of one instance that they want to desperately change. This makes the temple a perfect hunting ground for the new threat to humanity- the King of Distortion. It’s unclear what the true form of the King is, or if they have a real form at all, as they take the form of whoever is necessary for pulling others into their dreamscape. They seem to feed off doubts and regret, tempting people in with redoing a key moment in their lives. A love confession, taking back words to a deceased friend, being more proactive- the King shows people these moments perfectly and offers the chance to redo it again. As Habara points out, whatever these people are experiencing is a dream, and so whatever is tempting them is imaginary. Still, being fully immersed in memory makes it hard for most people to realize what’s happening, which will no doubt only fuel the King’s power some more.