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Boogiepop's outfit: nightmare of cosplay's worldwide

While typing the review of Serial Experiments Lain I kept finding myself wanting to compare it to other series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Boogiepop Phantom as I found review a surreal series in a vacuum just doesn't work. That said, here's another slightly informative but not particularly funny review; Boogiepop Phantom (NGE is a whole can of bile-filled worms I'm not going to even consider right now).

Boogiepop Phantom is a 13 episode anime series that just a small portion of the Boogiepop series, which consists of many light novels and also probably sounds a lot less retarded in its native language.
BP's plot takes place in the aftermath of the events of a previous story, and focuses on a whole bunch of vaguely connected people and how they cope with the supernatural powers that have been awakened by a pillar of light.

Now, time for some comparisons (which incidentally are a lot easier to structure than actual sentences, hurrah for convenience):

Structure:
-SEL is linear and straightforward (the subject matter on the other hand...).
-BP is non-linear. Episodes cover the time of the pillar of light to about a month later, and frequently flashback to five years ago when a serial killer was stalking the city.

Characters:
-SEL has a small group of core characters (Lain, her family, her friends, God) and a few recurring characters (the MiB, the Cyberia kids). None of these characters seem to have any real development, but given the nature of the show, that could be the point or I could have just completely missed it.
-BP features a new central character and their close acquaintances in most of the episodes. By the end of the episode the central character has probably meet an unpleasant end and only will appear again in a cameo in a later episode, which chronologically will occur earlier. There are several main characters though, and despite featuring in the intro they don't appear as much as one would think.

Visuals:
-SEL's strength is its visuals; they are diverse and creative. Old school game graphics, surreal lighting, weird shit coming out of the walls, and on screen text directed at the viewer are just some of animation present in this series.
-BP goes in the completely different direction. Where SEL is diverse and ever changing, BP uses a desaturated colour palette and a vignette effect (clear in the middle, blurred on the edges) for every episode except the last. While this can be hard to see in the numerous night scenes and may get monotonous, it also gets across the bleak uncaring feel of the anime's world.

Plot:
-SEL...
-BP...

Ultimately Serial Experiments Lain and Boogiepop Phantom can be simplified as works with similar styles and genre that go in completely different directions, and this is significant in regards to the overall plot and viewer understanding of these works. With each episode of SEL more questions are raised then answered, and by the end much is left unanswered and the viewer must make their on conclusions; whereas BP starts off foggy, but as one watches the episodes characters and events begin to line up, and by the end a coherent plot (or at least the hints of a coherent plot) are present. It's for this reason first and foremost that I prefer Boogiepop Phantom over Serial Experiments Lain.

Rating things is often problematic. Since I gave SEL a 3/5 already, I guess I should give BP 4/5. But does BP really does that? Perhaps I should say that SEL gets 2/5 and BP gets 3/5? The nature of ratings is that unless there are some really clear and concise guidelines, past ratings come back to bite you in the ass, and even with guidelines there will always be special cases. So how about this?

Boogiepop Phantom > Serial Experiments Lain

The Matrix, just less pretentious and more Japanese

If only the entire show had this quality of animation...

After I finished watching the anime series Serial Experiments Lain I thought it would be a good idea to review it whilst it was still fresh in my mind. Well it's two weeks since then so I've already failed on that point.

Serial Experiments Lain is cyberpunk set in the present day, present time, with a liberal dose of horror for good measure. The plot follows the titular Lain, a 14 year old schoolgirl, as she delves into the hacker culture of The Wired. That's the plot in a nutshell; to go into more detail would either lead to spoilers or personal interpretation, as this is a series that remains vague for many of the details and reasons of the various events.

Given its nature as a mind screw Serial Experiments Lain has some rather interesting visual ideas. A particularly surreal one is this:


I was going to talk about contrast, atmosphere and the subjective nature of the 'blood pools' but you know, I think the screen capture does enough by itself.

Unfortunately, not all of the visuals are quite as nice. The overall quality is rather fuzzy at times, although I'm willing to bet some of this is due to my version of the series being downloaded from a torrent purchased legitimately. Some scenes also leave me guessing what was cost cutting and what was artistic choice. An example would be one of the shots of students in Lain's class. Are they grey and less detailed because it's cheap to do so? Or is it a metaphor for how they are not relevant? Or perhaps an effect of The Wired on Lain's perception?

In the end, I'm not actually sure whether or not Serial Experiments Lain is a good anime or not; nor do I know whether I personally like it. Pros look like cons with a different frame of mind, and vice versa. Is Lain just a flat character with no developed personality or motives, or a girl who is trying to find herself amidst a supernatural identity crisis? These sorts of questions leave me unable to form any real strong feelings either way so I guess I have to say:

Serial Experiments Lain: 3/5

Or better yet, decide for yourself; the series is only 13 episodes long. 13 episodes of incomprehensibility, magic computers, and far too many eye close up shots.

End of A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.

I was originally going to get a Alma rape scene pic, but that proved awkward to screenshoot...plus I'm not sure if I'm allowed to anyway

Once again I feel like blogging, and once again I'm stumped as to how to properly start a post. All I remember from high school on the structure of text is to repeat the topic phrase in the introduction, conclusion and basically every paragraph in between as though the reader has the attention span of something with a short attention span (leave me alone, I've never been good at spontaneous metaphors (or similes (jerk))).
So.
Why FEAR 2 makes me wish I hadn't spent money on it.

Now, as I am just typing what comes to mind, I should point out that the various factors that irk me will be in no order and the amount of text dedicated to them will not be an indication of importance; I'm simply going to type till I'm bored, out of complaints, or feeling so bitter and twisted that I have to go and kick a puppy (note: not serious).

Also, let's all pretend Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate don't exist.

First up: the freaking vehicle segments. The FEAR series is your standard twenty minutes into the future setting, so it's essentially the same as today but everything is a little more advanced. This meant in FEAR there were particle beams, lasers, hover drones, personnel cloaking, power armour and even small mechs. With the exception of the lasers, which were far too space opera for the setting, these were all fine; none were commonplace or over the top. This helped to ground you in the reality of the game, which was important as it made the supernatural portions even more surreal and jarring. But FEAR 2 had to up the ante a couple of parts where you conveniently score an unmanned mech and proceed to wreck havoc through the trashed streets. While the FEAR 1 mech was about car sized and packed either missiles or the gay pink lasers, the FEAR 2 mech is several stories tall, very well shielded and comes with both dual chain guns and (bigger) missiles. While joyriding in the mech the player is virtually invincible as few weapons can harm them meaningfully and the carriers of such weapons can be smeared into the ground rather easily.
I should mention that the original mechs do show up in FEAR 2. You encounter one as a boss, which takes far too much firepower to kill (freaking shields), and then later whilst in the larger mech a few appear to slow you down.
'Wait, what do you have against obliterating dozens of soldiers in a giant robot you fag?' You may hypothetically ask, my hypothetical reader. And then I'll respond with something like: 'Nothing, when it's appropriate to the game's style, which it's not you retard.'

Speaking of massive numbers of soldiers, the amount of Replica soldiers and Armacham mercenaries you fight in the game is staggering given the context. There's a battalion (1000) of the Replica soldiers so fair enough for them, but I don't see why there's a seemingly endless supply of mercenaries. Plot-wise they are there to clean up any evidence or personnel that could incriminate Armacham, essentially a private army. What bothers me is why. Sure Armacham is a traditional corrupt weapons research and manufacture company, but why do they need that much muscle? It's not like they regularly send out there black ops death squads...right? While this is a fairly minor point, it is related to a slightly more important one: secret underground bases.

As far as I can tell, Armacham Technology Corporation while being modelled after Umbrella for continued research into inadvisable ideas, they chose to use the Black Mesa School of architecture. In FEAR 1 you go to a water treatment plant they own, their local HQ and a secret underground base where they kept Alma. And that's fine, an evil corporation is expected to have a secret facility. Except, that in FEAR 2, you go to several more underground bases. First there's the one that seems like a normal hospital for the most part, but turns out to be underground (naturally). Then there's also the one under the Armacham controlled school and there's the base which houses the psychic amplifier. And don't you forget about the massive underground train system that connects at least two of the bases to one another.

So far I've complained about fairly trivial and personal things, so let's get into something less trivial (still rather personal). Horror segments, fear effects, supernatural elements; that stuff that puts you on the edge and makes the next gun fight more nerve wracking. Except that in FEAR 2, they've taken what little atmosphere they had and beaten it to death with bloom effects.
Now in FEAR (1) the scary moments were hit and miss; for every gem (such as Alma's shadow behind you when you walk into a dead end) there were duds (like coming across another splattered corpse and having the scare chord play). However in FEAR 2 they are all misses, from getting blinded with an overpowering bloom effect on the HUD to grappling with Alma in periodic quick time events.
Two of the main factors in player based fear are the unknown and personal risk, and once again FEAR uses this adequately whereas FEAR 2 fails.
In FEAR one of Alma's first actions is to vaporise your squad, which naturally puts you on edge and makes you wary of a possible fiery supernatural death. This feeling is reinforced when she does try to incinerate you. After jumping at radio static and little girl laughter for a while the player probably starts to think that it's all illusions and thus harmless, which is true...until about half way into the game. One of the types of horror moments are when you are trapped in flashbacks, usually consisting of the hospital (where Alma gave birth) and/or a fire filled void. These are fairly tame by themselves, but then the Nightmares show up. Suddenly the flashbacks become combat zones where you can barely see (due to the flashback gauze effect), can't slowmo and are under attack by suiciding monsters. Act 3 takes things further (as it should) when Harlan Wade releases Alma from the Vault, so you know that things are going to get messy. As you start to flee the imminent nuclear explosion, suddenly slowmo kicks in and the dozens of Nightmares start coming out of the walls. And they do this basically in every room as you flee the Vault.
FEAR 2 in its incompetence looks at what FEAR 1 did well and manages to lose what it did well while adding things that also fail. The Nightmares have been replaced with the functionally the same but visually different Specters. So instead of dull grey enemies that blend in with dark environments, there are bright and shiny white ones that stand out. Two new enemies are the Abominations and the Remnants. The former are failed experiments that crawl along walls and try to disembowel you. Initially the Abominations are rather unnerving (they also remind me of the fast zombies out of Half Life 2) but this diminishes fairly quickly when you realise how soft and squishy they are (unlike the fast zombies). The Remnants can be rather accurately described as insane zombie puppet masters. Like the Abominations, the basic idea behind Remnants is creepy, but the application of it is not so. The Remnants spend the fight running around reviving enemies as puppets and hitting you with an annoying scream attack if you get to close. And they take a lot of ammo to kill.
Alma and all her illusion based fun naturally get screwed as well. The scares and horror moments, which were already pretty scarce to begin with, are almost nonexistent, especially the subtle ones. Hell, you don't even get radio static anymore. Furthermore, you get visions of a tree with a swing that obviously is of some importance to Alma, just not enough to be mentioned anywhere before this game. In FEAR 1 you the player see Alma as a young girl in a red dress until she gets released from the Vault, and then she's older and naked. This change in appearance marks an important plot point and makes the climax of the first game seem more epic. However, since FEAR 2 consists mostly of events after FEAR 1, Alma is already released so there goes that sense of your ultimate enemy getting stronger, as she is already there. But who likes pacing and events getting more intense anyway.

Well I've prattled on for quite a while without any real sense of order or logical thought and I could probably just keep doing so, but I'm going to wrap this up. Ultimately FEAR 1 and 2 are both flawed games, but I can cut FEAR 1 a lot more slack because it was the first one. When it comes to the first of anything (movie, game, child, whatever) I am more tolerant of its flaw, as the creators had no good benchmark to compare to. This same ideology of mine means I expect any and all sequels to be better. What makes FEAR 2 so frustrating is that it doesn't even manage to be equal to FEAR 1.
In conclusion:
First Encounter Assault Recon: 3/5
Extraction Point: 1/5
Perseus Mandate: 1/5 (probably)
FEAR 2 Project Origin: 2/5

PS: Under my own reasoning, I have got to use this 3 part bitching session as a benchmark for any future posts. Therefore future posts will hopefully: be more concise, follow a more ordered thought and be just more entertaining.