The first in the Boogiepop series, it was released in 1998 by MediaWorks and won the fourth Dengeki Game Novel Contest.

When waiting for his girlfriend, Touka Miyashita, to arrive, Keiji Takeda sees a ragged-looking man stumbling through the town.

In the end, Boogiepop appears to Takeda in Miyashita's school uniform, and explains that the crisis was over, so he would disappear.

Rather than panic or fight back, he told Manticore it would be better off leaving him alive and taking the form of Yurihara.

As their experiments in controlling people begin to fail, and Nagi Kirima seems to be investigating too close, the relationship between Saotome and Manticore strains, until Naoko Kamikishiro came upon them, calling for Echoes.

Two years ago, when they were in High School, he met Kamikishiro when she was confessing her love to Shirou Tanaka.

Kamikishiro had told Kimura that she had met an alien named Echoes, who had been sent to evaluate humanity, but he had been cloned.

He continues, "I thought perhaps I should turn it into the message that, no matter what, we must express our 'sense of isolation from deep inside that won't let us smile.

[8] Sayaka Yoshino gave up her summer break to appear in the film, and had to perform in Boogiepop's "sauna suit" in days reaching 35 °C (95 °F).

[7] Maya Kurosu spend two months in training for her role as Kirima Nagi, so that she could perform in the action scenes.

A Typhoon reached the Kantō Metropolitan area on that day, but against the forecasts it cleared up before they were due to begin filming.

A Boogiepop version of the classical overture to Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" was included on the album as an additional bonus track, arranged by Yoshihisa Hirano and conducted by Orie Suzuki.

It was published in North America by AnimeTrax and released by Right Stuf International as a single disc CD on 30 April 2002.

[15] It has also received praise for ripping "the rules of narrative wide open",[16] especially for how it allows the characters to grow on the reader.

Whilst the characters and plot were well received, the special effects and costumes have been described as "campy", but "par for the course of something of this level and budget".

[19] The Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh manga received generally favorable reviews, particularly for capturing some of the more complicated scenes better than the original light novel.

[20] However, it has been noted that breaking the complicated plot of Boogiepop and Others into a multi-volume manga results in individually weak volumes.

[21] As with Boogiepop Phantom, the character designs have been noted as "lookalike and nondescript", which can make some of the events difficult to follow.