By the end of the three episodes on this opening DVD, a lot of questions about all this have been raised, but few have been answered; SoulTaker's creators have clearly made a concerted effort to be as cryptic as possible. In the opening episode, particularly, images flicker by in rapid succession as the "camera" quickly shifts perspective, picking out small details (eyes, feet, a crucifix) or taking in settings from a distancing remove. Due to swift pacing, jumps back and forth in time, deliberate gaps in continuity, visual non sequiturs, blurring and special effects, perplexing scenes that can't be interpreted until later events add some background, images of things that can't be identified until something moves, and, above all, the very strange events and the many, many things that aren't explained at all, it's virtually impossible to follow these episodes the first time through.

Naturally, with this many barriers to comprehension, SoulTaker's creative team has had to come up with reasons for people to keep watching. Some of the bait they use is fairly standard—sex (in the person of Maya, who initially appears in incongruously revealing clothes and provocative poses) and violence (as Kyosuke and Shiro engage the doctor, the Kiriharas' android security forces and a giant robot in flashy, intense combat). But as baffling as SoulTaker's oblique visual style can be, it's also a draw. It's often hard to make the scattered, individual shots cohere into a sensible story, but those individual shots are sharp, gorgeous and unconventionally designed. From Kyosuke and Maya's second conversation, held in part against a backdrop of bright, moving, abstract geometric shapes, to Kyosuke's shattered memories, which contain a great deal of colorful iconography and attention-grabbing tableaux, SoulTaker makes sure every fragmented shot is a memorable one.

And, of course, there's the mystery itself. As stylized, mysterious puzzle-stories like Serial Experiments Lain, Gasaraki, and Boogiepop Phantom become increasingly popular in the United States, fans will have to decide for themselves whether complex mystery stories like this one are rewarding to unravel or just frustrating. SoulTaker, with its intriguing ideas about human soul-fragments, is a decent argument for the former. But either way, its visual poetry and zippy pace demand attention and make it impossible to become bored.