You're not Paranoid if they really are all out to get you

I ended watching a lot of anime while at home. I did enough other useful stuff that I don't feel to bad about it, but at the same time...Shakespeare, Dickens...Seuss (The triple, part of our television heritage). Oh well.

The other series that I began (finished up here in JPN) was Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent". I've heard mixed reviews about this, but I've really enjoyed the rest of Satoshi-san's work ("Millennium Actress", "Perfect Blue", and "Tokyo Godfathers") so I picked it up.

Goodness (<-- The sort of shocked, worried, and yet impressed kind)

This anime is a beast. First off I will say that I absolutely love the look of all his anime offerings. They have a very polished look with good clean lines, highly detailed and realistic backgrounds, and character models that look like actual people. I don't know if this is a function of Satoshi-san or the animation studio (Madhouse), but either way, keep up the good work, yo.

The basic plot is about a series of brutal street attacks carried out by a phantom kid who rides around on roller blades and whacks people on the head with a bat. The story more or less follows two detectives as they try to piece together any kind of sense in all these crimes. It's a dark look into the tortured human existence. The senseless violence is bad enough, but all the victims are dealing with even bigger problems. Prostitution, Extortion, Suicide, Depression, etc. It's like they were having a sale at the dysfunction tent and Satoshi-san just couldn't say no. Very gritty. If think you might have trouble with this, go ahead and stay away for your own sake.

Once you get past this initial stage, I think the actual drama is quite good for the first half of the series. The drama delves deep into the obsessive nature of the detectives and is good at tracking the victims and making each of them feel human. It's hard to describe, but there is a definite heaviness about everything. It just feels like everything is happening at the end of 12 hour shift on a hot muggy day toward the end of August. Everything the characters do is labored and tired. Creating such a strong feeling of dread and gloom is not easy and it goes a long way into making this a good series.

That being said, once the second half of the series hits, everything goes crazy. What was before a nice long story arc that seemed to be driving to a certain point, now becomes a series of semi-related, odd-ball, meta, stand alone episodes. Why the sudden shift? The ending is also quite odd. It changes from a psychologically driven show about paranoia into something...else. It turned the products of the mind into something a bit more physical, but to what degree? After watching it once, I don't even really have an opinion because, frankly, I don't get it. Call me stupid, but I just don't. One thing I do know, the ending felt like a cop out. Rather than solve the problems in the interesting psychological realm that characterized most of the series, Satoshi-san reverts to crude matter to finish things.

I suppose it's really no accident that things end the way they do. The anime does reuse some familiar Satoshi themes. It takes the psychological crime story from Perfect Blue and blends it with the reality bending, stream of consciousness directing of Millenium Actress. Even now that sounds pretty cool, but in execution it's like oil and water.

A final verdict? Technically, one of the best looking/directed animes I've ever seen. Storywise, I have to say it did not make me feel good and there were definite flaws. It's hard to grade it much past that.

I am sure of something though. After watching the show I don't think I could ever own one of those Maromi dolls (see pic) even though I think they are quite a cute design. Just seeing it sit on the desk would be enough to give me the jibblies.