(Japan 2004 13 Episodes X 25 minutes)
Director Satoshi Kon, Takuji Endo (co-director for three episodes); Screenplay Satoshi Kon, Seishi Minakami, Tomomi Yoshino; Producer Mitsuru Uda, Satoshi Fujii
by Stephen Russell-Gebbett
What does fear look like? Does it have a demented smile? Does it wear roller skates and wield a golden bat?
Society is sick. Anyone in Paranoia Agent will tell you. Violence, disrespect, a morbid obsession with pop culture, sexual depravity. What is more, people are unwilling and unable to face the aberrant and torturous realities of modern existence. They flee from the here and now, yammering into their mobile phones to some distant listener, worshipping cuddly Maromi, a soft toy totem for the latest craze.
Paranoia Agent suggests this broken Japan could be a self-fulfilling, mass psychosoma. Tsukiko, a character designer, is the first of many to be attacked by Lil’ Slugger (Shonen Bat or ‘Bat Boy’, literally). She is the first to welcome him into her life. She is under pressure, afraid of not reaching a deadline, worried that she might humiliate herself. She feels boxed in, cornered, and the teenage boy, who swings his bat with vicious force, offers her an escape – to a hospital bed and to a place outside of the system.
He may not be real, albeit there’s a copycat on the loose, but he is the ‘incarnation’ of a very real malaise. He is a hologram that no-one gets close enough to pass their hand through. Once the incident is in the papers, on the TV, gossiped over in the backstreets, he becomes an agent of paranoia akin to a chemical agent. Fear of fear itself embraces myth and goes viral, eventually consuming the whole city.
In a later episode, a lady (Misae) comes home to find Lil’ Slugger there. As if in a confessional she unburdens herself to him and as she does we see him grow as she despairs and shrink as her resolution strengthens. If we acknowledge fear then his stare will weaken us into submission.
Life is too much, too full of obstacles that may be our downfall. The end of the series shows a city destroyed by a fear grown beyond anyone’s control. Laying his eyes upon the devastation, a man says “it’s like after the war”.
Some maintain that this refers to a decision taken by Japan in 1945 after the Potsdam Conference. They say it refers to Japan’s unwillingness to face reality when President Truman delivered an ultimatum that if they did not surrender to the allies that a “powerful new weapon” would be used to assure their “prompt and utter destruction”.
It is also said that the series functions as a potted history of Anime itself. Maybe it is dangerous to read too much into it, especially given Kon’s cheeky explanation that the disturbing opening credits (mushroom clouds, drowned children, maniacal laughter) and cutesy soporific end credits are there to wake people up for the late-night show and then get them ready for bed!
Whatever the most salient reading, Paranoia Agent is a work that reeks of pain, a crippled struggle for peace of mind.
Sometimes it is hard to watch. In one episode three people (two adult men and a young girl who ‘meet’ each other on the internet) arrange to meet in order to fulfil a suicide pact. Ironically, these strangers grow closer than any of the other desperate ‘victims’ or desperately concerned onlookers who fuel society’s fire.
Satoshi Kon laid puzzles and traps and played games with his characters and his audience in Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and, most recently, Paprika. Though there is complexity of structure and of form in these films there is little emotional complexity. Paranoia Agent isn’t just a brilliant mind-trip. Rather it is a brilliantly rounded story, sharply and colourfully animated (with characters more round than the usual wide-eyed waifs) of a world complicit in its own downfall, yet a world that attracts no less sympathy for it.
Paranoia Agent is the pinnacle of Anime series.
A little taster…the first part of the first episode:
I watched the first couple episodes of this and found them amazing, I just have to find some time to finish it. Satoshi Kon was and is one of the masters of japanese animation (the current holy triad for me is Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Hosoda and Satoshi Kon).
Do find time, Jaime…the series grows and grows into something you find very rarely on television.
We do need more top class film-makers to work in television; TWIN PEAKS and PARANOIA AGENT are two of the best series I’ve seen.
I’m not a big fan of Hosoda myself – THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME left me a little cold – I’m not sure why. I may have to give it (or SUMMER WARS) another look later. Of course I’m in complete agreement on Satoshi Kon and Miyazaki.
The first episode I saw of Paranoia Agent was the 2nd episode, I think, in which the Yichi kid gets followed around by Little Slugger and eventually gets whacked. I didn’t watch all of the episodes (I caught them whenever I could on Adult Swim), but the most disturbing one I saw involved a fat man who becomes a rapist and serial killer until he beats up the kid who claims to be Little Slugger. Don’t remember much about that episode.
I thought the ending was confusing, though. After Tsuiko admits that Little Slugger isn’t real… what happens, exactly? Everything goes back to normal? The people Little Slugger killed come back to life? I didn’t understand the denounement when it happened.
Still, I’m gunning for watching this series again. It got me into Satoshi Kon’s work. Oh, how miserable I was when I heard of his passing this year.
I can’t say I understood the ending completely Adam. There was a real person who killed a couple of people.
Apart from that the fears and delusions of the people did seem to become incarnated in a real and physical way.
Things do go back to normal in the end – back to square one with people on their phones in a traffic jam.
A great work and a testament to Kon’s legacy. It’s a tradition in this series, but this writing really is top caliber.
Thanks very much Frank. I do think PARANOIA AGENT represents Satoshi Kon’s best work.
Do you have a particular favourite of his?
Excellent review and continuing series. The darker Japanese entries remain the ones that stay with you, and that’s the bottom line. This is one such example.
Cheers.
“The darker Japanese entries remain the ones that stay with you, and that’s the bottom line.”
Yes. That is generally the case for me too.
I knew you have Kon well-represnted Stephen, and I can’t say I blame you. The world lost a great talent was Kon passed on at that young age last year, but he left behind some masterpiece, of which this haunting work is clearly one. Again, superb writing and passionate appreciation.
I watched Paprika sometime back and hated it (only truly bad anime I’ve watched, most were just plain trashy but had a great grasp of action that the artistic anime-tors either don’t have or don’t use). It set up many interesting things and used them in service of a one-dimensional theme. And even visually, the drawings in the foreground and the paintings in the back did not gel at all.
This, however, is much better, even though stylistically it falls into cliche fairly often (the picture whirlpooling to become hallucinations in the second episode for example, that was a technique whose effect I consider iffy at best).
I only chose to watch this because it’s at number four and I’ll have watched numbers one through six (very little of the simpsons), and because you take care to deprecate Paprika near the end.
Ronak,
I don’t remember the “whirlpool” bit but I think it’s fair to say that people (and maybe me too) are less aware or more forgiving of cliches like that in animation. Whatever the cliches I found it uncommonly powerful.
Paprika is quite good but I think PARANOIA AGENT, much like the world of TWIN PEAKS for David Lynch, is where Satoshi Kon’s best work lies – an opportunity to explore feelings and situations more in depth.
To be clear: I haven’t finished this, just watched some five episodes.
I hope you’ll come back when you’re finished. I’m a big fan of these 13 episode series. Time for a real arc and yet never outstaying their welcome.
Sorry for the late comment, but I was so happy to see you put this up there on your list. Very well deserved! I’ve spent years trying to put people onto it to little avail. I’ve watched it around 3 times now and still enjoy picking apart and searching for all of Kon’s messages. I still remember the first time I got to the end, I was just frozen in a pool of thought, wonder, and intrigue, and it stayed with me for days after. Just genius really.