skywaterblue

Cooper lent me the series "Paranoia Agent", because he was surprised I had never seen it. Indeed, kind of weird because I'm familiar with Satoshi Kon's other work, the anime films "Paprika" and "Tokyo Godfathers" and "Millennium Actress". (Also, "Perfect Blue", the only one I haven't seen.)

So, first: the animation is gorgeous. Really, every frame of it is beautiful and the character designs are amazing. It also features a genuinely bizarre opening sequence. All of the dubbing is really good and the voice actors give great performances.

If you're familiar with his previous work, it's a lot like that. He deals with meta-narrative and the boundaries between fantasy and reality. The wikipedia article on him lies and says that "Tokyo Godfathers" is set strictly in reality. It mostly does, but there's some questionably magical realism going on in that movie.

The premise of this follows Tsukiko Sagi, a young woman in her twenties working at a toy design firm. She's become unexpectedly famous after the creation of a pink dog character named Maromi, and is under intense pressure to make a follow-up hit. This is when she is attacked in a parking lot by a criminal the media dubs Lil' Slugger, and put into hospital. Two police officers, Ikari the older and grizzled vet, and his new partner Maniwa have to track Lil' Slugger down as he increasingly attacks the populace.

This is all really set up for thirteen episodes of horror mindfuck. Initially the story does focus strictly on the victims, the detectives and Tsukiko, but it meanders a bit (entertainingly) in the middle.

Like all the other things Satoshi Kon has ever done, it's ultimately a big deconstruction on aspects of Japanese society - the obsession with cute, the treatment of women and small children, Japan's issues with mental health or the lack thereof, ultimately all ending in one satisfying conclusion about being responsible for our actions in the world. I really liked this, and I thought a lot of