released 06 mar 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Having been extremely impressed by Satoshi Kon's animated movies MILLENNIUM ACTRESS and TOKYO GODFATHERS, I was seriously intrigued when I found out that he had created an anime video series, PARANOIA AGENT -- an anime video with 13 episodes on four DVDs -- and so I had to check it out.
On first inspection of the DVD menus and the like, PARANOIA AGENT suggested that it was something along the lines of Ryutaro Nakamura's SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN anime series -- dark, unconventional, bizarre. Each of the episodes involves a different character: Tsukiko, a painfully shy young toy designer who has a surreal relationship with her toys; Yuichi, the popular boy at school, who finds his position suddenly threatened; Harumi, the good girl, and her relationship with her "sister" Maria, the bad girl; and Hirukawa, a loutish, sleazy, corrupt cop who gets in too deep with a set of gangsters. The major link between the four is "Shonen Batto" ("Boy Bat", rendered as "Little Slugger" in translation), a mysterious adolescent assailant who swoops out of the night on rollerblades to bash strangers with a metal baseball bat. Two detectives are trying to track down the trail of the senseless crimes.
It is clear at the outset of PARANOIA AGENT that this series is very original and well-produced. The animation is cinema-quality or very close to it, with fine character and scene designs, backed up by a very creditable Susumu Harasuma soundtrack (the intro music is particularly rousing, even with its absurdist lyrics). Its episodic arrangement, focusing on different urban dwellers under stress, is a bit reminiscent of Tarantino's PULP FICTION.
However, despite its good production qualities, the series ends up being something like a high-grade version of LAIN, becoming a set of doodles for the production crew -- a bit satire, a bit fantasy, a bit horror movie, a bit experimental, providing a lot of interesting scenes but lacking overall impact. To be sure, it's generally entertaining and put together well enough; it's worth watching, but all it amounts to is a set of quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes grim stories. I can recommend PARANOIA AGENT, but I have to warn that the initial impression that something great is unfolding is misleading.