Anime on crack.

I'd wanted to save it for a boring afternoon in the middle of vacation but the puzzling disappearance of the modem + Daniel playing snippets of it which threatened to scream SPOILERS! any second forced me to prematurely taste this delectable spice ----


Ever had a dream that was so warped it made perfect nonsense? Twist it, splash it liberally with technicolor, put it in the spin cycle of Salvador Dalí's washing machine. Multiply that by a factor of 349 and you'll be halfway towards the spectacular chaos that is Satoshi Kon's Paprika.


The plot is intriguing: A neo-futuristic device called the DC mini has been developed, which lets therapists help patients by entering their dreams. Like all dangerous inventions with well-meaning intentions, when it falls into the wrong hands all bloody hell breaks loose. People start dreaming while wide awake; a man shot dead in a dream dies in the real world. As the line between reality and the subconscious mind becomes increasingly blurred, only a woman therapist (nicknamed “Paprika”) seems able to stop the nightmare that threatens to engulf them all.



At first watch everything seemed disjointed, sequences having no seeming connection with each other, but since it’s a film about dreams I guess that’s the idea. Or maybe because I was too busy soaking in the colorful bizarreness that assaulted me frame-by-frame to really pay attention.


I have to say, the plot is complex for an anime, and no wonder because it was adapted from an award-winning novel. Most movies are divided into 3 acts, Exposition Build-up and Climax. Yadda yadda. But it’s not often you get films with a different set of acts, like The Dark Knight (which did four), whereas most artsy shorts make up the one- and two-act category. I think.


And Paprika? Felt like 7. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day.



The ending was surprisingly anticlimactic, as the fan boy part of me was rather hoping for a showdown of the cosmos. Looking back though I guess the meat of the story was in the middle, the underlying sense in the midst of all the confusion. It was clever of Satoshi Kon to use such disjointed reality in dreams to cover up certain plotholes; one thing about Japanese anime is that many things are implied, reflecting the careful reserve of this far-eastern culture.


Now, after rereading through this post, I realise (only too late) that no-one who hasn’t seen this movie is going to understand a jot of whatever I just said.

Oookayfine.
How about a preview then?

Paprika - Opening Sequence



Enjoy~