Paranoia Agent

You should know the name Satoshi Kon. Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika? The Hitchcock of anime decided after his first three movies that he had more ideas to play with, so what did he do? He dumped all his unused stories into a 13-episode mini-series that does to society what a starfish does to a fiddler crab. Look it up on Wikipedia – it’s awesome! And Paranoia Agent isn’t that bad, either.

The surrealist psychological drama centers upon the mystery of Shonen Bat (‘Lil Slugger in English), a mysterious young boy terrorizing emotionally cornered citizens with a bent, golden baseball bat. Ah, little league tee-ball; those were the days. Our lead detectives have no leads and each victim leads only to more dead ends as the murky legend of Shonen Bat reaches mythic, nearly super-natural proportions. The strangest part of these attacks: the victims lose their worldly troubles; their head traumas make them happier. Not very hard for the average Japanese cram school student, let me tell you. So just when you start to fear Shonen Bat, you start to respect him…then go right back to into being terrified, like a circus clown with a flamethrower.

Kon roped-in Seishi Manakami for the script. His goal was to shift perspectives by changing the main character in each episode, giving viewers a macrocosm of Shonen Bat’s influence. Each character gives a very personal POV into their individual case, personal struggle, and eventual encounter with Shonen Bat. Some episodes can be watched on their own as their characters have little relevance to the larger story. Such episodes are magnificent fillers, but Kon’s fingerprints are all over each of them. His grasp of human emotion, psychology and story structure are frighteningly accurate, which makes the black humor in Paranoia Agent even funnier and more poignant. If you laughed at Heath Leger in The Dark Knight, you’ll get a few sick chuckles out of episode eight.

What draws me to Paranoia Agent, from the old-fashioned detective to the reserved animator to the schizophrenic tutor to the fallen golden child to the lecherous reporter, was the pathos developed with every character. Every character is a case study for the psychological pressures of modern Japan. The situations are very believable and the stress of Tokyo almost becomes its own character as students, teachers, and the elderly are all equally pressed from all sides by the struggle to match society’s expectations.

As a testament to Satoshi Kon’s micromanagement prowess as a director, every episode features a repetitive sound that sets the pace and structure for the story. Speaking of sound, the bizarre pseudo-techno, dreamlike music of Susumu Hirasawa (Paprika, Berserk, and Millennium Actress) adds another level to this visual mind-screw into a scrambled but beautiful mess, like a naked rugby game during a hurricane.

During his interview on the first DVD, Kon mentioned his fascination over a child’s ability to create a stomach ache just to avoid going to school. Thematically, avoiding responsibility is the social and emotional paralysis that summons Shonen Bat. If you watch this series and keep “accountability” in mind, you will understand every symbolic shot in this series.

Obviously not for little kids, but this masterwork deserves at least a gander from any fan of Hitchcock, Memento, or Misery. For the ridiculously low price you can find it for, it deserves a spot on your shelf. The English dub is unmatched in its execution. It is exciting, dangerous, and visually dazzling stories like this that keep me watching anime.

Ghoust Hound

We have come to expect big things from Production I.G, which us such young adult heavy-hitters as Ghost in the Shell and Blood +. For their 20^th anniversary project, the studio reunited the director and head writer of Serial Experiments Lain to once again blur the line between dreams and reality.

The small, rural mountain town of Suiten is loaded with secrets. Three middle school students, whom I refer to as the wise-ass (Masayuki), the badass (Makoto) and the dumb-ass (Taro), discover their commonality in their childhood traumas. Once the boys accidentally cross into the Unseen World of spirits in an attempt to uncover the past about Taro’s kidnapping, it becomes clear that their horrors are the least of their concerns. The spirits have followed them home. The result: astral projection.

The boys’ abstract forms look like malformed transparent blue-tinted Lava lamp babies, but who am I to judge?

Taro, our undisputed main character, is fifteen-years-old and dabbles in lucid dreaming. When he was a child, he and his sister were kidnapped, and only he survived. Now, by unlocking the gate of his memory through hypnotherapy, Taro uses astral projections to find his sister’s spirit. His cousin Makoto is a reserved, sharp-eyed punk who walked in on his father hanging himself. Now his ancient grandmother, a previously influential cult leader, is demanding he inherit the family legacy. Finally, Masayuki, the smirking transfer student from Tokyo, developed acrophobia once a student he tormented jumped from the roof of his school.

Eat your heart out, Shinji! You’ve got nothing on these punks.

Fans of Satoshi Kon will definitely get the most from Ghost Hound: it tosses around complex psychological terminology like a harem anime tosses panty shots. Series director Ryutaro Nakamura ambitiously blends the series’ themes of psychology and Shinto mysticism to create a coherent aesthetic. Memories and flashbacks are drowned out by both static and an underwater blurring effect for both their audio and video: you feel as though you are floating in and out of a dream you cannot control. There are also many elements of horror and suspense, so expect a ton of extreme-close-ups.

Ghost Hound blends complimentary styles including supernatural, psychology, horror, and mystery into one genre that aims to literally blow your mind apart. HOWEVER, despite all the smart-people talk, the story is chronological and easy to follow: you are never totally lost.

That said, the series has much that could have been improved. Because it deals with childhood trauma, expect a ton of flashbacks to the same scenes over and over and then over again. Script-writer Chiaki Konaka (Hellsing, Big-O, Lain) juggles many mysteries at once, and while he develops them all evenly, much of Ghost Hound’s sharp intelligence becomes a double-edge sword resulting in some pretty dull episodes. There are mountains of dense psychological theory cluttering the dialog, and the series could easily have been Freud’s PhD thesis. The intense dialog is contrasted by dream sequences and frequent trips to the Unseen World, which may look cool, but remain disappointingly bland.

By the end of the ride, you do feel as though you have grown with these boys, however. Makoto has gained a heart despite his overt hatred for his family. Masayuki has gained courage in confronting the scientist who sexually possesses both him and his father. And Taro gains the brain he so desperately needs. While Ghost Hound definitely runs on anime rules (trauma, Shinto shrine maidens, family, blaming the past for our present inadequacies) it is difficult to imagine an audience for this show. It is for young adults, and while it has great cliff-hangers, it lacks energy and pizzazz. But, just as with the human brain and our dreams, there are far deeper themes and meanings in Ghost Hound than can be fit into a simple blog-styled review.