Paranoia Agent-
Volume 1- Enter Little Slugger
(MVM Region 2 PAL DVD)
(2004)
review by Blackgloves

The unique and idiosyncratic vision of anime director Satoshi Kon -- evident in such bizarre and disturbing works as "Perfect Blue" and Millennium Actress" -- has already earned him comparison with the maverick american director David Lynch: Kon's thematic concerns with the fragility of identity, his post-modern playfulness with genre conventions and the dark, nightmarish tonality of the surrealism that tints most of his animated features, are reason enough to justify the tag -- but now the writer/director has provided another one by bringing his twisted sensibility to TV with the outstanding cult anime series "Paranoia Agent". When Lynch concocted the short-lived "Twin Peaks" in the early nineties, he was able to carry over ideas, motifs and his distinctive knack for composing jarring, edgy visuals to the (then) safe and formulaic world of U.S. television, all the while subtly subverting its cosy conventions.

Satoshi Kon does exactly the same thing with this anime series: joining up with the incomparable production house, Studio Madhouse and incorporating some beautifully detailed character designs by Masashi Ando ("Spirited Away"; Princess Mononoke) that best display the director's distinctive trademark thematic concerns, edgy film noir atmospherics and plots that merge social comment with unsettling and provocative abstraction -- all the while avoiding many of the clichés that a lot of anime television series have fallen in to in recent years.

Kon has created the series out of ideas left over from his full-length feature films -- which obviously explains its preoccupation with broken minds and fractured realities; the result is one of the most essential and unmissable anime series ever made ... one that is almost certainly destined to have a huge influence on the genre in the next few years.

The viewer will be left in no doubt that they are in for a mind-bending anime experience like no other from the very first frames. The bizarre opening title sequence blasts on to the screen with the series' catchy theme tune, "Dream Island Obsessional Park", thundering and soaring over unsettling images of the principle characters chuckling oddly while standing in a variety of surreal locations -- from mountain tops to underwater seascapes. There are several regular flourishes of this nature in every episode that seem - at this stage, at least - incomprehensible and quite abstract (another link with the world of Lynch): a wizened old man delivers cryptic monologues at the end of each episode while standing in a moon crater; and the end theme's dreamy lullaby is accompanied with images of all the characters sleeping on a lush summer lawn, their prone bodies forming a ring around the toy character Maromi -- a large-eyed pink dog of familiar anime design, which has been created by one of the series' main characters. This kind of blatant weirdness helps lend a particular off-kilter mood to all the episodes even though their actual story content is quite varied.

The series consists of a huge cast of characters (the opening and end credit sequences sublimely introduce us to many of them before they appear in the actual series) and each episode concentrates on the varied psychological problems that each of them are struggling with. There is a framing device, linking all the stories and characters together, which involves a police investigation into a series of brutal muggings which are being carried out all over the city. All of the victims of the muggings describe a baseball bat-wielding youth on rollerblades as their attacker and the media dub him Lil' Slugger (the original Japanese translation names him Shonen Bat); but no matter how hard they try, the two detectives assigned to the case are unable to find any suspects or discover any motive in the attacks. Gradually, strange, apparently coincidental links between each victim are discerned -- but still no logical solution can be deduced by the baffled authorities.

The series proceeds (at least, for the four episodes included on this first volume) by making the principle protagonist of each episode one of Lil' Slugger's victims. The main character of each story has usually been a secondary character in the episode before it, giving each instalment a concrete link with its predecessor no matter how different the content; eventually, the mugger becomes almost a mechanism for enabling the "victims" to form a socially acceptable excuse for their psychological problems. Are the Lil' Slugger attacks a form of mass hysteria then ... or is something even stranger going on?

The psychological dramas of these first four episodes are delivered in an extremely dark, but quirky and always visually compelling style that keeps the viewer hooked from the beginning to the end of every single twenty-five minute episode. Masashi Ando's slight tendency toward grotesque character design is well catered for by some of the characters in this series, but there are also many attractive and beautifully rendered designs as well; the overall aesthetic is one of a brooding yet colourful modern noir thriller. As with most of Kon's previous work, issues surrounding identity and the nature of experienced reality form the crux of all four episode's content. This is nowhere more evident that in episode one ("Enter Lil' Slugger") which introduces us to Tsukiko Sagi -- a famous toy designer with a major toy manufacturer...

Sagi invented the popular toy doll called Maromi; the pink dog-like toy has taken Japan by storm, making its designer a major celebrity. However, Sagi is under pressure to finish the design for yet another character, and for it to be equally as popular! After she is attacked in a deserted alleyway by the phantom mugger nicknamed Lil' Slugger, rumours begin spreading across the internet that Sagi made the whole thing up to get attention. A sleazy writer called Akio Kawazu is out to expose her, and as the infamy mounts, Sagi takes refuge in pleasing delusions -- finding comfort from one of her own toy Maromi dolls, that then appears to have come to life!

In episode two ("The Golden Shoes") teenager Yuichi Taira's life as a model student with a perfect life and lots of friends begins to fall apart when Sagi's description of Lil' Slugger matches his profile: baseball cap-wearing, rollerscater! To make matters worse, The student whom Taira always used to bully, Shogo Ushiyama, suddenly becomes very popular and threatens to beat him in the student council election! When Ushiyama is attacked by Lil' Slugger right in front of Taira, everyone is even more convinced that he is the culprit! The student becomes tortured with paranoid delusions and hallucinations and soon begins to feel that the only way to escape his predicament is to become a victim of Lil' Slugger himself!

Episode three ("Double Lips") is about a young woman called Harumi Chono. She was Taira's private tutor but she actually has a double life as a dowdy library assistant and a high class prostitute called Maria! She is secretly treated for multiple personality disorder by a psychiatrist, and until she agrees to marry her employer at the University library she manages to keep her two lives separate. When Harumi gives up the prostitution job to Marry though, her Maria personality attempts to take over her life completely!

In episode four ("A Man's Path") one of Maria's clients, a corrupt police officer called Masami Hirukawa, tries to blackmail the criminal bosses behind the prostitution ring but ends up having the tables turned on him. Forced to turn to increasingly violent acts of robbery and assault in order to pay off the criminal gang, Hirukawa loses himself in the adventures of a hero from the pages of a Manga comic. But imaging himself as the invented masked hero as he goes about these heinous acts only seems to provide licence for him to indulge in his darkest, most perverted fantasies!

"Paranoia Agent: Volume 1" is presented in a pleasing anamorphic widescreen transfer that features both English and Japanese 2.0 audio tracks with English subtitles. The English dub is very good indeed and stays as close as possible to the original Japanese meaning. Extras include a multi-angle storyboard-to-screen comparison feature, some trailers and a five minute interview with writer & director Satoshi Kon that packs a fair amount of information into a short time and provides a very interesting insight into the series.

This is one anime series that everyone should see; I can't emphasis enough just how good it is! Very highly recommended.