I don’t really “get” anime, and  I probably never will. While I certainly appreciate the visual quality  of 
much of the work, the stories tend to either be either infuriatingly  childish or downright convoluted. 
There are a few that I’ve really  enjoyed, although I can’t claim to have fully understood them, and  
Paprika is the most recent to fit that description.  



Centering  around a “dream machine” developed for the sake of treating  psychological illness, 
Paprika tells the tale of what happens when said  technology falls into the wrong hands. When the 
dreams of a psychotic  begin to affect those close to the project, it is up to a young doctor  named 
Atsuko to enter these dreams and bring the victims out. She does  this with a sort of dreamworld 
alter-ego named Paprika; a sexy,  free-spirited redhead who seemingly does everything that the 
repressed  Atsuko wouldn’t dare do in the waking world. 
 

Paprika is at its hallucinatory best when our heroine is navigating the  nightmares and 
dreamscapes of the other characters, with everything  from liquid floors and floating bodies to 
parades of horn-blowing frogs  and marching refrigerators. None of it makes a lick of sense 
(at least  to me), but damnit if it doesn’t look cool as hell as director Satoshi  Kon pushes the 
boundaries of animation to artistic extremes.  

I’ve only seen one other traditionally animated film on Blu-ray (the excellent Tekkonkinkreet), so I’ve not much to go by in terms of image quality comparison. Paprika certainly looks good, but it lacks the “pop” of the aforementioned title, and looked very two-dimensional. The image isn’t nearly as sharp as one would expect from a BD title, but, then again, much of the action takes place in the “fog” of dreams, so perhaps the soft image is unavoidable. Just the same, I wasn’t nearly as floored by the look of this film as I expected to be, but I was still impressed by the colors and imagery, which are perfectly realized here.

The Dolby TrueHD soundtracks are presented in both Japanese and English, but, as with all foreign films, I prefer to watch the subtitled versions because they almost invariably offer the best translation. With Paprika, dialogue sounded low, but that is mostly due to the restrained delivery of the Japanese voice actors. Sound levels are consistent overall, but the techno score was a bit peaky at times.

Anime fanatics will love Paprika, while the uninitiated will balk at its initially confusing narrative, but if you hang in there long enough, the beautiful sights and sounds will more than make up for any of the stories shortcomings (or your lack of comprehension, depending on who ask).