
	Directed by Satoshi Kon Studio Madhouse Original Run February 2, 2004 - May 18, 2004 Number of Episodes 13
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Paranoia Agent

At what was apparently the world premiere of his outstanding new film Tokyo Godfathers, a beaming Satoshi Kon announced that he was already hard at work on another new film that, amazingly, he hoped to have finished by next year. In terms of two-hour-ish theatrical releases, we didn’t see any new “films” from him until last autumn, when his Paprika began to make its runs around various international film festivals (I haven’t had the pleasure yet). However, he did manage to crank out another one of his special sausages in 2004, the miniseries Paranoia Agent. It’s a real crime that something not so easily booked into a preordained slot couldn’t be seen on an enormous, big-screen canvas with other recent films, but I digress…

I have to be cautious with this one. I knew nothing about Paranoia Agent when I first happened across it, other than the fact that Satoshi Kon was the man-in-charge…so even the very first twenty minute episode was chock full of more surprises than any twenty feature films. I’d want (and assume) people to go for the purest response to this work as they possibly could: so those of you who’ve managed to get by to this point in your life knowing nothing whatever about Paranoia Agent, don’t read another sentence. Just buy and watch the damn thing before even the slightest detail is inadvertently let slip to you.

But I know some people need at least a tiny amount of basic information (which I’m still loath to give up), so I’ll tread as carefully as I can, and stick only to clichés. There is a mysterious assailant roaming the streets at night and attacking people randomly. In what at first looks like it might be no more than your average

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episode of Law and Order, the police are convinced that there is a method to the mystery man’s actions, and struggle to piece together the puzzle. Perhaps it would be okay to tentatively suggest that each new episode revolves around a different “sighting” of the attacker in a different part of town, and how it provides new information for the officers’ criminal investigation.

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Why should you watch something so tired and familiar? Hmmm…Let’s see. Because Satoshi Kon’s ability to shift his focus effortlessly from one point to another is nothing short of astonishing, for one thing. It’s a nearly impossible task to lay down the track – in any kind of story, in any medium (book, film, or game) – for a “certain kind” of story, then later decide to push off in a different direction with the same set-up. It seems like Satoshi Kon does it at least half a dozen times here…and without breaking stride. Yikes… Furthermore, I for one desperately need to see the stories of real people: the homeless people who live on the streets, the people who are left mopping up other people’s splooge at the end of the day, the seemingly well-adjusted people who have to put on a façade to go outside and live in the world. Kon apparently has the same desire.

In terms of individual episodes, my favorites were “Happy Family Planning”, “The Holy Warrior” (well, obviously…), and “The Golden Shoes”, but frankly, they’re virtually all great…and with thirteen episodes to screw up, there’s hardly a single loser in this bunch. But that single remains; I for one believe “MHz” was unnecessary, and the information therein could easily have been spread out over the remaining twelve episodes…but even that episode isn’t bad at all, just a waste of time and space (one of the episodes is a disturbingly accurate representation of my last job…).

Previously, in films like Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers, I sometimes worried that the way Kon chose to visualize a character’s inner psychosis too often bordered callously on cheap yuks and an easy laugh. No more. Sliding from reality into fantasy and back again is effortless, and only serves to heighten an individual’s emotional drama – which is not to suggest that Kon’s visions are without humor. This is easily one of the most dead-on modern satires I’ve ever seen, not merely at the level of person-to-person interaction, but also in its keen understanding of the way we absorb assorted pre-programmed, corporate commercial junk into our systems, which in turn shapes both the way we perceive the world, and the way we choose to react to it. And for all these “flights-of-fancy” clogging up its system, Paranoia Agent never becomes less than a painfully accurate representation of various people pushed to their final limit.

What comes out of this work more than anything else – the powerful psychological drama, the striking sense of humor, the powerful visual command of the medium, the constant shifting of focus from one thing to another, the leaps between fantasy and reality, the effortless blend of genre and day-to-day satire, the wonderful abstract imagery – is the overwhelming sense of social horror. The world is spinning out of control, with normal people cast adrift in a world that doesn’t care for or about them, forced to make excuses for themselves simply because they have to keep pace with the ball that someone else started rolling. In the terrifying years ahead of us, as the bombs drop all around us and all life on our planet faces extinction, the last thing we’ll hear will be the man in charge screaming, “It’s not my fault!”

One of the best films of the last several years may not have made it into theaters, but that’s no excuse for you to skip it. Whatever your interest in this program is, whatever your current situation happens to be at the moment, no matter how stable and well-adjusted you may think you are…don’t miss this one.

Brendan Lynch

April 23, 2007


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