We’ve talked about Satoshi Kon before, but here we have perhaps his most famous and influential piece—one that takes his trademarks, like actual Japanese-looking characters in anime, to very in depth psychological takes. Compared to Perfect Blue, this one fully embraces the surreal and the chaotic, but the question is, does Paprika hold up 20 years later?
Our lead is Dr. Chiba, voiced by Megumi Hayashibara, in a near future where a little gizmo has been created to bridge the gap with reality and dreams—the precise logistics aren’t super explained and aren’t really that important. While someone moonlights as a fey therapist in the dreamworld under the alter ego of a young woman called Paprika, someone else seems to be driving others to madness into a demented parade. So, alongside the somewhat socially stunted developer of the machine and a grizzled detective, it’s down to them to uncover the mystery behind it all.
You have be wondering ‘huh, this kind of sounds like Nolan’s Inception’. And you know, you wouldn’t be the only one. The starting premise is certainly very close, though in theme and plot the films diverge into their own separate takes—but let’s just say there’s large-scale urban reality-bending in both. You make the call!
Well, there’s more—both have the ambiguity before long of what’s real and what’s a dream, with the line much more blurred this time around. However, Kon embraces everything that can come from dream logic much more—where space and time don’t really mean much, and where physical reality can be what the subconscious wills. Theme parks lead to oblivion, one can meld Journey of the West with Tokyo, all that. And, of course, there’s some creativity with music—there’s the discordant and disturbing parade soundtrack that’ll still never leave your head.
More importantly, there is the character inspections anchoring all this, as we peel back the pasts and psyches of most of our heroes, and this is is where the film as its most interesting. After all, dreams are were a lot of unsaid anxieties and traumas can come to rise up, right? That’s something it does run with for a lot of the proceedings.
That being said, where things do stumble for me is nearer the end where this is interrupted for a bad guy literally going ‘mwahahaha’ and spouting somewhat standard anime villain cliches. Had perhaps this been replaced with some collective neurosis, maybe, it would’ve been more interesting and perhaps fit the themes set up better. There’s also a fairly last minute romance that comes out of nowhere which, yeah, could’ve been set up just a bit more.
Still, that certainly leaves Paprika a memorable trip, even if I prefer Perfect Blue a little more. If nothing else, the lavish visuals do make it something actually worth watching on a big screen if you can. As Kon’s final film before his untimely passing, it is one that does leave on a suitable coda for all his still pretty distinct style…
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