Anime master delivers again
I’ve seen a lot of Japanese animation
– known to most as anime. My first taste of anime was not much
different than the classic American cartoons that are geared toward
children. My sister and I watched
”
Sailor Moon,
”
a story about an insipid blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager who
suddenly finds herself a super hero. I hate to admit I was in high
school when I first started watching it with my little sis and my
best friends.
Anime master delivers again
I’ve seen a lot of Japanese animation – known to most as anime. My first taste of anime was not much different than the classic American cartoons that are geared toward children. My sister and I watched “Sailor Moon,” a story about an insipid blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager who suddenly finds herself a super hero. I hate to admit I was in high school when I first started watching it with my little sis and my best friends. After I went away to college since it didn’t come on any of the stations in Claremont, my sister dutifully taped it for me day after day and mailed the VHS tapes to me for viewing a couple times a month. Eventually when Netflix became available, I was able to watch all 30+ episodes in order, in addition to countless movies.
The show was silly – each episode was really the same as the Sailor Scouts fight evil and win every time – but the goofy, wide-eyed girls and the squiggle lines coming off their faces to denote anger, drew me in none the less. And Serena’s love interest – Tuxedo Mask/Darien – was the most gorgeous cartoon I had ever seen with his black hair and green eyes.
Since then, my sister’s taste in anime has grown and so has mine. I’ve seen shows that are just as silly as “Sailor Moon,” such as “Love Hina,” which follows a dopey guy who can’t seem to get accepted to university and also has no control over the girls boarding in his home. But I’ve also seen plenty of shows that have a much darker side to them.
Many anime movies and series have a fatalistic tone to them – the earth has been destroyed and humans are building elsewhere – or some new technology has been devised that is likely to destroy the earth. For a culture that lived through the atom bomb, it’s no wonder the artists have a morbid view of the world.
One of the few anime films that touches directly on the war is “Grave of the Fireflies,” released in 1988. The film is about a young boy and his little sister during World War II after the bombing of Hiroshima.
Other films, such as “Akira” deal in sci-fi worlds where human nature is less than stellar. It is one of those films that still doesn’t quite make sense after multiple viewings.
Satoshi Kon’s latest film, “Paprika” falls somewhere in between. It is a bit confusing at times and some scenes are a bit like what I would imagine a really bad acid trip would be. But it has a story line and characters that are mostly well developed. The Japanese style of animation is understated compared to the nearly 3-D American feature animation and it works in that the viewer stays focused on the story rather than on the cool graphics.
Kon has several feature-length animations to his name, including “Perfect Blue” and “Tokyo Godfathers.” Those who are not into anime probably won’t appreciate his latest film, but those who are, will love it. It has all the best elements of anime – off the wall characters, runaway technology and an unexpected villain.
In “Paprika’s” futuristic world, an inventor named Tokita has worked with psychotherapists to develop a technology that allows the therapists to get inside the brains of patients and analyze their dreams first hand. One of the main characters is Paprika, a tan-skinned, red-head who serves as a guide through the dreams.
The movie starts abruptly – just a flash of the Sony Pictures Classic logo – and then we are off into the first dream. Paprika is helping a police detective named Konakawa to understand a recurring nightmare.
Soon it becomes clear that the therapist and inventor have bigger problems. Three DC-Minis have been stolen and anyone who has them can manipulate the dreams of others – destroying their personality or causing them to do harm to themselves.
As the search begins, several co-workers nearly leap to their death as they relive the dream of a manic patient who was obsessed with a parade of refrigerators, dolls and other toys. It’s a dream – it really doesn’t have to make sense.
The fear with the DC-Mini is that it will start working when people are awake and that people won’t even need to be connected to the device anymore for their dreams to be manipulated.
It is clear from several comments early on in the movie that the screenwriters really don’t know much about dreams. Paprika says movies during REM sleep are like feature-length films – but most sleep researchers agree that we aren’t dreaming during REM sleep. In a film where there exists a device that can manipulate dreams, I guess I can let it go.
But dreams are one of those things that are not well understood. In the movie, they are the realm of regret, unrealized desires and mystery. And that’s not too far from the truth. Sometimes they seem to come out of real life, as did a recent dream I had about having a conversation with a friend about the future of our relationship. But more often than not, they seem to come out of nowhere, as a dream I had this weekend about polar bears in my backyard in which my biggest concern was how to call animal control on a Sunday.
Luckily, for us, there is no one to creep our dreams with technology as in this film. After all, I wouldn’t want someone to make something of those polar bears. I’ll keep my dreams to myself, but for anyone willing to read the subtitles, “Paprika” is still playing in select theaters throughout the greater Bay Area.
