Title: Mousou Dairinin (Japanese)
Director: Satoshi Kon
Character Design: Masahi Ando
Production : Madhouse Production
Visit Official Website
Genre
Psyche, suspense, horror (? a bit maybe...)
Synopsis (can't get more brief than this... quoted from www.animenewsnetwork.com )
A kid dubbed with the title "shounen bat" has been going around attacking people with bats. now two detectives are on the case to stop this kid from any more attacks... but they will find out soon enough, that this is much more than they can handle.
Director
alrite, let's get started. Paranoia agent is a TV anime series directed by the renowned director satoshi kon, who's credited for his ingenius movies such as 'perfect blue', 'millenium actress' and 'tokyo godfather'. Satoshi kon speaks the real hard truth in anime, not exaggerating, nor masking the thing we know so well as 'reality bites'.
Character Design
I wasn't aware of it until the name 'ando' caught my eye. Masahi Ando works for Ghibli as well. His style is, mmm, very realistic n comfortable to look at.
Infomation from www.animenewsnetwork.com
Madhouse Studio
www.madhouse.co.jp
---->Satoshi Kon
Tokyo Godfather is about three tramps (a girl who stabbed her own father when overtaken by rage, a transvestite who has a gentle heart and the dream to become a real woman ~_~, and a seemingly good-for-nothing guy who had a broken marriage). The unimaginable assembly of the threesome and their transient interaction with each other triggered by an abandoned baby bring us lots of surprises and warm reminders of how kindness still prevails even in the subzero city states that adopt us yet abandon us.
Camera zooms in. Big movie banner that says 'heaven's tears' and a huge crowd of people gathering on the floor, listening to priest's 'how God loves us' talk on CHristmas Eve.
Focus change. Top of the building, a girl pokes her head out of the safety bar and looks down on the dark crowd, then spits. Someone in the crowd who has been listening attentively jerks his head up as the spit hits him hard. But the girl already withdrew from his vision. All that is visible is the movie banner 'heaven's tears'. So it must be it. He wonders, eyes open wide, as the priest carries on with preaching.
Heaven's tears. In a cold hard city where people gather in search for love and truth.
My ass. Just a speck of spit. And streetcars buzz on.
That's Satoshi Kon you come to admire.
--->Paranoia Creeps in
What do u make out of the title? It's a psyche series, one that's full of deceits, illusions and hooks that set your mind on a frenzy search for the absolute truth which's somewhere far far away. I've only watched the first five episodes but from the rate of progress, the plot is getting more n more intangible as the no. of victims grow and so is the web of relations that pull these characters together.
Episode I Shounen Bat Has Arrived!!
Opening Theme
We see the main characters in the series laughing. Laughing laughing and laughing, as if seized by disease. THat's all they do, laugh.
No wonder it's called paranoia.
Noises, lots of noises. People shouting on mobile phones, cars and trucks horning away, congested subway trains rushing past. Graudually the noises mingle together until the cacophony is on the brink of exploading.
Then...
We see a senile patient scribbling strange characters on the ground of the hospital carpark. I don't understand Jap so I can only make out the last line 'blah blah = 510'
510 seems to be an omen, or an important clue.
In front of him, a commuter bus pulls to a hault. Through the window, we see a spectacled gir(Sagi Tsukiko). The old man gasps and looks alarmed.
It started out weird enough with a designer called Sagi Tsukiko who has her shot of fame when one of her designs becomes a fav. (if you ask me, japs they have sooo many funny little soft toys that look pitifully kawaii). Maromi is a gloomy looking girl who's taciturn and easily nervous. She always carries a soft toy with the name Dorubakon in her bag. She doesn't get along well with her collegues who are jealous of her talents and say harsh things behind her. And her all money-minded boss who thinks she could come up with money grossing designs overnight buggs her nonstop.
'With you magic!!'
'magic, magic, magic, i wish i have it...' mumbles Sagi as she walks home alone at night. An old lady who's picking through trash bags gives her creepy stares as Maromi walks past. There's something mysterious about the identity of this obasan. She's a tramp that camps around Maromi's apartment but disappears after the day of incidence. Alrite, so Sagi is scared and starts running as the street lights turn out one by one and dark shadows slowly devour the space and creeps in on her (paranoia!!) In the utter panic Maromi trips and falls, spilling the contents carried in her handbag. Scraps of designs are scattered all over the ground . She presses herself onto the ground and extendes her arm as far as possible in order to fetch a design that gets lodged beneath the car base and just as she straightens up, a shadowy figures looms out of nowhere and attacks her with a bag. The next morning, she's in hospital with two detectives in charge of the assault. One of them has a quick temper that simply explodes in front of witnesses who refuse to speak. The other is extremely patient and gentle. In the end, they gather that the assailant is a primary school kid with a baseball cap and attackes people with a crooked baseball bat. Back in her room, Sagi is scanning the msgs posted in her fan forum. One post which reads ' you're attacked by the shounen with the golden bat...' scares her and her pet toy Dorubankon slips off her lap as she shivers. The scary thing is not about the threatening post in the forum. It's the pet toy. Dorubankon speaks !! n moves!!! utter horror! I have no idea whether it's a ghost from Sagi's own paranoic imagination or plain fact.
An annoying freelancer who wants to write sensational stories out of the incidence traces Sagi down like a pervert dog. Yaks, he's so disgusting. All he thinks about is sex and money. One day when he is chasing after Sagi, the shounen bat appears and attacks him in the same way he does to Sagi.
Second Victim.
End of Episode I.
Tidbit of Episode I
The ringtone played as Sagi crosses the road and bumps into the annoying writer is exactly the same as that used in 'Beyond - Animatrix'. And it sounds horribly paranoia!
The trick about this anime series is, you stop believing in anything you see coz they could all be figments of imagination and the series is in totaly anacrhonistic chaos. Flashes of scenes that take place in different places and time and only give you an abstract and nonetheless eerie feeling of what indeed happens, and all those weird characters, existent or non-existent!!
to be c'td
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