Title: Paranoia Agent aka Mousou Dairinin
Genre: mystery, psychological horror, satire, thriller
Original Novel: Satoshi Kon, Yuichi Umezu
Director: Satoshi Kon
Studio: Madhouse
Format: 13 episodes
Dates: February 2, 2004 – May 18, 2004
Genre: mystery, psychological horror, satire, thriller
Original Novel: Satoshi Kon, Yuichi Umezu
Director: Satoshi Kon
Studio: Madhouse
Format: 13 episodes
Dates: February 2, 2004 – May 18, 2004
A hit-and-run assailant, known as Shounen Bat, is on the loose attacking people with his golden bat. He gets everyone's attention including 2 investigators who will stop at nothing until they capture this criminal. Eventually, they find out that there is much more mystery to this case than they thought.
Just as expected, Satoshi Kon gives us another one of his psychological mysteries in Paranoia Agent. The art and story greatly resembles his work in Perfect Blue. I haven't seen Paprika and Millennium Actress yet, but it seems to follow the same tale of odd and sometimes disturbing circumstances. I understand that it's just proper for the art to be consistent with the movies mentioned but I don't like how dull and gloomy they made the show. This made it hard to watch so it took me a while to finish it.
Every episode presented different stories, each with different characters who were connected in some way. All of them were victims of Shounen Bat. I wasn't able to follow at first and there were moments in the earlier episodes that I found myself asking, "What the heck's happening again?" I was almost getting tired of hearing shounen batto this, shounen batto that... But when I was halfway through, the stories grew more intriguing and I'd finally gotten the hang of the weirdness of the show.
I'm giving it a 6.5/10. Not that bad after all.
Every episode presented different stories, each with different characters who were connected in some way. All of them were victims of Shounen Bat. I wasn't able to follow at first and there were moments in the earlier episodes that I found myself asking, "What the heck's happening again?" I was almost getting tired of hearing shounen batto this, shounen batto that... But when I was halfway through, the stories grew more intriguing and I'd finally gotten the hang of the weirdness of the show.
I'm giving it a 6.5/10. Not that bad after all.