Who’s ready for a mind-bending anime freakout?
Don’t all shout at once.
“Paprika” is a Japanimated film from director Satoshi Kon. I’m not a big anime geek but I submit myself to the A-listers like “Spirited Away” and “Akira“. This got a lot of notice last year so I popped it into the queue.
Yowza. The plot concerns a device that records people’s dreams and uploads them directly to your computer. Which is way more convenient than CDs, if you ask me. As you might expect, the dream plot allows for some seriously freaky visuals, like this one.
And this one.
Trust me, it gets weirder.
The device falls into the wrong hands and the dreamworld begins to collide with the real world, if there is such a thing. A scientist straddles the real world, as herself, and the dream world as her avatar, the Paprika of the title. Things get squishy, in more ways than one. It goes off the rails a bit at the ending, but that’s pretty much the norm for this type of film (sci-fi and action, not necessarily anime). I forgive it.
The visuals, as noted, are wild and the sound design, particularly if you have 5.1, is terrific. If you’re into things like “The Matrix” (the first one, which actually had some philosophical content, not the other two, blam blam) or anything that might be enhanced by certain types of drugs, you may dig it.
October 9, 2008 at 8:34 pm |
Those stills are beautiful and intriguing. That description kind of terrifies me.
October 10, 2008 at 7:17 am |
I’m not an anime fan, but I LOVED “Spirited Away” so I might just have to put this on my list of movies to watch.
October 10, 2008 at 11:39 am |
If you liked Spirited Away, then also check out Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. Same director, and they all follow a lot of the same style. All enjoyable.
This movie makes me think of a game I just played called Dreamfall. It had a lot to do with a similar storyline, except it was a government conspiracy to put everyone under mind control. Pretty good story involved.
I must see these seemingly rabid butterflies.