Paranoia Agent.

I got a huge back log of stuff I want to post about, but can't take the time to actually write... I wanted to write about this in april.
I always have something better to do before (very important stuff like messing around on Facebook (^_^; )... I mean it's not easy to write so I got to be in the right frame of mind...
Anyway. Enough of that diva thing.

It took me nearly 2 years for me to watch Paranoia Agent. 2 years.
I was scared. I knew it would be tough. Its director, Satoshi Kon made Perfect Blue among other great things and his stuff has the tendency to be quite twisted. It's good, but you have to be... In the right frame of mind!!!!

So I finally found the occasion and dived in. And surprisingly, it wasn't that hard after all. :)

The term "masterpiece" has been so overused lately that it almost has lost its meaning. Yet, seeing such work, it genuinley springs to mind, reminding you of what it truly defines...

If you've seen Perfect Blue, you'll recognise the atmosphere straightaway. This sort of strange (paranoiac!) feeling that things are not as normal as they should be...
It actually starts right at the opening credit, as you see each of the main charaters (that at first you don't know) laughing out loud in a place that could actually a "perfect" place for a suicide (at the top of a building, in a burnt house, under water...)...
It's a series that is always trying a balancing act, keeping you guessing if the story that unfolds is taking place in the "real" world or a fantasy one.

From episode to episode, it carefully presents unrelated characters that yet all have one thing in common (on top of being all a bit twisted) and all get attacked by this boy with a baseball bat... Is he real? Is he a ghost? Or would he be a collective hallucination?
Yet, as the mystery gets thicker and the boy becomes "legend" (more and more people are attacked), the series starts exploring some side roads and the actual aim becomes quite clear: it's a sort of snapshot of Japanese society (and by extension ours).
It reflects and exposes our fear and insecurities in today's environment.

And of course it's not pretty, although it doesn't give into the bleak and always treats its subject with humour.
Still it's quite frontal and very provocative. See the episode "Happy Family Planning" which actually upset me quite deeply, but in a good, very stimulating way... Again you get the balancing act... You never really know if you laugh that you're not going to cry next second or vice-versa.

Seeing such an ambitious project unfold and succeed is a marvel. It's almost like you know what it's tryng to do, yet you get tricked anyway. Incredible.

And then there's the ending. As I thought I got it before the end, it still manages to steer into another direction and give a conclusion that manages to tie everyting up (including the society snapshot) but also push the concept beyond what I expected.
It even ties in the images of the opening and ending credits, which actually hold so many information about the story (that you actually discover bit by bit as you watch the episodes, if you watch the credits each time, that is... And you should!) that it made my head spin.

And yet I left this with the satisfying feeling that I had understood. Of course the ending is open and mysterious, yet I gobally got a good idea of what it was about.

That's maybe the most amazing feat of it all: to take this story, this incredibly ambitious concept and present it so at the end, people have understood!
When you think about it, it's so easy to do something confusing... A lot of movies and series try to put some confusing elements to actually prevent you from understanding something that is actually often quite simplistic.
But to make something complex and convoluted so naturally understandable, without looking down on the audience (because nothing is said, you still have to work it out yourself) that's something that requires a craft in storytelling that is truly exceptionnal.

Technically also, it's stunning. A lot of animation styles are used, always with a view to describe a character's point of view / fantasy. There are even points where at first I thought that there were some sort of defects but actually it turned out to be intended, as it was underlying something I hadn't understood at that stage...

All that defines a masterpiece...