2004, d. Satoshi Kon - Crunchyroll (13 episodes)
Let's start with the premise [spoilers ahoy]: An animation character designer - the meek, demure Tsukiko Sagi -- is under immense pressure to come up with a new hit character as her current creation -- the floopy, sleepy-eyed dog named Maromi -- is increasing in popularity at a rapid clip. On her way home after yet another unsuccessful day she is attacked by a teen wielding a baseball cap and golden rollerblades. She illustrates her attacker and a pair of detectives, Ikari and Maniwa have differing takes on the incident. Ikari is suspicious of Tsukiko while Maniwa believes her. Word of this attack by Shonen Bat (aka Li'l Slugger) hits the news and becomes a sensation.
This initial set-up is actually quite fascinating from a current day lens, especially the ACAB view where Ikari looks at Tsukiko more as a suspect than a victim. Tsukiko is our guide through the first episode, and we do get a strong sense of the world she lives in, one in which she is judged harshly by others for her shy mannerisms, and she constantly falls victim to passive aggressive abuse. But at the same time, the way the animation is directed, it does call into question the truth of the events Tsukiko recalls. Plus, Kon draws upon the fact that Tsukiko is a character designer and her formation of the description of Shonen Bat is almost a procedural how-to on character creation.
The next episode follows Yuuichi, the most popular kid in school, a kid who happens to wear a baseball cap and wear golden rollerblades. Yuuichi is an ambitious kid, running for class president, but he's facing the new kid in school, a super-congenial, friendly outsider whose niceness is genuine in a way that's not performative like Yuuichi's is. When Yuuichi's popularity nosedives because a rumour starts spreading he's Li'l Slugger, he gets angry, paranoid and suspicious that it's the new kid who's sabotaging his popularity. He begins wishing the new kid would get attacked by Li'l Slugger, which is exactly what happens, only it further points the finger to Yuuichi being Li'l Slugger...until he himself is attacked.
The third episode follows a woman with dissociative identity disorder as she negotiates one life as a sex worker and another as a bride-to-be, before one personality is attacked. The fourth episode finds a low-level police officer who has taken bribes to elevate his family, only to be pulled further down into the world of crime. Just as we think we're getting a sense of how these stories will go...people dealing with extreme stress get attacked by Li'l Slugger, this episode upends it with this corrupt cop capturing Shonen Bat.
The next episode finds Ikari and Maniwa interrogating the kid, Makoto, who is lost in a video game world where he believes he is a holy warrior fighting monsters. Ikari gets increasingly more irate with Makoto and his gobbledygook, where the younger Maniwa seems to follow along with the kids allegory. This episode takes the detectives inside the young man's delirium using a lot of traditional anime tropes, but constantly broken by Ikari's refusal to go along for the ride.
While Makoto is in custody another young woman is attacked, a runaway teen, proving that either there's a copycat, or Makoto is the copycat. The detectives begin their hunt for suspects based on certain connective threads between the various victims, but when Makoto winds up dead in his cell and Li'l Slugger just disappears into the shadows, both detectives are relieved of their duties. Ikari later struggles to make ends meet for his ailing wife's fare, while Maniwa is lost in Makoto's holy warrior fantasy.
A couple diversionary episodes, one is a dark satire in which three people from a suicide chat forum meet up to kill themselves together, only for one of them to be an excitable perky pre-teen girl. The two older men make it their mission to ensure this child doesn't meet such an unfortunate fate, and without ever conceding their mission, manage to find a new lease on life. It's an absurd and uncomfortable and funny episode that stands on its own, utterly disconnected from the rest of the series (I don't even remember where the Shonen Bat connection comes in) that is absolutely my favourite episode, containing much the same energy as Tokyo Godfathers.
Another episode find the gossip circle of an apartment complex drowning on and on about stories of Shonen Bat that they've heard (or, just as likely, are making up in their attempts at one-upsmanship). A new younger resident of the complex, tries to join in, and despite her stories being no less absurd than the others, is constantly mocked for her stories. The ending twist is very dark... funny, but dark.
Very early in the series what is discussed as the connective threads between victims is everyone who is attacked by Li'l Slugger is under a great deal of undo stress or experiencing high levels of anxiety. The question becomes is this bat boy real or a subject of mass delusion?
While there are a lot of characters introduced throughout the series, as nearly each episode has some stand-alone facet, there are also a lot of connective tissues. In many ways these connections feel forced (in no small part because most of these ideas came out as independent thoughts in Kon's notebooks, that he then strung together into a mostly cohesive narrative) but in both the way they do and don't connect speaks to the larger idea of social anxiety, of groupthink.
I was exposed to the concept of a tulpa after reviewing the film The Empty Man, basically a thought being come to life. That is exactly what Li'l Slugger is in this series. Where there are many misdirects (especially with Makoto), in thinking that there's a real Shonen Bat or that maybe it's Tsukiko all along, it's never that simple. It starts with Tsukiko, we learn, but ideas have a tendency of spreading, some that capture people's imaginations in positive ways, like Maromi the dog, but some that capture peoples worst impulse. And when someone is in a dark space, wishing for escape, even in the form of a malicious assault, that thought can manifest. And when so many people are in a place of despair, that tulpa can become enormous and dangerous.
Kon was clearly an ideas guy, and I think with Paranoia Agent being a dumping ground, in a way, for his own disparate ideas, it's almost a logical leap into the conceit of an idea taking on life of its own. Tokyo's population's fascination with Li'l Slugger is mirrored by their obsession with Maromi, who becomes an equally outsized phenomenon that starts to impact society in really insidious ways. In this Kon examines consumerism as a villain, and throughout he's very critical of the animation industry he works in and the pressures it puts upon everyone in the business (so many of the victims in this series are connected to animation). There's definitely an art vs. mass appeal theme unpinned here to.
But both the origin and culminating point of the series in in repressed emotions, be they guilt, grief, resentment, or any other strong feeling that is pushed deep down only for it to spill out of you in other ways. It's a cautionary tale about avoiding or denying one's feelings and not adequatly processing big events in our lives, both as individuals and as a collective.
It is a lot to take in, and it many times triggered my repulsive reflex towards anime, but I persevered and am still unsure of the exact reward. Is this something I enjoyed, or was it just a part of my Kon-watching exercise? Will this be something I go back to, to try and understand better? Will I think about it any further once I finish writing this sentence?
Heh. You hit publish as I was finishing off my latest post.
ReplyDeleteI have to revisit Kon, specifically Paprika and Paranoia Agent, primarily because I recall loving them SO much but honestly, I don't recall them specifically. I am going to read your posts, watch them, and then comment via own posts.