In that vein, it is safe to say that of the three Satoshi Kon movies I've seen, Paprika is my least favorite. I have tremendous respect for the mission that he has undertaken, to show that anime doesn't have to be all tentacle-porn and giant robots. Perfect Blue was a pretty troubling look at what women must pierce through in society to be successful and the toll that misogynist attitudes take on institutions like film. It could be seen as a critique of the way anime and Japanese society has handled women's issues, but it also resonates in Western cultures. Tokyo Godfathers was even more nuanced and character-driven with commentary around societal ills and the extent to which homeless folks are too easily classified as lazy, possibly dangerous, and worthless. The characters in Tokyo Godfathers fall well outside the usual short-list of anime tropes and the story plays out in a much more coherent fashion than Perfect Blue. The pacing and story of Tokyo Godfathers was also superior.
Paprika has its source material in a series of books by Yasutaka Tsutsui. The translation may be pure and account for the surreal quality of the movie, since many of the modern Japanese novels I've read take a similar approach. For an audience that connects with the author or is more tolerant, Paprika is a great ride with incredible animation. The lighting, camera focus, and mingling of CGI with hand-drawn elements is as perfect as I've ever seen. What is more impressive is how the many dream settings of Paprika, with their anything-goes imagery a la The Matrix, are depicted without breaking the thread of realism and credibility. The comparison would be to recent big-budget Hollywood shows that realistically depict completely unrealistic events. All this being said, there isn't much that is coherent in Paprika for audiences unfamiliar with Tsutsui's books or audiences that are expecting anything like Kon's previous movie. Instead, we have mostly free-association depicting a woman capable of entering the dream-world of her patients to perform psychotherapy. The woman is cool, the dream-world is amazing to watch, and there is some undercurrent of danger from what appears to be terrorist elements. It turns out that terrorism isn't really the issue at all, which felt like a betrayal and a feeble attempt to connect Paprika with current events for the sake of a blurb on the back of the box. Nothing is more clear at the end of the film than the beginning and the part in between feels like a very long 90 minutes.
Extras include interviews with the cast, Director and Tsutsui. Focus on how the film's effects were brought into being is particularly interesting and help make Paprika worth a second viewing. As might be expected, the crew's slavish attention to detail in all aspects of design and direction pretty much boggle the mind. Understanding the story and the meaning behind some of the imagery is helpful and removes some of that "WTF" feeling. In the end, I was disappointed that Paprika failed to be the worthy successor to Tokyo Godfathers. It felt more like Perfect Blue-redux than anything else. Anime fans can justify a rental or purchase if only to see the high quality of the animation. General audiences will have to wait for the next Satoshi Kon film to hopefully see a grand masterpiece with a perfect trifecta of story, character, and technological achievement.
