xoxoxo e: Satoshi Kon

Showing posts with label Satoshi Kon. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

paprika 's dream world

Vintage has recently re-released Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993's mind-bending novel Paprika. Set at Japan's Institute for Psychiatric Research, two brilliant scientists, psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba and inventor Kōsaku Tokita are developing a tool they have dubbed the "DC mini" which can allow psychiatrists to enter a patient's dreams, and which they hope to use to cure a variety of psychic aliments, from anxiety to acute schizophrenia.

In order to work as a "dream detective," which is considered illegal, Atsuko has created an alter ego called Paprika, to more easily invade, and in many cases, inspire dreams. Unfortunately for Paprika her secret identity is no longer very secret, and someone has stolen the DC minis and has started using them to drive everyone at the Institute insane. The differences between the world of dreams and the real world is becoming more and more difficult to determine, and with increasingly deadly results.

Although it has an initially interesting concept, Paprika is a very slow read, with at times some very plodding prose. The inter-office politics at the Institute, and the absurd notion of the main characters developing such an unstable device as a way of vying for a Nobel Prize, bogs down the initially clever sci-fi premise. The dreamscapes that Paprika and her friends explore include some interesting imagery, but readers will be far more rewarded by Satoshi Kon's wonderful 2006 anime adaptation of the novel.

Satoshi Kon's Paprika was chock-full of amazing images

Although Atsuko/Paprika may be the heroine, and a potential Nobel prize winner for her lethal co-invention (exactly who is reviewing these inventions, by the way?) she is far from a feminist or any kind of female role model. The two-dimensional "dream doctor" falls in love with all of her (older) male patients and is frequently the (willing) recipient of their rape fantasies. Rape and virtual sex seem to be the core of her diagnostic technique. A lot of the attitudes about sex - gay or straight - leave a bad taste for the reader. It is unclear if the author, Yasutaka Tsutsui (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, What the Maid Saw: Eight Psychic Tales), who is much revered in Japan, intended his characters to be misogynistic, homophobic, or both. Maybe a poor translation has eliminated a sense of satire in regard to the sexual politics of the novel, but it seems not.

Most of the characters, except for one of Paprika's patients and champions, Deputy Chief Commissioner of Police Konakawa, are downright unpleasant. Innocent people are mauled and destroyed left and right when the dream world starts to take over the real world, but with no real world consequences. Paprika and her friends don't seem to have any regrets about the public impact of their deadly invention. The ever-growing love-addled male Paprika-posse just keeps taking her out to eat after each escalating disaster, to public places where her enemies can easily get to her.

The late Satoshi Kon created a brilliant anime film based on Paprika in 2007. Many of the characters were condensed, and most of the boring office-related dialogue was excised. This book can best be viewed as an interesting inspiration for a superior work of art.

Originally published on Blogcritics: Book Review: ‘Paprika’ by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Monday, November 08, 2010

a dash of paprika

I recently watched two movies I've been wanting to see for a while, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by the great Hayao Miyazaki and Paprika, by Satoshi Kon. I have been a huge fan of Miyazaki for ages, but only recently discovered Kon, unfortunately coinciding with his recent death from cancer.

Both movies feature strong female heroines, something that is quite common in Japanese animation, anime. Why is it so easy for audiences to accept a strong female hero, who is often still quite feminine when she is an animation, but not so easy when she is flesh and blood? We seem to want our human heroines to be larger than life and to be able to kick butt and take names just like, well, men. Now don't get me wrong, I love Angelina Jolie in Wanted (although calling her a heroine in that movie is stretching it a bit— maybe female lead is more accurate), but part of the fun of being a girl is getting to dress up all purty, so it's fun to see that too. Buffy Summers could pull it off.

Nausicaä, who also happens to be a princess, but blessedly unlike the typical Disney concept of the same, is smart, resourceful, compassionate— everything a true leader should be. She is willing to sacrifice herself to save the world, both flora and fauna. The drawing, as usual with Miyazaki, is just stunning. The hues of the blue sky and dry sands that Nausicaä glides over are fantastic. The unusual landscapes are somehow like nothing you've ever seen before and real at the same time. Miyazaki manages to work in an environmental theme as well. And even though the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, my daughter was as thrilled as I. The Ohmu, insect-like creatures which are both threatened and threatening, could have easily just become monsters, but somehow Miyazaki gets us to care for them and their survival as much as the young princess.

Paprika, an adults-only anime, was just as wonderful, yet wildly different than Nausicaä. The eponymous heroine, who may be real or a dream, guides Kon's surreal tale. Part science fiction, part detective story, all fantasy, Paprika takes us on a strange trip through people's dreams and mind control. It splices together ideas about filmmaking, existence, and true love. Just when you think that things are getting too fantastic, Kon either adds or strips away another layer, sometimes simultaneously, to take you a little further down the rabbit hole. His animation is a wonderful collage of standard anime, realistic drawing, and photorealistic images. As dizzyingly as things moved, there were some sequences that will stay with me—Paprika pinned like a butterfly to a table, a crazy parade with good luck kitties and frogs, a man running down a hallway that melts around him.

When Paprika was over I tried to remove the disk from the DVD player, but instead of coming out, it just seemed to go deeper and deeper into the device. I slipped my hand into the slot where the disc tray is, but neither the tray nor the disc would budge. Suddenly I felt like I was in the movie Videodrome, which had flitted across my mind like one of Kon's blue butterflies while I was watching Paprika. I can't say I am a huge fan of that particular Cronenberg film. In fact one viewing many years ago was more than enough. But I can say that some of it's imagery—weird, even gross, was indelible. Like Paprika, not easily forgotten.

I finally had to get a screwdriver and loosen the top of the device to extract the disc, in case you wondered. But that's too real-world practical a solution and not interesting. I probably should have left things in the realm of dreams.

Saturday, September 04, 2010

now excuse me, I have to go.

First published on Associated Content . . .

Blogography pointed me towards one of the most beautiful farewell letters I have ever read. Japanese anime director Satoshi Kon recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. He left a moving message to his family and fans. After losing my beloved cousin Ann to ovarian cancer last May, so many of his words are especially poignant. But his words I think are also helping me deal with Ann's death.

I have been holding on to some hurt and disappointment at feeling held at arm's length in her final days and hours. My daughter and I shared so much of our daily lives with her that it struck an odd note to not be there at the end. I know these times are difficult for everyone, and I've been struggling with letting go of Ann and my own sense of letdown, but I never really felt how it must have felt for her until reading Satoshi Kon's apology to his friends and parents.

There are so many people that I want to see at least once (well there are some I don't want to see too), but if I see them I'm afraid that that the thought that "I can never see this person again" will take me over, and that I wouldn't be able to greet death gracefully . . . The more people wanted to see me, the harder it was for me to see them. What irony . . . I wanted most of the people I knew to remember me as the Satoshi that was full of life.

He seemed to have clarity to the last, and desired nothing more than to go home to die. I know from Ann's mom and brothers that she felt the same. I know that I would, too.

I just wanted to go home to my own house. The house where I live.

He seemed to get a brief respite from death and he used it wisely. My cousin had a (too brief for us) remission, but when the cancer came back it was clear it meant business. She once expressed to me that maybe she should have taken a trip or used that sixteen cancer-free months in a better way, but I assured her that she spent her time in the best way possible, living her life with the people she loved.

Afterwards, when I could think of nothing else but death, I thought that I did indeed die once then. In the back of my mind, the world "reborn" wavered several times . . . Now that my life-force had been restarted, I couldn't waste my time. I told myself that I'd been given an extra life, and that I had to spend it carefully.

I find it beautiful and fascinating that he may have indeed died the first time and that the remission was a rebirth. I know Ann would have loved that poetic idea as well.

It's so disrespectful to die before one's parents . . . I've felt as though I've lived more intensively than other people, and I think that my parents understood what was in my heart.

How hard to leave those you love behind and how hard for all of them to let you go. But Satoshi Kon seems to have left this world, like Ann, very gracefully. I am sorry for any suffering that they had to endure. But I am forever grateful to have had Ann as a part of my life and my daughter's life, and to this stranger, this artist, for putting into words what also must have been in her heart.
Thank you, Satoshi Kon for helping me to take a further step on the road to acceptance. Domo arigato.