Paranoia Agent, or, how animation crosses the line into ?????

Googling didn't come up with anything. I know of an animated series (anime) called Paranoia Agent, but that only has one season (13 episodes). I have the DVDs of that and will one day watch it. It's a classic, and definitely made for adults. I tend to like Satoshi Kon's work. I tend to think of him as the David Lynch of anime.

Paranoia Agent is probably my favorite work by Satoshi Kon, who is known for his surreal psychological drama. I found his other works vaguely letdown-ish, but I remember liking PA quite a lot. I saw it a looooong time ago, so I don't recall all the details but the 'solution' to the central puzzle is heartbreaking, IIRC.

Dawnstorm said:

Googling didn't come up with anything. I know of an animated series (anime) called Paranoia Agent, but that only has one season (13 episodes). I have the DVDs of that and will one day watch it. It's a classic, and definitely made for adults. I tend to like Satoshi Kon's work. I tend to think of him as the David Lynch of anime.

Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with Paranoia Agent, but I certainly know this name. I saw his Tokyo Godfathers earlier this year and was absolutely blown away. Maeze, if you're enjoying this trek into adult animation, I highly recommend Tokyo Godfathers. It's a single movie instead of a series. I haven't seen it, but I've heard good things about his Paprika too.

I can also recommend looking into Crunchyroll (a streaming website) to watch more because Jesus Christ, anime will run you dry with their sparse DVDs, as you've found. When I was younger and dumber, I was spending $30 for a VHS with two or three episodes of a show on it.

I've seen it. It's hard to believe that all this messed started because...

The protagonist lied about how her dog died.

MaeZe said:

So you have it but you haven't watched it?

Click to expand...

That's it. I have many anime on DVD I haven't seen yet (Planetes - Rubble removal in sapce; Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 - Earthquake aftermath... and so on). I tend to watch anime online, but when they release something in my region I'm interested in I buy the disks immediately, before they disappear. And then I'm too lazy to actually unwrap them and move the disks, but I also don't watch them online, because I own them. It's silly, really.

I bought Paranoia Agent on the show's reputation and on the strength of my previous experience with the director. So I basically can't say much about the show in question, but I'm confident I'll like it once I get around to it. (The last one of my DVDs I watched was Seirei no Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit. I had that one for three years, and I was every bit as good as I thought it would be.)

I love both the opening and ending songs.

MaeZe said:

Has anyone else seen these animated stories? They're for adults, but not because of any sex or porn, but the genre is not a kid's cartoon.

Click to expand...

This makes me happy to see. I wish my mother could open her mind enough to realize that animated does not necessarily mean "for children."

If I mention to her that I enjoyed this or that anime series (I generally avoid the subject, but sometimes it come up), she inevitably looks at me with pity, like I'm broken in some way, and says something like, "You always did like cartoons. I just don't understand it... but I accept it."

Ugh. The condescension... she never comes straight out and says it, but she's made it exceedingly clear over the years that she views my ongoing enjoyment of animation as some kind of mental or personality flaw. I've given up trying to explain that there are all kinds of animation, and that dismissing it all as kiddie stuff is as foolish and short-sighted as a young person dismissing all black and white film as boring and stuffy (it has to be stuffy, because it's old, right)?

MaeZe said:

Episode 4 got very much darker.

Click to expand...

Wait until you get "Family Planning".

Without divulging any spoilers, the ending ultimately disappointed me. Everything up to it was incredibly gripping and held my attention but by the end of the last episode, I wanted to scream and throw things at the TV. I thought it was a cheap cop-out.

BenPanced said:

Without divulging any spoilers, the ending ultimately disappointed me. Everything up to it was incredibly gripping and held my attention but by the end of the last episode, I wanted to scream and throw things at the TV. I thought it was a cheap cop-out.

Click to expand...

Can you believe that it went down the way that it did?

MaeZe said:

It wouldn't be the first mystery that started out strong then went nowhere. Blindspot, Twin Peaks and Lost all come to mind for me.

Other series end up just going on and on with a series of events but little story, like Vampire Diaries.

Click to expand...

I couldn't make it past the first episode of Twin Peaks​.

MaeZe said:

It amazes me there is this world of adult animation, something that many in the US don't recognize, or I'm just old. I'm glad my son has turned me on to this broader horizon.

Click to expand...

I take it you might not have heard of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network? It's pretty much all cartoons/anime for adult audiences (granted, a lot of anime that they play on Sunday mornings in Japan for kids might be considered mature content over here). Adult Swim used to broadcast Paranoia Agent, but that was about 10 years ago. PA only ever had one season, IIRC, and ended back in the mid-2000s.

If you're interested in checking out some other anime with similar themes, you can stream many of them for free (with commercials) on www.crunchyroll.com. Streaming without commercials is $7/month. You can stream on your computer or download the app onto your phone, PS4, Xbox One, iPad, some smart-TVs, etc. for easier viewing.

Crunchyroll will help you catch up.

I watched it on Go Go Anime.