Paranoia Agent #3: Serial Psychosis Pioneer 75 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 03/08/2005 Reviewed: 04/05/2005

Back To P Listings

After two weeks of crappy updates and non-updates I apparently am back in the saddle. You can thank some of my industry for putting in a movie (this) I absolutely loathed on Sunday and the rest on the magnanimous shoulders of the one referred to in legend as Le Joel. I had abandoned him to the wolves last Monday, during our appointed 24 hour, to hang out with what the Spaniards are calling "Los Bitches Caliente". But the man-mountain, in his heart of hearts, saw fit to forgive me. Joel gave me a call this past Saturday and suggested the type of excursion that I have not known for some time. After a brief stopover at our local Subway, where we tried to defraud them out of delicious chicken sandwiches, we moved quickly to other such wonders as our local Best Buy and a game store where Joel picked up the exquisite Mega Man Anniversary Collection. The only sexualization I was getting that night was from the sweet, sweet overtures of Dr. Wily's Castle. At Best Buy, and I hope this is no surprise to you, I decided that I'd take the plunge and acquire the second to last volume of the show that has been treating me so well that I'm surprised it's not the one giving me rubdowns in the back room when nobody else is looking.

I suppose there's the possibility that it has been giving me these rubdowns and I'm just too shy to tell you. If you find that thought leaves a bad taste in your mouth then it's probably a good thing that we have so much to talk about! We get no breaks in these scant three episodes and, just like I like it, they waste no time with silly things like continuity. Instead it's more of those saucy little vixens that the thinking man knows as "vignettes". Delicious stories abound in the seventy five minutes we'll dwell in this land of imagination. An almost hilariously ill fated suicide cult trips and stumbles its way through various methods of ending their assorted lives. Housewives gossip on and on, making up their own stories about the menace of Lil' Slugger and stuffed dog Maromi becomes our whimsical guide through the wonderful world of cartoon animation. A boxer beats the hell out of some unassuming strawberry cake. Then Woody Allen shows up for -no- -reason- -at- -all-

With the first episode about the cult, I would assume that everything is squared away and Kon has no more movies he directed to cannibalize. I have yet to see Tokyo Godfathers, but I am familiar with its presence and plot enough that I think there's more than a little connection between the two. That's okay, because in this instance I haven't seen the prior work and I sift through the see in a fit of blissful ignorance. At the end Kon does this goofy little thing that makes you think the characters are ghosts, that they've really succeeded in killing themselves. As the camera slowly zooms in on what is assumed to be a newspaper stand, the viewer is quite sure their assumptions are correct. The headline will read "Three found dead in freak train accident" or some other silly phrase. But Kon is a smarter man than that, or I want to believe he is anyway. What you see may surprise you, it's certainly not a newspaper the camera finally rests on. That's the kind of demeanor I want out of Paranoia Agent, like it has the ability to know that the audience needs a kick in the shin every once in awhile. My major qualm with Boogiepop Phantom was that the show was so angsty you could drown ten goths at Hot Topic. This is all well and good if you have a sizable amount of punk rock bitches to even it out. If not, you have to rely on other less tried tactics like dry humor and sarcasm.

I know it sounds crazy, but I think it's about time someone tried something a little out there. The first episode held me about as much as the first episode on the last disc did; that is to say: it didn't hold me that much at all. This was immediately recovered by the two stellar pieces that followed. Episode 10, where the adorable Maromi walks us through the gruesome homicides of an animation studio, was so totally enthralling I didn't even want to get up to go to the bathroom. And I had corn the night before. There's a funky sort of power in some of the shots they use in this show. I just installed a new 2,000 Flushes this afternoon and let me tell you, I was ready to give it a run for it's money. The show made me demure for a whole 20 minutes, which is more than bragable. So, as Kon's getting crazy with the craziest, I thought it was just about time that I got my rear in gear. I went out and bought this very good third volume of a very very good show . Last monday might've been sexier (it certainly was drunker), but this Monday had all the trappings of a delicious anime feast. I don't know which I prefer, but I'm pretty sure which thing is less likely to give me herpes.