Paranoia Agent #4:
Sayonara Maromi
Pioneer
75 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 05/10/2005
Reviewed: 05/31/2005
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Paranoia Agent #4:
Pioneer
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I don't like it when things end. When a loved experience suddenly stops, with barely a warning or a written memo on the fridge, it's a sad event for people like me. How many nights have I been out drinking with a group of compadres, having a wonderful time, living the life? At the end of the night, though, people go their separate ways. How many friends have I retained from my high school years? How many friends have I retained from my recent college graduation? As I lay there on the couch watching TV I reminisce about how not too many hours ago I was enjoying a few drinks with my good buddies, talking about politics and world hunger and how Evan and I once tried to dominate a man as tall as a mountain. We called him man-mountain. He stole our fifth of vodka. |
A dire presentiment fills me with the end of any series that I enjoyed. It's probably the reason I've never finished Mazinkaiser. The series is only two DVDs and I own both of them! So too did it happen with Paranoia Agent, a show I loved so much that I'd hestitate to refer to it as anime. Paranoia Agent is something that transcends description. To describe it as anime seems horribly gauche, because I wouldn't lump something like this, this indulgent banquet, this luxurious nectar, this regale rarity, into a category so humdrum and boiler plate as the same style that encompasses stories about anthropomorphic dogs who travel through time to rescue princesses from modern day Tokyo with gigantic samurai nunchuks. I mean, what the hell man. That's like saying both Salvadore Dali and my crayon drawings of the Ghostbusters can legitimately be called art. I frequently have dreams about covert operatives that operate out of Delis (they'll cut you a quarter pound... OF DEATH), but that doesn't make me high art. |
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It's no secret that I'm in love with Satoshi Kon. If I could have his man babies I wouldn't take a second thought. There wouldn't be time! I bet the line is long enough as it is! There's someone out there making shows like this, like Paranoia Agent and I worry that he barely gets a second thought. Because a show about paranoia and the collective unconscious doesn't hold a candle to the thirty seventh one concerning the travails of a group of pretty men that totally want to kiss each other while running a flower shop and secretly being assassins (that kiss each other) on the side. The anime market is already suffused with shows about men who want to kiss each other. How many shows do we have where washed up detectives escape into a world of their own delusions? How many shows do we have that I can talk about in public without feeling like I'm being lumped into the same category as a fat, smelly pedophiles? How many shows do we have that lampoon those selfsame fat, smelly pedophiles? |
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As the characters descend into their own dementia it leaves me with a feeling of dread. They're coming so close to unraveling the mystery that frees them and I'll be left all by myself. How could they do that to me? I knew this show couldn't last 26 episodes, but I don't think 13 will ever feel like enough to make. Maybe it was the plot, maybe it was my stalwart companion Joel, maybe it was the dulcet refrains of Michael McConnohie**, but something kept me coming on back. It sure as hell wasn't a team of ninjas who gathered together in a robotic blimp to fight crime and make delicious submarine sandwiches. But that would be awesome. |
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