Paranoia Agent

I've been meaning to post something about this amazing animation series for a while now. This was one of those series that seemed to take animation and film making to that level where one seems to reach a core of reality so deep that any attempt to discuss it seems futile.
Satoshi Kon is an accomplished master.
He can not only see through the medium but also through ourselves.

To be honest this whole series deserves far more than just a post. It deserves to be seen. To be experienced.
perhaps that is the core of this series. Experience itself.
Like Lynch, Satoshi Kon takes us to a place where logic breaks and where, by being lost, we regain something that we have forgotten about.

It still astounds me how Satoshi Kon has managed to pull off such a series. It's like a breathing organism, growing and mutating, adapting to our own growing perceptions of it. And, by knowing this, it takes us on a carefully established journey through our own lunacy.

When I went to Panditarama Forest Monastery for my first ever meditation retreat a few years ago I did not know the many surprises my own mind had kept so well hidden away from my intense conceptual/philosophical soul searching throughout the years. I thought I had seen it all. That I knew it all.
And, in a way, I had.
But I had not experienced it all.
Knowing madness is quite different from experiencing it.
We all, by one reason or another, come close to these experiences in our lives. Through loss or sheer frustration, through an unbearable pain or some sort, our minds seem to want to recoil and slingshot into a different level of awareness where the normalcy of feeling is lost and thus, the seemingly uncontrollable experience at hand shifts into a more manageable level.
Sometimes we just want to lose control. Perhaps because a part of us knows that if we do so, we will regain another sort of balance.
But, we also know, even if vaguely, that the consequences might not be the best and so, we refrain.

I think Satoshi Kon knows very well how the human mind works. If not in a scientific way surely in an experiential way. The intensity and clarity of such experiences are clearly demonstrated throughout the series by the mastery with which he takes us - safely, nonetheless! - in such a perilous journey.

At first I was puzzled with this story. Captured by the images, by the sequences of strangeness and beauty being offered at every moment. But I did not understand this kid with golden rollerblades and golden bat beating people up. This was no ordinary thriller, that much was clear...

After two or three episodes a pattern began to emerge. All those that had been attacked suffered from some form of mental breakdown.
The girl that had created the doll and that was so pressure that started to hear the doll talk back to her.
the boy collapsing under his own success at school.
The woman that had dual personality, crashing under her own desire to regain herself, crushed by the weight of her two opposing sides.
The cop with too much to hide.

I thought I had cracked it.
I didn't know how Shonen Bat (golden bat) had managed to tap into all those people but this was nonetheless the pattern emerging. And, somehow, I doubted that a paranormal explanation would be the correct one.

Then one of the police officers said a very important thing half way through the series.
That maybe this case was the signaling of a new type of crime. A crime that avoids patterns and reasons. A type of crime that no one can hunt or be prepared for.

An this is the key for the whole series, in my view.

The series then apparently seems to lose its focus after episode seven when the basis for the whole Shonen Bat story is no more. Episodes range in their surrealism and darkness, but always depicting madness in one way or another.

But, slowly, the story seems to return to where we had left it. Maromi's creator, the two cops and the dying man in the hospital seem to begin to coalesce once again.
It then becomes clear that all of them have become infected with the Shonen Bat paranoia. in one way or another, this mystery has taken over their lives.
This is what they begin to find out with different levels of awareness.

In the end, even though the mystery is cracked, at the same time it continues.

My interpretation is simple. What Satoshi Kon is targetting is not Shonen Bat itself but the paranoia that exists within each and everyone of us and thus, that pervades the whole of society. The only reason why Shonen Bat becomes the cult phenomenon it does is simply because we resonate with it. Ie, we resonate with the fear of the unknown - which is the basis of paranoia.
This is Satoshi Kon's masterstroke.
He's not talking about a boy in rollerblades.
He's talking about the pressure we experience in our everyday lives and how this causes paranoia to creep into us.
All the episodes are merely examples of how this might happen. If you take a closer look, you will see that he has attempted to look at every significant strata of society. First and foremost he focuses on those we already know that are on the edge. Either because of their professions or their lifestyle but then, as the cult catches on, everyone becomes a vehicle for this. Because all of us have stresses in our lives, in one way or another.

To me the experience is truly to see the series from beginning to end and see the circle forming. Realising that, even though Shonen Bat is no more, Shonen Bat is still very much alive. It was never a person. It was an idea. It was the expression of our individual paranoias that had finally found a way to reach the surface of our minds.

Obviously, this series is aimed at a Japanese audience and looks intently on the Japanese lifestyle on the big city.
Thus the ending, which is so similar to the beginning is not only suitable but also fundamental. Satoshi tells us that the pressure is everywhere and we don't even see it anymore. We just take it as normal. But that the consequences of it live on while this pressure remains.
And that this is something that cannot be resolved by the normal analytical mind. It needs to be known and experienced. And then a choice be made upon this realisation.
This is the true importance of the detective that, connecting the dots, decides to stay real rather than succumb to his fears. Like his partner. That then replaces the old man in the weird calculations on the sidewalk.

At first I did not know what these scribbles meant. I only noticed that each of the numbers reached at the end of each step of the calculation were connected to the main character of each episode. Their age. Date of birth. Number of document. Car tag. Door number. Etc.
But what did they meant? What was the purpose of all this?
To me this insane character that believes he knows and predicts the fate of the next victim represents simply the logical trying to make heads or tails of something that is more a symptom rather than a pattern.

This is what Satoshi Kon is ultimately telling us. That our contemporary society is ill. And that some strange diseases are on the loose.
Illnesses of which we all participate.
And he's showing us the way of how to outgrow them.
This is why this series is so important to me.
It can safely take us to the other side of our own madness.
And make us whole again.

Peace.