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I have a theory about the movie Paprika (2006). I believe that it was meant to be a full anime TV show instead of a movie. I also believe that I can piece together what it would have looked like fully realized, or at least fill in some of the blanks. I can also try to explain some of the more mysterious aspects of the plot, as Paprika is a movie meant to mystify and amaze rather than be blatantly obvious. You don't really need to have it analyzed to enjoy it. However, I quite enjoyed watching it with this in mind, so here I go!
To start with, I will say that Paprika is a fantastic experience of a film. It is the last of several animated films directed and designed by visionary Satoshi Kon before he died of aggressive pancreatic at the age of 46. The list includes Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, and an anime called Paranoia Agent. His final creation was meant to be followed up by one or two more films posthumously, but unfortunately the Mad House animation studio has never managed to (A) pull together the funds and (B) find a director who would create a movie in the way Kon would want it rather than just imitate his style. As far as I know, there was nothing about the production of Paprika to indicate Kon was going to die soon. Wikipedia includes a quote of his that says everything about the film changed aside from the basic story while they were working on it, and this could be due any number of reasons. My guess is the funding was an issue, which would certainly explain why something meant to be a TV show would be shrunken down into a single feature film. Before I go further, I will provide a plot summary for the uninitiated. However, I highly recommend seeing it for yourself. The soundtrack by Susumu Hirasawa is one of my very favorites and the animation is gorgeous and detailed. The voice acting is great, the imagination is abundant, and the symbolism is spectacular. (Please note that I will simply have the Japanese names in the American order: personal name, family name.)
- Spoilers -
A clown emerges from a tiny clown car, reminding us that not everything is as it seems.
In the near future, psychotherapy machines have been developed that allow one's dreams to not only be observed on a computer screen but also be experienced simultaneously with another person. There is also a portable version called the DC Mini. The inventor, named Tokita, works alongside lead psychologist Atsuko Chiba, her assistant Osanai, and her aging mentor Shima. The team's goal is to harness this technology and use it to treat patients suffering from mental ailments that are hard to understand or describe. However, there is one more person working illegally with the device outside of this team: a woman named Paprika. We see Paprika in a hotel room at the start of the film with police captain Konakawa, jumping through dreams with him as he struggles to understand why he chases after a fugitive through many movie-like scenarios: circus, jungle, suspense, romance, etc. He is haunted by the image of a victim shot in the back, falling in slow motion to the ground, while the culprit gets away through a faraway door Konakawa cannot reach. The words "But what about the rest of it?" stick in his mind. It is clear after this encounter that Paprika and Chiba are, in some way, the same person.
Unfortunately, three of the DC Mini portable devices are stolen before Tokita has had the chance to install their security access circuits, meaning anyone can use it on anyone from anywhere as well as access the machines in the lab. The team gathers to discuss the problem before the Chairman finds out, but the pale old man in his wheelchair is in the office waiting for them. He berates them for using technology like this, but the conversation is interrupted when Shima begins speaking in nonsense verse, runs out of the room, and throws himself out a third storey window in a frenzy of mad excitement. He lives, but is on life support as his mind remains stuck in a crazy dream about a parade of home appliances marching to the horizon. It is deduced that someone used the DC Mini from afar to plant a subconsious dream into Shima's head while he was helping a patient. Chiba, through Paprika, uses the DC Mini to invade the insane dream and show him that the parade world is fake. While there, she sees Tokita's assistant Himuro as a doll, sneering at her and speaking more nonsense. So, everyone begins searching for Himuro, now the primary suspect who has been out for several days and had the most access to the DC Mini besides Tokita. Osanai says he understands; it is hard for assistants not to feel jealous of their mentors, for he feels that way about Chiba. In Himuro's apartment they discover signs that he was holding a grudge against his mentor Tokita. Chiba follows a doll into the closet and down a ladder despite Paprika's warnings, ending up in a amusement park. She nearly jumps off the balcony as the dream dissolves into reality, but her assistant Osanai saves her. The three go to a diner to discuss how someone who is both awake and not hooked to a psychotherapy machine could fall under the "terrorist's" influence.
At an arranged time, Konakawa logs into radioclub.jp to meet with Paprika. It is a virtual bar overseen by two virtual bartenders. They talk together for a while, then Paprika takes him out of the bar into the street, where there are only movie theaters featuring the movies of Konakawa's dreams. Unfortunately, he is unable to face any of them. Previously he said he has no interest in movies, but now he states that he actually hates them.
Two more employees at the Center for Psychological Research are influenced by the dream and destroy a bunch of equipment before walking into traffic and causing an accident. Simultaneously, although Shima was staying in the hospital to put off the board meeting where the Chairman could end the DC Mini program, the Chairman personally forbids the use of these machines. Tokita begins clearing out the broken computers from his office while Osanai and Chiba watch, and she happens to see that the shirt he is wearing under his lab coat features the same robot characters as the ones in the amusement park Chiba saw in Himuro's dream. She and Tokita, and Paprika in her own way, go to the real place, which has been abandoned for years, and while there Himuro throws himself off the Ferris wheel in a suicide attempt. He lives and smiles, but remains in a deep coma, his mind a blank besides the parade dream.
Konakawa becomes involved with the investigation after this point. He immediately suspects Chiba is the woman Paprika who Shima recommended to him for treatment, but she does not acknowledge him while they discuss the DC Mini with Tokita, who speaks about his vision like a child with an idea. Later, when Konakawa asks Shima about Paprika, he mischievously avoids answering, which is for the best because the Chairman wheels out to berate them some more. At the same time, Tokita has gone back to his office to work on yet another DC Mini. Chiba takes the opportunity to scold him for being too much like Himuro—getting caught up in one thing without caring about the consequences. She calls him out on his lacking sense of responsibility for the lives lost to his creation and calls his continued work on the DC Mini in the face of trouble nothing more than "masturbation." She leaves Tokita with his thoughts when Shima comes to get her; Konakawa has had an anxiety episode. Little does she know that Tokita decides to take Himuro to the lab and visit his mind all by himself, in which he realizes that Himuro is not the one guiding the dream, but someone else.
Paprika, dressed in uniform, has Konakawa in the elevator. She stops at various floors where he can see his dreams play out. When it comes time to visit floor 17, he stops her, but the elevator changes so that it only has one floor and the doors open upon the scene with the murder victim falling. At first the dream plays out as before: Konakawa is shocked, then runs with his gun, then the floor sinks out from under him until he falls. In a theater watching, Paprika calls for an encore, and he finds himself back at the start of the hallway and able to get his footing. However, when he reaches the door there is not culprit there. As his gun begins smoking, he looks back to see that the falling victim was himself all along, not the victim of a crime he is currently investigating. A bit later, in the theater, Konakawa has become a movie director and explains grandly about the different movie terms that cropped up in his dreams. When asked more questions, he reverts to a young man, wondering why he killed himself in his dream when he has never thought about suicide. The conversation is interrupted as the butterflies and strange creatures and appliances from the parade dream break in. Tokita as a toy robot is there too, speaking nonsense, and Konakawa gets swept up in it all despite initially wondering if he had gone insane. The parade continues on, passing through the other wall.
Chiba is determined to save Tokita from all this and heads to the lab despite Osanai's objections. He clearly does not understand why she does all she does for Tokita and does not rely on him at all. Shima oversees her sleep and Paprika's dive into Himuro's dream, where she expects to find Tokita. Initially she follows the parade, but when she doesn't see the Himuro doll she goes down a side street to follow a small whirlwind of ashes, which leads her to cracks in reality. She goes through to discover an abandoned city of old wooden buildings and Tokita dolls. In the distance is an enormous marble statue of Apollo with Osanai's face. Turning into a little fairy, Paprika follows a strong wind into the sewers, which are lined with roots, and comes out into a cavern that turns out to be the empty shell of Himuro—his mind is gone. She follows the roots further and they all lead to a huge tree with the Chairman's face on it. Paprika calls for Shima to wake her up, and they drive to the Chairman's house. On the way they discuss this snowballing dream. Like water droplets, the dreams are coming together until they form a huge mass that overflows.
At the house, they confront the Chairman, who continues to lecture about the improper use of technology, only to see that his legs are roots, Osanai is there instead of Shima, and Paprika is still in the dream rather than Chiba. In reality, Shima is trying to wake Chiba while Paprika runs from waves of tree roots. She jumps into a picture of Oedipus and the sphinx to fly away as Osanai chases her, falling to the water to swim away as a mermaid. The Chairman's voice echoes through the world: "Try and run! The world of dreams is limitless. Without physical boundaries, the mind can be free!" He is a huge whale that swallows her and blows her out as Pinocchio. She runs, but she is caught. When Paprika awakes, she is pinned to a table in a room full of butterflies on display with Osanai standing over her. They go back and forth as Paprika deduces that Osanai influenced Himuro, got him to steal the devices, and followed all of the Chairman's orders.
Konakawa has somehow ended up back in Radio Club with the two bartenders. They ask him gentle questions about movies and it is revealed that back when he was 17 he made an experimental film with his friend. It was about two friends: a cop and a fugitive. One runs and the other chases while scenes from their past play, and Konakawa says that was how he felt about his friend, who was always a step ahead of him. He lost confidence in himself and left his friend to finish the film, but he did not realize that his friend was terminally ill. He thought of that friend as his partner—his other self—and realizes that by abandoning their dream and leaving that friend to die unfulfilled he feels like he killed himself. As he realizes this, the shadowed friend appears in the bar and Konakawa chases after him, ending up in the street full of movie theaters. There is a new movie playing: Paprika. He goes in to see on screen how Osanai is still arguing with her. "You really think you can beat Tokita?" Paprika asks him. Calming down, he says that with power he can manipulate others and he forces his hand into her stomach, breaking the outer skin that is Paprika to reveal the naked Atsuko inside. At this point, Osanai's hand turns to tree roots and the Chairman's head sprouts next to his own, scolding him for being defiant and being weak for one woman. Konakawa manages to break through the wall, pick up Chiba, and escape into his own dreams. Osanai chases after, taking on roles in those dreams. When Konakawa pulls a gun on him, Osanai tries to run through the same door as the culprit always does, and Konakawa remembers again his friend's words: "But what about the rest of it?" He insists it is right here and pulls the trigger, and Osanai is shocked by the pain. Konakawa stands before a sunset as an audience applauds, his old friend among them, and he kisses the unconscious Atsuko as though he is in a spy movie.
Konakawa's kiss wakes Atsuko, and she slaps him, although in real life it is Shima leaning over her. Exhausted, they sit in the lab talking as she comes back to herself. They wonder what should be done when a bloodied, transparent Osanai walks in, stumbles toward Atsuko, then disappears. Back at the Chairman's house, we see that Osanai has died in real life too and he falls into the sinking floor. The Chairman crawls after him, calling him selfish and insisting that Osanai's able body belongs to him, that he will be perfect when they combine. Meanwhile, Shima and Atsuko walk quickly as they try to make a plan, unsure about what they saw with Osanai, when a huge doll appears outside the building and attacks. It becomes clear that dreams and reality are merging.
Konakawa logs out of Radio Club, looking refreshed and energetic. However, when he turns around, he sees outside that the dream parade is here and people are joining it. Salarymen are jumping off buildings, families are turning into lucky cats, men and women turn into TV's, musical instruments, and cellphones, and they all join the parade. At first Konakawa thinks again that he might have gone insane, but the Radio Club bartenders appear beside him in real life and assure him that the worlds have bleeding into each other. They come to a great hole in reality, which the bartenders indicate goes to "the other world," possibly that of death. At the same time, Atsuko and Shima are helped by Paprika, and they are both shocked to see her in real life. They follow her to escape the giant doll, but it follows them and nearly crushes Atsuko before giant robot Tokita appears and fires rockets at it. Despite this heroism, he is still lost in the dream. Atsuko wants to go after him while Paprika wants to find a solution to the bigger problem. She insults Atsuko when she tries to get Paprika to do as she says, comparing her to the Chairman trying to control the world and herself and calling Tokita an "irresponsible fatso." Atsuko defiantly goes off to find Tokita, which Paprika seems satisfied with, commenting that she is finally being honest with herself. Unfortunately, Atsuko's words do not get through to Tokita and he picks her up and swallows her, stating that it needs a little spice, something like paprika.
The Chairman emerges from the hole in the world, huge, onyx black, and joyful to have working legs. Shima and Paprika start to run away, but Tokita is gunning for them. He is stopped by the bartenders holding a huge banner between them and crashes into a building. Konakawa is there too. Then, a giant transparent Atsuko comes up behind the Tokita robot, and we are reminded of a scene from earlier when he got stuck in the elevator entrance and Atsuko had to pull him out. She does the same now and they sit there together. "Atsuko is dreaming," Paprika says. It becomes clear that Atsuko and Tokita are in love, held back by propriety and principles. "Outside appearance doesn't matter, but there is a limit to that too," Atsuko says softly. "I swallow everything," Tokita replies. The Atsuko apparition disappears and the robot falls to the ground.
Now the dark Chairman is beginning to blow up parts of the surrounding city and a great wind pushes them all back. He now controls the worlds of dreams and death, and darkens the sky as his destruction begins. Paprika, however, does not seem overly concerned. "Well done, Lord of Darkness," she calls. Then, to Shima and Konakawa, she says, "Life and dark. Life and death. Man and..." They finish for her, "Woman." She continues, "Then you need a little bit of spice." After a pause, they respond, "Paprika?" Satisfied, Paprika jumps into the window and dissolves into the fallen robot. While Konakawa and Shima try not to be blown away, a baby girl emerges from the robot and sucks up the wind, calming the air. Then she sucks up some of the slop of ruined reality that has gathered at the hole's edge. The Chairman notices something is happening, and goes to stop her, covering her face with his hand. However, she sucks him up completely as well. With every gulp, she grows much bigger and older until she is a woman standing over the city. The blue sky returns and the dream materials fade, although there is still some smoke from the damage.
In the hospital, Tokita wakes up as though from a nice nap to find Atsuko there with him and they share a tender moment. Shima and Konakawa leave them, with Shima joking that he as been dumped. Konakawa looks into a window and sees his old friend, who assures him that he became a cop to finish the movie they were making together using his own life and it was brilliant. At peace, Konakawa logs in to Radio Club once more to see the bartenders bandaged with their arms in slings. They have a message from Paprika that relays the following: Congratulations on solving the homicide case. I have an announcement too: Atsuko will change her family name to Tokita. P.S. Dreaming Kids is a good film. In the last minute, Konakawa goes to a theater that is playing all of Satoshi Kon's films as well as the unmade Dreaming Kids and he buys one ticket.
Sad as it is to think about, this is a very interesting place for Satoshi Kon's film career to more or less end. His past works are reviewed and his dead dreams are showcased. On top of that, although Perfect Blue is perhaps better known in some circles, Paprika is arguably his most notable piece, having been compared to Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away in terms of realized animation and story. One notable difference, however, is that Kon's work is often based on books, like Howl's Moving Castle was, rather than completely original story lines of his own. I do not say this to make his work seem any less important. In fact, it is in some ways more impressive, since it can be a real challenge to realize on screen what a book did on paper.
So, what does it all mean? Well, like the human mind, it can be difficult to assign exact meaning to each piece of Paprika. Let's start with the first and easiest mystery: what happened before the DC Mini was stolen? The answer begins with the Chairman. From the beginning he has a disturbing presence: his skin is deathly pale, his face has only sharp lines to it, and he sits in a wheel chair. He is like a scary Professor X. However, his ideals seem to be in line with someone completely against using the psychotherapy machines and messing around with that which we do not fully understand. What comes to light by the end of the film is that despite these principles, he actually wants the machine far more than anyone else. The wheel chair is his physical and mental crutch, for he is incapable of seeing himself as a walking man even when asleep. (Perhaps he will have roots or be a huge whale, but not walking until near the end at the peak of his power trip after absorbing Osanai.) He has developed a sort of madness around this single powerless part of himself, despite having power and money elsewhere in life. Desiring the body Osanai had, he began influencing the younger man and eventually manipulating him with visions of grandeur. The Chairman promised Osanai shared power if only he would share his strong body and legs with him. Utterly obsessed with legs, as evidenced by his representative tree roots, he seems to want to create a perpetual dream in which he shares Osanai's legs and keeps others out. As they spent more time in the dream world working off each other, focused on power, they began to see themselves as the guardians of this world of dreams, the psychotherapists as humans trying to control dreams, and Paprika as a terrorist. Their great delusion is thus displayed, for they are the ones striking fear in others and controlling—and terrorizing—other's dreams. Throughout the movie, bright blue butterflies show up in all the suspicious dreams, becoming more and more abundant as the climax approaches. Butterflies are associated with death in many cultures, and I believe that is why they appear in any dream touched by the Chairman's influence. From one butterfly flitting around a doll to swarms of them surrounding the parade, they only disappear from the film when the Chairman inadvertently rips a hole in reality and becomes a god of death.
Next, what was Osanai's role? Well, there were three parts to it, but let's start with why Osanai went along with the Chairman's plan. He actually mentions it a couple of times throughout the film before it is revealed that he is in with the baddies. Early on he mentions how Himuro must have been jealous of Tokita and says that he understands because he is jealous of his mentor Chiba; no matter what he does, he will never be equal to her. Later on, when Himuro is referred to as "desperate," Osanai chimes in that "desperate times call for desperate measures." What all this adds up to is that Osanai feels emasculated by Chiba's success as well as the way she relies on fat Tokita rather than beautiful him. He is also attracted to her beauty and wishes to possess her, which would prove his masculinity and dominance over her. It is possible that he truly loves her in some part of himself, but we never see that because his mind was poisoned by the Chairman before the film even began. (He reaches out for her as he dies, perhaps in a moment of pained clarity regarding his mistakes.) In a quest for the power the Chairman dangled before him like a carrot, Osanai listened to him and became a sort of henchman. By extension, he became the Chairman's legs, as we see at times when the two are fused. The second vital role he plays is that of the manipulator, convincing the person with the most access to the DC Mini to steal it for him. More on that later. And thirdly, he is part of the cover-up: no one would suspect someone so loyal to Atsuko Chiba. For a long time he goes along with helping the investigation as though his greatest interest is in Atsuko's safety, when in fact he is simply diverting attention and saving Atsuko for his own pleasures later. He sees her as the ultimate prize, or even specimen. His private room in the dream he and the Chairman have nearly come to share is lined with framed, pinned butterflies, and he clearly sees Atsuko as a similar creature of beauty to be possessed and loved at his leisure. This desire for one woman, for anyone outside himself, is something the Chairman did not foresee, and it brings the two at odds with each other. They are both associated with butterflies in the film, but while Osanai's are static like art, the Chairman's are active, brutal, and overwhelming.
From there we can more deeply ponder over Osanai's relationship with Himuro and how he convinced him to steal three of the DC Mini without security access. It seems to me that there was a time when Himuro idolized and possibly even loved his mentor Tokita. His apartment features many pictures of the two of them together, or of Tokita in the background. All of Tokita's faces have since been crossed out or cut out. Later on, when Paprika is exploring Himuro's dream, she comes across a sort of abandoned Japanese city filled with Tokita dolls. While glanced over, it appears to be the old version of Himuro's mind from a happy time when Himuro thought mainly about his work, his dolls, and Tokita. At some point that all changed when Osanai picked up on his homosexuality. This is also revealed during the apartment scene when Osanai is looking over some shelves and grimaces he passes over some sexy men's magazines. Knowing he had to do something to get the DC Mini from the Chairman and also create some sort of puppet or scapegoat, Osanai gritted his teeth and lured Himuro's attention to himself. True to his nature, Himuro abandoned all else in his obsession of this new "love," who probably told him that he was better than Tokita and that if he was truly loyal he would steal the DC Mini. He came to idolize Osanai to such an extent that it overshadowed his love for doll-making and for Tokita. The Greek statue of Apollo with Osanai's face towers above everything else in the ruins of Himuro's mind, putting it all in shadow while a spotlight falls upon the marble. Osanai convinced Himuro to turn all his attention and adoration on his beauty and talent, as well as discard any feelings of loyalty he had for Tokita. It is unclear how involved Osanai became with Himuro to achieve this level of obsession within the vulnerable man, but his reaction to Paprika's accusations suggest he did quite a lot and it further emasculated him. (Is the fact that Himuro's empty shell is naked aside from an open kimono any indication?) When he briefly has Atsuko in his arms, he probably thinks all the sacrifices were worth it.
And now we must talk about Atsuko and Paprika. What is Paprika? Is she an alter-ego? A second personality? A schizophrenic hallucination? There is no simple answer to this question, for we know nothing about Atsuko from any other part of her life than this place of success and devotion to her work. What we can deduce is that Atsuko may have gone into the field of psychotherapy in large part because she wanted to control her own mental problems. This means that Paprika is not really an alter-ego, but a separate personality or hallucination. (Also, someone does not talk to their alter-ego the way Atsuko does with Paprika; they simply embody them when they need to. By the end it is clear Atsuko holds a lot more animosity towards Paprika than a mere I-wish-I-were-like-this-in-real-life personality.) There is actually a lot of fascination in Japanese popular culture regarding multiple personalities and the duality of the self. You can see it in works like Othello and Deadman Wonderland. The new dilemma is that a separate personality has to come from some sort of need for the host personality to be protected from pain or lack of self confidence. So, did Paprika appear in Atsuko's childhood as the result of some traumatic experience? It is never revealed. The only clue we have regarding this is the Woman at the end of the film. Atsuko seems to rest inside the Tokita robot. Paprika jumps into the Tokita robot. Then the child appears, a child with dark hair like Atsuko. This suggests to me that Paprika has been with Atsuko since birth. The question is asked: Is Paprika part of Atsuko, or is Atsuko part of Paprika? In reality, Paprika rests inside Atsuko. In the world of dreams, Atsuko rests within Paprika. In my opinion, this says two things: (1) Paprika is not a second personality or schizophrenic hallucination, at least not now that the DC Mini allows her to help others rather than bang around inside Paprika's head during the day. My guess is that she terrorized Atsuko for years before the psychotherapy machines allowed them both to have an outlet. Perhaps Atsuko spent the early years of her career trying to rid herself of Paprika, then came to understand she must accept that Paprika is useful, if unwanted. (2) Paprika is a wholly real part of the dream world, brought to full realization by the power of the merging of the worlds. She is undeniably tied to Atsuko, her reality rock, but she is her own separate entity.
Is there anything else to back up the idea that Paprika is connected to Atsuko yet is not Atsuko? Well, I can start out by pointing out Tokita's treatment of the two of them. Unlike more old fashioned Shima, who thanks Atsuko for something Paprika did, Tokita never speaks to or about them as though they are the same person. He does suggest that Atsuko should be happier like Paprika, but even that statement is a reminder that he sees them as two separate people who could try to be more alike. Later on, while out of his mind as a robot in the mass dream, he swallows Atsuko, then says she needs some spice. Even while he is unaware of himself, Tokita knows that it is a fact that Atsuko and Paprika are not complete without each other. This understanding makes it more appropriate when the Woman (the combination of Atsuko and Paprika in the dream world) is born again out of the robot shell. And perhaps Atsuko finally being able to admit she loves Tokita also allows her to accept Paprika into herself.
(I would like to touch briefly on Atsuko and Tokita's relationship. If you watch carefully, you can tell that Atsuko loves Tokita, but you might miss it because who could love a fatso like that? If he was attractive, it would be totally obvious, but the point is that Atsuko loves him regardless. She loves the way he takes everything in and creates new things. When it is fully revealed that she loves him, she says that despite being a fat slob he is the genius of the century and so much fun. She seems to love him because his is boundlessly free while she feels trapped in the head she shares with Paprika. Is it propriety or society that holds her back from being with Tokita, or is it a fear of herself? Clearly he is not afraid or disillusioned. She smiles warmly, if subtly, when Tokita talks about the dreams he had the at led to his invention, and her attention is always focused on him more than others. She puts her energy into making him see his responsibilities, into saving him, and into making his dream a reality with real life applications. Tokita's reasons for loving Atsuko are little less clear, but maybe he is better at knowing he has feelings than diving into the why?)
Paprika may have started as a second personality or some sort of hallucination—we do see her walking around in reality at the beginning of the film, possibly with a wig on—but the DC Mini certainly changed all that. This explains, too, why Atsuko remembers people Paprika has met, such as Konakawa. However, by the end of the film, with dreams becoming so strong and shareable, Paprika clearly exists on her own and not just as a sub-personality in Atsuko's mind. I would dare to guess that her cheerfulness comes in part from the freedom she has not only in Atsuko's dreams, but in the dreams of those patients she helps. It may also come from the fact that she has learned to communicate with other, similar, body-less personalities, ending the isolation she might have had within Atsuko. We only see two types of these. One is the "other me" in Konakawa's mind that represents his long lost friend and his sense of worth. It is not a full blown second personality, nor is it an alter-ego, but it is something in Konakawa's mind that communicates underlying feelings to him. The second type we see is that of the bartenders from Radio Club.
After watching Paprika for the first time and thinking about it, I realized that the most mysterious characters in the whole film are these two virtual men. While Paprika is linked to Atsuko (and vice versa), the bartenders are complete anomalies. They seem to be something like guardians of the internet, which Paprika mentions is a lot like dreams in the way it allows the inner self to flourish, but the name of the bar ("Radio Club") would suggest they are older than that. They are comfortable with both Paprika and Konakawa, who are both able to enter the virtual bar, and they know about "the other world" that the Chairman breaks into with his destructive dream. In short, they may not be born of people at all, but the quiet entities born of the collective worlds, minds, dreams, and needs. Unlike pure dream people probably would, they maintain their injuries after the conflict. Like Paprika, they return to their respective world when reality is restored. They do their best to help those who are brought to them, like Konakawa, and become actively involved when the world is in danger. It makes me think of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, although here the internet deities seem much more mature.
This reminds me that we mostly never see Atsuko and Paprika's therapy methods, although I would hazard a guess that Paprika's methods tend to be very different from Atsuko's chosen ones. I am sure they differ depending on the patient. With Konakawa, she acts as something of a travel companion or guide, accompanying him or pulling him along. With Shima, on the other hand, there is some indication that his treatment was a little more...physical. He mentions that Paprika helped him with his depression two years back, so she is familiar with his needs before diving into the parade dream to save him. While there, she starts as a doll calling out to him, but changes to her full beautiful self when that does not work. The body touch brings him back, and his expression is something like intense pleasure when she wakes him up entirely. Even if it was not altogether a sexual form of therapy, we can safely say Paprika uses unorthodox methods.
Have you begun to see why I think this was meant to be a full animated TV series rather than a single movie? Personally, I think there are more than a few missing scenes. The movie is still good without them, but I am curious what it could have been like. For example, Himuro is not introduced until he is a suspect in a crime. Osanai's introduction is also a little rushed on the way to Himuro's apartment; I could not tell you when the first time they actually say his name is. Another example is when Konakawa ends up in Radio Club, even though the last time we saw him he was lost in the parade dream. Presumably the mysterious bartenders found him and brought him there, but it is never mentioned. Or maybe he wandered there himself, drunk on the dream? It is unclear. Also, when Osanai and the Chairman are sharing a body and fighting over Atsuko, Osanai explodes into butterflies, which I thought meant he had been destroyed the same way Himuro had been. However, we see him a minute later chasing after Konakawa, only to have a more complete death scene. I wonder if we missed something?
Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent aired two years before Paprika. It actually plays with similar visual themes, although instead of dreams invading reality, it is the lies we tell ourselves. (It also has similar characters: a detective, a young woman, an old man, a young man...) I wonder if at first Kon was going to get permission to make another anime, since Paranoia Agent was well received, but then was told the budget had been cut and he needed to trim it down. This would explain why everything but the basic story changed. He went from having a whole TV show's length of time to fully realize the message of a novel, then had only a couple of hours. In a way I think the movie does a better job of blowing your mind because you sit there for two hours puzzling and being amazed. A movie's pacing can be much choppier than a show's and get the same result, so who knows if the anime's pacing would have been as good as Paranoia Agent's? Much as I enjoyed that one—it also has great animation, music, and characters—it did drag on a little sometimes with the mystery and confusion.
Even with such a small run time, Paprika has a sort of anime opening and a heck of a lot of symbolism and detail packed in. One of my favorite symbols is the reoccurring image of Oedipus meeting the sphinx. It first appears in the meeting room where Tokita, Atsuko, and Konakawa talk about the DC Mini: what the vision was and how it works. Here its meaning falls along the lines of facing the riddle and finding an answer. Tokita solved the riddle of accessing dreams. Konakawa thinks he knows the answer to the riddle about Atsuko and Paprika. And Atsuko has yet to find the answer to the riddle that is her feelings for Tokita. Later on, inside the Chairman's home (or his dream of his home), this image appears again hung all over the wall of the sitting room. Fittingly, Paprika takes on the role of the riddle-telling sphinx who knows the answers while Osanai becomes Oedipus, answering the small riddles of the world but doomed in the long run.
There are other clever little things I like noticing. The parade towards the end features several religious icons dressed in funny clothes or costumes, including a Buddha in some sort of frilly pink bodysuit, suggesting that nothing is sacred anymore. (Not even life?) Early on, in Himuro's apartment, we see a robot toy with Tokita's cutout face stuck to it holding a sign that says "help me." Is this a sick desire to see Tokita suffer, or a very small trail of breadcrumbs meant to lead Tokita to seeing that Himuro needs help? Did some part of him realize what he was doing was wrong right before being pulled in completely? Paprika's dream incarnations are also interesting: a fairy, the sphinx, Monkey from Journey to the West, Pinocchio, a mermaid... When she is determining her own form, she tends to become fairy tale creatures that are a bit mysterious in their origin, power, and meaning. This rings true to her nature as a mysterious being of unknown origins. Similarly, the places where she conducts her therapy sessions are specifically chosen. When she meets with Konakawa at Radio Club, she describes it as "a meeting place, a place to relax, a date spot." There is a certain neutral quality to the places she takes Konakawa. First a hotel room (real), then a bar (online), next a street with entertainment, then an elevator, and finally a theater. She seems to be gauging what sort of environment Konakawa needs in order to heal, but they are all meeting places or date spots. She only takes control, like in the elevator, when Konakawa unknowingly needs her to.
Another aspect we could dive further into is the significance of all the parts of Konakawa's dreams. We have established who the "other self" was and that Konakawa feels he killed it, but what else? Well, there are various parts of the movie dreams that come together as part of that story. The circus bit is the most telling, along with the final hallway scene. In fact, you can also trace Konakawa's life through the dreams. (1: hallway) Konakawa tries to catch up to his friend, who always seems too far ahead of him. (2: Western romance) Nevertheless, he is having fun and continues filming. (3: train spies) He fights with the doubts within himself, and feels that he is losing. (4: Tarzan) He runs away. (5: circus) He becomes a copy pursuing various culprits, and here we can see best what haunts him. In the stands he observes the circus, whispering information to his partner who poses as the clown or a clown mask. In the beginning, Paprika is this partner, but later on it is movie advice coming from his friend, ideas and conversations that he still remembers. The ringleader, a man in glasses we see nowhere else, points Konakawa out, then pulls a curtain to reveal he has appeared in a cage. (When Paprika asks him about this friend who put him in a cage, Konakawa says that it is not like him to do so. This could either indicate that Konakawa has become distrustful the more he develops anxiety.) Next the ringleader encourages the audience to come have a look, and all the audience members have Konakawa's face as they reach for him. (Another possibility is that the friend with glasses asked about Konakawa's past and it brought the intense guilt to the surface, but not the memories of where the guilt came from. The people, who are all him, reaching for him seem like an expression of guilt to me. This may be yet another instance of something cut down for the film that would have had some background in a full show.)
So, what do you think it all means?
