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Paprika 1993
Written in the early 1990's by Japanese avant-garde novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui, Paprika is mainly the story of Atsuko Chiba, a psychiatrist helping explore the potential of groundbreaking psychotherapy ("PT") machines that allow doctors to observe, collect, and even enter the dreams of schizophrenic patients. The book largely focuses on the two of them, along with other friends, trying to discover the details behind the plot to misuse these devices in order to push them and their allies out of the Institute for psychiatric research. This political plot quickly becomes much more serious when it becomes clear that the perpetrators are using the PT devices to harm the minds of others and spreading rumors.
Most people today are familiar with the Paprika story through the 2006 film by director Satoshi Kon. The same is true for me. I read the book because I wanted to see where the inspiration came from. As is usually to be expected when something is adapted for film, there are a lot of differences. However, you can easily trace the thought process that brought the film to life. The book has a long, meandering plot that would be challenging to turn into a screenplay. Personally, I believe that the movie was originally going to be a short animated TV series, partly because the book is so very complicated in the number of characters, scenes, and themes it contains. I also believe that it is probably better as a movie, having read the book and seen what could have been poured into a TV series. If Kon's work on Paranoia Agent is to be referenced, then Paprika as a show would have been terribly confusing. Interesting, but less meaningful. As is, the film takes the material from the novel and turns it into a trippy experience that sticks with you and is fun to analyze. I have already spent a significant amount of time doing just that in my other Paprika article. Here I will go over the central characters and plot of the book, then discuss some of the things they did similarly or differently in the film.
- Spoilers -
Atsuko Chiba, renowneed psychiatrist of just 28, works closesly with Kosaku Tokita, the inventor of the psychotherapy (PT) devices that allow doctors to explore the dreams of their schizophrenic patients. He is a fat and childlike genius, at complete odds with Atsuko's outstanding beauty, but the two of them are revealed to be in love after spending years together, in reality and in their dream experiments. Together they are up for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and both are directors at the Institute for psychiatric research. They are mentored by 54-year-old Torataro Shima, president of the board and chief administrator. Unfortunately, not everyone at the Institute is pleased with their nomination or their work. In a new field of technology that can only be tested on human beings, there are still questions about the ethics surrounding the use of PT machines, despite the success Atsuko and others have had in treating schizophrenic patients. Generally this is what the devices are used for, despite Tokita having initially designed them for his childlike sense of wonder at the idea of sharing a dream with a friend. He does not understand why anyone would misuse such a wonderful device. Atsuko defends them as well using statistics of success, although she may ignore the fight back a little too much. Rumors have begun to go around about "infectious schizophrenia" passing to psychiatrists using the PT devices and experiencing the schizophrenic dreams firsthand. Atsuko and Tokita suspect that someone may be feeding a program into the devices that will harm the user, but do not report it due to lack of evidence and preoccupation with other problems. They suspect Vice President Inui, director of the Inui Clinic, because he often speaks out against the use of the devices, as well as fellow psychiatrist Morio Osanai, a very handsome but coniving man.
Meanwhile, Atsuko is asked by President Shima to secretly treat a friend of his suffering from an anxiety disorder. About six years ago, PT devices were banned altogether and Atsuko and Tokita could only work on them in secret. During that time, Atsuko adopted an alter-ego named Paprika by changing her hair, wearing fake freckles, and acting younger than her age. Shima was one of these patients. Although hesitant, Atsuko agrees to treat his friend Tatsuo Noda, an executive at a car company developing a zero-emissions vehicle. First they meet at an underground bar called Radio Club overseen by the waiter Kuga and bartender Jinnai, then they take the treatment to Atsuko's apartment. She shows Noda the PT devices. She explains that at one time they needed to use a cap covered in wires, earning it the name "gorgon." Now, however, it is basically a shower cap with one thick cable coming off it. Together they explore Noda's dreams and Paprika admits to herself that the close interaction has led her to falling in love with him. It is implied that she maybe falls a little bit in love with every patient like this. Six years ago, she was the psychiatrist to the stars, treating men of high social standing who could not let their colleagues know they were suffering from mental illness. Now, she reassumes this role again, especially when Noda recommends her to his old friend Toshimi Konakawa, superintendent for the police department. She romps with him in his dreams as well. She muses sometimes over the ethics of having sex with patients in their dreams, but knows that male psychiatrists have sometimes argued the benefits of such an act. She uses her instincts in the moment to choose her actions.
Around this time, Tokita completes the final version of the PT devices: a daedalus collector, or "DC Mini." While not a crown the way the word daedalus might you think, the DC Mini is a small device that sits on the scalp. Atsuko has the opportunity to see it once before all 6 of them go missing. Tokita had not had the chance to install any security funcitons in it, so these tiny devices are capable of accessing any other PT device without restraint. Atsuko tries to go about her usual routine while also trying to fight back. The reader sees that it is the handsome Osanai, working for his mentor Vice Presdient Inui, using the devices in evil ways. Already, without the DC Mini, he fed schizophrenic images to his colleague Tsumura and Atsuko's assistant Kakimoto. Now with the DC Mini, he can do much more. First of all, he and Inui are engaged in a sexual relationship that they further explore with the DC Minis while they sleep. Next, Osanai uses the DC Mini to destroy the mind of Himuro, Tokita's assistant, who he seduced with sexual pleasures and convinced to create the destructive programs as well as steal the new devices. After that he targets President Shima, then Tokita. At the same time, Atsuko gets closer to figuring out all that is happening, so Osanai goes to her apartment on Inui's orders to rape her. Having lusted after her for years and being quite sure of his own beauty, Osanai expects her to give in to him, but is disappointed that she only does so to avoid his violence. He fails to perform and leaves the apartment. After this Atsuko discovers that both Shima and Tokita are in a vegetative state and has to begin treating them both. At this point, Noda and Konakawa get involved, having felt that Paprika had something weighing her. She has no one else and accepts their help. She also receives some aid from Matsukane, a TV reporter who has become infatuated with her.
The line between reality and dreams begins to blur as impossible things happen. Atsuko is able to steal Osanai's DC Mini in the dream and wake up with it still in her hand. Vice President Inui performs terrible deeds in the form of monsters from mythology, tearing apart a subordinate who failed him just once and attacking the press conference where Tokita and Atsuko were asked to speak about winning the Nobel Prize. From there, all the dreams of everyone who has been exposed to the PT devices begin to show up in real life, including Himuro, whose mind was destroyed and who may already be dead. They frequently bring up Tokita's point about anaphylaxis, his explanation for becoming more sensitive to the world of dreams the longer one is exposed to them. After a certain point, the DC Minis are no longer needed to dream. Monsters fly through Tokyo, Japanese dolls walk around causing traffic accidents, and people go insane at the sight of things that trigger their inner fears.
In the end, there is no way to defeat Vice President Inui after his mind is completely lost to the dream world. It only ends when, in an act meant only to protect Paprika, Noda manages to give the older man a severe shock, showing him the image of his beloved Osanai as Christ on the cross, part of his homosexual cult's dream, only with female genetalia. The monsters stop roaming the streets and they finally find where Inui hid himself in the basement padded rooms of the Institute, wasted away. Osanai is convicted with murder. Those harmed by the PT devices are cured. Everyone seems to accept that the deaths caused by the incident were tragic but in the past. Tokita and Atsuko announce their engagement, and everything seems well with the world. The future of PT devices is unclear, although they seem to still be needed. At the very end, it is still a bit of a wonder if the world of dreams really has completely separated from reality.
There is a lot to enjoy in this book. Unfortunately, before I go into any of it, I have to say that I was distracted by the fact that only a handful of female characters are introduced, two of them are the same person, and only one is particularly important. As a standalone story that would not be such a big deal; Atsuko/Paprika is sort of supposed to be a genius psychiatrist in a male-dominated world. Unfortunately, it just kind of comes off as a weird attempt at feminism that feels a bit trashy. Atsuko falls in love with nearly every male character to some extent, and every male character who is not gay falls in love with her or is infatuated with her. It honestly gets really annoying. It is implied she has had sex with Shima and Tokita in dreams. She has dream sex with both Noda and Konakawa, who are both married yet don't really feel remorseful at all. ("It's just a dream!") She manages to turn a rape situation into something she has control of, yet at the same time it is mentioned that she still has nightmares of men/boys who assaulted her in some way when she was younger and none of this trauma is eve relived during the story. On top of that, it releases her pent up sexual energy. (This would be an interesting exploration of a person, their needs, and their ability to gain control of a situation, if it wasn't paired with everything else sexual in the book.) Later on, she has sex with Noda in front of Konakawa in a dream to wake the three of them up, using the term "rape" because she wants to shock them in the act, although clearly all three enjoyed it since their orgasm is what woke them. And again, she at some point finds herself naked with Osanai, her attempted rapist, in a dream, although by that point she feels more pity for him than anything since his personality is being harmed by the extended exposure and dream death.
You could say that all this adds up to Atsuko being an unusual Japanese woman, fulfilled by her sexual life rather than tarnished by it. She even gets engaged to Tokita without any hangups or fights regarding her sexual history, merely apologizing to Noda and Konakawa since she has professed her love for them at some point. On the other hand, the extreme amount of sex in the book sort of takes away from the crazy things happening. A lot of the instances in the book would be interesting on their own, yet they add up to Atsuko seeming incapable of interacting with a man on a deep level without falling romantically and lustfully in love with him, and vice versa. It really is not a good example for male-female relationships. It would be one thing if they touched on the fact that some male psychiatrists have argue that having sex with certain hysterical patients can really help them and she worked on that logic, but she seems to use this method indiscriminately! She does have great moments as an individual character, such as her admittance that she is sometimes more selfish than righteous. They just seem to constantly come back around to love and sex.
I will admit that when I saw the film, I had an inkling that perhaps the Paprika in the book was far more sensual with her patients. I thought this because her interactions with Shima in particular point to it. He feels some sort of love for her that is a mixture of familial, friendly, and romantic that he mostly deals with in stride. Atsuko refuses to let him see her as Paprika, especially since in the movie Paprika is a separate personality from Atsuko. (More on that later.) At one point she wakes him up from a toxic dream with an embrace that causes his eyes to roll with pleasure, despite the otherwise absurd scene, so I wonder if within the world of the movie Shima was one of the few Paprika felt it necessary to be intimate with. He was suffering from depression, and in the book Paprika treats Konakawa's depression with the intimacy, safety, and reaffirmation of sex. In moderation, it is an interesting idea. Unfortunately, the book just goes crazy with it.
Similarly, the take on homosexuality in the text is very odd. The main villain is part of a homosexual sex cult sect of Christianity he joined while in Vienna after being seduced by his professor. He, in turn, influences the handsome Osanai who he feels very possessive of. At the same time, Osanai has overwhelming feelings for Atsuko and uses the head nurse for sex, so it is unclear if he was bisexual or if Inui poisoned him with his homosexual influence. The latter would seem to be true since Osanai then uses what he has learned to seduce Tokita's assistant Himuro, convincing him to do terrible things like steal the DC Minis. On top of that, other characters' reactions to finding out about Inui and Osanai are usually quite negative ("That's disgusting!") but it can be a little hard to tell if that reaction is purely to the homosexuality or to the old man seducing the younger man. Inui is not supposed to be a particularly handsome old man. Whatever the case, it doesn't cast the best light on everything. On top of that, Atsuko's assistant Nobue is only briefly introduced, but during that time it is clear she holds Atsuko up as a goddess the same way Osanai does with Inui. It feels like an all girls anime trope.
All the sex aside, there are a lot of good things about Paprika. I like the incorporation of religious ideas, ancient mythology, and personal struggles and pleasures into the dream world. Inui is aggressive in his feelings of Christianity, but other characters like the waiter Kuga embody the strength of Buddha. Symbols from both religions come out from different places, never really creating a clear choice between them since they are products of people's minds. The book emphasizes that two people will see the same thing, place, or person differently; a symbol of a friend for one is just a dangerous tiger to another. Another example is how the Vice President constantly uses mythological imagery to attack other people, perhaps representing his old fashioned nature and being stuck in the past, yet Tokita knows all about those creatures because he is a nerdy guy who knows a lot about everything. Really, when it comes to the psychotherapy side of the story, there is too much to talk about. It is the best thing about the novel. The main thing that frustrated me when reading it is that no one really reports any incidents in the hopes of dealing with them quietly, and pretty soon the whole thing has spiraled out of control. You would think people would focus less on trivial things like everyday work and a good public appearance when the world is quickly going to hell.
Now I need to start on something I find unavoidable: comparing the movie to the book. Originally I wanted to discuss them separately, but I honestly think the movie is really, really good and is worth talking about alongside the book. The tiniest details were maintained, even when large parts of the story were cut or how the climax is changed dramatically. Atsuko is a very beautiful, young, genius psychiatrist who drives a green car and works closely with Tokita on the psychotherapy machines. Tokita is very large and very childish, and actually receives a lot more attention as a character than he does in the book. The characters of Noda and Konakawa are combined, creating new Konakawa character with the personality and dreams of Noda, which I think was for the best. In the same way, other changes were made by taking elements of the book and incorporating them into fewer character or simpler plot points. Osanai is made to be Atsuko's assistant, while Himuro is still Tokita's assistant who Osanai seduces. Osanai and the villain are not in a sexual relationship, as far as the audience can tell, but the villain has still convinced the younger man that his worldview is the path to power. He still hungers for Osanai's good looks, but it is more because he hopes to take over his body in the dream world, being in a wheelchair in the film. Even explanations of dreams and anaphylaxis and the like are incorporated in some way. I could go on and on and on.
The main thing I want to talk about is actually Paprika. In the book she is Atsuko's alter-ego. She exists only as Atsuko's dream self and there is little explanation in regards to why she chose that code name as an illegal "dream detective." This is not the case in the movie. While it is never discussed out loud, I think I can piece together Satoshi Kon's inspiration for her. In the book, the PT devices have only officially been approved for use on schizophrenic patients who might not recover with any other treatment. In the movie, Paprika almost acts like a schizophrenic hallucination sometimes, warning Atsuko of danger and showing up in her peripheral vision. (Perhaps this is why Atsuko is sometimes susceptible to traps?) At the same time, she acts like a second personality, which is what I initially thought she was. However, when Atsuko and Shima see Paprika in real life when the dream world and reality merge, they are utterly shocked. I think this is because Atsuko was never sure that Paprika was anything but a delusion given flight by the dream machines and Shima always assumed that Paprika was an alter-ego. The book never reveals why Atsuko went into psychiatry. Within the world of the movie, on the other hand, I think it is likely that she went into this field to learn more about her own schizophrenia, then met Tokita, and ended up grudgingly allowing Paprika to participate as a way of dealing with the delusion of her existence. This also means that Paprika exists more as a dream than as a person, because a second personality would exist in the same way Atsuko does and that is not the case. Paprika is a part of Atsuko in reality, and Atsuko is a part of Paprika in the dream world. They are one and the same, yet they are different. Other things Atsuko says to Paprika support this, such as "Listen to me!" She wants to control her schizophrenia, which means controlling Paprika, but she cannot. In the book, Tokita is the one that struggles with coming to terms with his and Atsuko's relationship. In the movie, Atsuko is the one who cannot let go of propriety and control, hindering it herself when Tokita would probably go along with it gladly. Really, I liked seeing both versions. My one issue with the film's portrayal of Atsuko and Paprika is that they fail to show that Atsuko sometimes dresses up as Paprika in real life to meet her secret patients, making it confusing when we see Paprika briefly in real life at the beginning, then never again, yet Detective Konakawa recognizes her in Atsuko Chiba despite the characters being drawn differently (eyes, hair color, etc.).
The other thing I would like to mention is the ending. Unfortunately, the book is sort of anticlimactic. It has an ending, but it is not really thanks to anyone. The evil Vice President is defeated mainly because a side character showed him an image that startled him, possibly putting him into his final death throes. He killed himself by hiding his body away and giving his mind to the dream world and revenge on those who received the Nobel Prize when he felt entitled to it. It is interesting, it just doesn't really involve the characters triumphing in any significant way. Atsuko is virtually useless at that point, despite fighting the hardest against Osanai night after night in the dreams. The ending of the movie is much more mysterious and suggestive. The waiter and bartender from Radio Club are not just two people who seem oddly prepared to fight dream monsters; they only existed in an internet website before the merging and dreams and reality. While not the final solution in either case, they lend a hand and in the movie suggest that the breaking apart of dreams and reality is opening a door to "the other world," possibly that of death based on the villain's sort of god of death rhetoric. In both cases, he is defeated by his belief that women are inferior, although in completely different ways. In the book it is simply a shock to see a vagina on the body of Christ, who is sexualized and idealized by his sect. In the movie, the combination of Atsuko and Paprika literally swallows him in a strange battle. The key to finding balance in the world again is to answer his masculine desire for destruction with her feminine will for peace. (Or something like that.) The point is that the movie does not throw a lot of subconscious religious stuff at you, but lets you wonder about the state of the world and its layers. In both cases, the Radio Club gentlemen seem to hold some secret we do not know, like guardians of the unfathomable.
In my opinion, the best way to experience Paprika is to watch the film, then read the book for background. The film is an amazing ride, and the book has a lot of interesting ideas that inspired it. You will learn where the name "DC Mini" comes from, as well as learn more about the characters' lives. It is also fun to see what the DC Mini looks like in the minds of the animators, along with the dream world, as well as in the book. And, in my opinion, a strange second personality or delusion come to life is more interesting an a dream alter-ego, although many of us do not dream of ourselves exactly as we are. I also feel that one should both watch and read the story because I feel like the movie did something very important: it gave the title a purpose. While the book touches on the idea that facing that which makes you uncomfortable can make you feel like you've had too much spice, the movie hints at a more profound meaning. The spice paprika (or perhaps flavor) can be seen as a nickname for that unknown something that makes a person special. The film hints at this in large part through the repeated indication that Atsuko is not complete without Paprika, without a little spice. Together, they are whole and they are strong enough to defeat those who would look down at them as only a young woman. It embodies Atsuko's potential as a person, further emphasized by the visuals at the end of the movie portraying her as a literal child growing by taking in the bad and triumphing over it. Is it cut and dry easy to understand? No. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. The point is that the book left me guessing and wondering if there just wasn't a better name.
