Alex Nichiporuk The best way to describe this movie to someone is to ask them if they ever watched Alice in Wonderland.Satoshi Kon has always had a thing for duality as the core theme in this movies, whether it is Mima's private and public image in Perfect Blue, Chiyoko's heart-wrenching story both on screen and off-screen in Millennium Actress, or the salvation and destruction of family in Tokyo Godfathers. In Paprika, it is reality and dreams that play as the tools for this theme when a device allows the user and others to observe and even delve into their own and other's dreams.Paprika's beautiful animation accompanied with hypnotizing music made this a real treat to watch. I was pretty confused at first on what was going on, but knew enough to not get completely lost. This movie accurately portrays just how absurd dreams are and Paprika shows what happens when we allow our subconscious to run amok, causing chaos and confusion, sometimes in beautiful ways. Characters were very fun to watch and the story, whether absurd or grounded, is engaging to follow along.Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in Kon's work or wants to try something a little out of the norm for anime.

mavoro Im not a person who get scared from monsters crazy violent people or anything like that. I can watch that without blinking and I'm usually bored from Horror Movies. But this Movie makes me shiver and full of fear. The concept of dreams always scared me. Why do we sleep what happens when we sleep is for me a quite scary topic in itself, and the insanity of dreams always made me jump out of bed when i was a kid. This Movie puts this into the form of a story. Even the intro makes me very scared in itself. The concept of dreams making you insane is something very familiar to myself and after this movie i probably don't plan on sleeping for some time. The story is fast pace and i was always one step ahead of it, did it make it any Les scary? NO, holy crap I'm so scared by this, please i don't ever want to sleep again! Animation: Superb Characters: Superb Concept: Genius I love every bit of it only its a bid to scary for me. Only scary Movie there is for me. Also this is one of the reasons Inception sucked SO hard. Im spoiled by this. 10/10

brchthethird I sure picked a doozy of a film for my second excursion into anime. PAPRIKA is an exhilarating, mind-bending look at dreams and the nature of reality that is also one of the weirdest, most visually inventive things I've ever seen. The basic premise for the film is that there is this recent invention, the DC-Mini, which is able to record dreams. However when three of them are stolen, and don't yet have programmed access controls, scientists who were working on the device and a cop have to recover them before the fabric of reality is broken and the dream world bleeds into the real world. Aside from the story, which is very confusing at times because of not knowing what takes place in the dream world and what doesn't, the aspect I most liked in this film was the visuals. It was animated using traditional cel animation (with some CG elements) and Satoshi Kon came up with some pretty awesome stuff to show us. The weirdest was probably a recurring procession with frogs playing instruments, giant dolls, and kitchen appliances. To say this film is confusing would actually be an understatement, although I did understand the setup and the general endgame. Another thing which might be nice to point out, and which I also noticed with AKIRA, is the cautious approach taken with science and technology. One theme common to both this and AKIRA is the danger when technology and science is in the wrong hands. Here, a device which can be used for psychotherapy is stolen, but because of the lack of proper access controls the person using it can enter the dreams of others and bring the dream world into reality. This seems to be a common theme in a lot of Japanese cinema, and it is explored here with enough visual creativity for a dozen films. Overall, despite the confusing nature of the story (which will probably benefit from multiple viewings) I thought this was an extremely original film that was beautifully animated and had a lot of artistry behind it. Highly recommended.

tieman64 "I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and then hook up with them later." - Mitch Hedberg Most of Satoshi Kon's animated films ("Perfect Blue", "Millennium Actress" etc) feature non-linear narratives which deftly merge pasts, presents, futures, dreams, fantasies and realities. His final feature, "Paprika", is no different.Though confusing at first glance, peel back its many layers and "Paprika" offers a fairly simple tale. Here we have a repressed psychologist who "enters the dreams" of patients in order to "fix them" and "make them more ordered". To do so, she creates a fantasy heroine called Paprika, a pixie-girl who embodies all the qualities the psychologist wishes she herself possessed. The irony of creating a fantasy to destroy the fantasies of others is lost on the psychologist.Next we have three emasculated men, one clinically obese, one wheelchair bound and one a police officer. The wheelchair bound figure seeks to symbolically "destroy all those who meddle with dreams". Why? Because dreams have become his chief means of achieving happiness, fulfilment and self-actualisation. Burnt by life, he depends heavily on, and retreats further into, his carefully groomed dreamscapes. Needless to say, Kon's "dreams" serve as metaphors for a wide range of "things". They represent everything from internet chat rooms to video games, movies, TV, drugs, sex, prostitutes, food and so on. His "dreams", then, are representative of any all human escapes or coping mechanisms.The cop, meanwhile, enters various dreams as a means of curbing his real life anxieties. Ingeniously, his meetings with Paprika occur in seedy locales, their psychoanalysis sessions resembling sexual liaisons with escorts or call girls. Other characters include a socially withdrawn computer programmer (symbolic of Japan's Hikkomori) and an assistant who acts out various rape fantasies. Virtually all the film's characters are psycho-socially messed up (nods to addictions, masturbation, alienation etc), Kon alluding to a Japan in which modern techno-capitalism has bred all manners of perversions and dysfunctions. The film's dream sequences, most of which feature a mysterious "marching band", are themselves packed with symbolic references to Japanese culture (lots of consumer objects, politicians, religious symbols etc). Elsewhere, billboards, advertisements and the glittery snake-oils of a hyper-consumerist culture bleed incessantly into and out of one another. Every commercial, jingle or pop-song is but another fantasy to be flirted with or discarded. By the film's ends, the dangers of fantasy (the social disconnection, violence, extreme egoism, sexism or misogyny they foster) are acknowledged, but also the emancipatory power of "dreams" as well, be they an individual or communal activity.Aesthetically, "Paprika" is strong, with mind-bending visuals and a memorable score. This being a Japanese animation, there's the obligatory tentacle-rape sequence, a bizarre fetish which goes all the way back to Hokusai's "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", and perhaps further. "Paprika's" climax is somewhat derivative, with its generic light-shows and gigantic apparitions, but it's nevertheless Satoshi Kon's strongest feature since "Perfect Blue". See "Existenz", "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", "The Sky Crawlers", Sang-ho Yeon's "The King of Pigs" and "Demonlover".8/10 – Worth two viewings.