Studio: Madhouse
Watched on 26/04/20
***SPOILERS***
This film is fucking gorgeous. If I accept a world in which no film will ever again have the commitment nor the budget to be Akira, Satoshi Kon and Paprika are the next best thing. The art and animation are beautiful. Everything else about it is allllright but I'd still definitely recommend this film to people purely because of its brilliant hand-drawn animation
The art style of Paprika transcends the industry it comes from. It doesn't draw 'anime' faces, it draws its own symbols for eyes, noses and mouths, with each one being thoughtfully adapted to suit its character - as they should be. The animation is fluid and fast-paced, yet meticulous, detailed and evidently well-researched. It's incredibly realistic, despite dealing with some of the most trippy, wacky subject matter you can imagine. It does an amazing job of not losing the principles of good animation. The occasional shortcut is taken here and there, which is understandable. How the hell else would you animate someone pushing through a ciema screen with a film playing on it? The other disappointing thing was the way speech was animated. Here, there was a bit of falling back onto industry standard, with the still-head-moving-jaw approach, as opposed to full-body acting in most cases. Still really great though.
With the animation being such a clear focus for Kon and his team, to me it felt like the other aspects of the film were given way less importance. They were decent, nothing special. Definitely didn't detract from the experience but that's it. For example, the story isn't so much a story as it is a rough outline of a story to carry you from one visual experience to the next. It makes sense and is kinda interesting but it's neither very satisfying nor purposeful. Maybe I'm missing a bunch of hidden meaning and symbolism or whatever but pretty much all the plot points are low-stakes and quite uninspiring. What does this Mr. Chairman actually want? And how on earth does he achieve it? A good example of not necessarily needing the science explained but at least the mechanics.
Similarly, the characters are all sort of interesting but I didn't find myself connecting with any of them particularly. They aren't very compelling and I'd argue only one of them (the police officer) even has a personal journey. The rest were so surface-level that any of them could have made any decision at all and it probablt fit with their character. As for the story-telling, it's actually pretty good but as I've said before, there's only so much you can tell a non-story.
The part where Paprika rides the nimbus cloud was fucking cool too. That whole scene/sequence was amazing. Also loved Satoshi Kon giving his own movie 'Tokyo Godfathers' a shout out lmao. Good film. 7/10.
