Review of Paprika (2006) by Ivan D — 22 May 2010

Anime is a different genre of its own, containing film traits that can only be attributed to such. "Paprika", originally a novel, is one of the rare concepts that can only work in and only around the realms of Anime.

Now, imagine it as a CGI-cooked spectacle, and it's an immediate afterthought that it would not deliver. "Paprika" is an imaginatively-conceived story about dream interceptions playing with the ideas of technological "ifs" and "whens", with surrealist images sometimes accompanied by Japanese Techno-Pop music.

The sole weakness of "Paprika" came from the film's introduction of characters and ideas. It's too incomprehensible to serve as a warm-up for what bizarre events to come. I appreciated some allusions to cinema, especially when the detective was explaining about the "PanFocus", and he immediately resembled Akira Kurosawa(I thought I'm the only one to notice it, only finding out that it's in the IMDb trivia section).

To have Freddy Krueger lurking in our dreams is pure suspense fun. But to have dreams and nightmares and mind figments and reality to cross over and merge: That's chaos, and is well-portrayed by Satoshi Kon.