Paprika contains scenes with sexual content.
Originally based on a book written in 1993, the 2006 anime film Paprika could be written off as an anime version of Inception. It's worth noting, however, that Satoshi Kon's film predates Inception by four years, and the original book predates it by over a decade. There are superficial similarities between the two plots, due to involving machines meant to influence people's subconscious through their dreams. Paprika is a one-of-a-kind experience, with a beautiful yet surreal style that make it so much more than just an anime version of a Hollywood movie.
Paprika's director Satoshi Kon was never quite as popular or well-known as Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki, especially outside Japan. However, the films that Kon directed including Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers have all been widely acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. Kon also directed the anime series Paranoia Agent, and the 1993 anime adaptation of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Paprika was the last movie Kon completed before his unexpected death from pancreatic cancer in 2010.
Paprika Is A Parade For The Sense
To briefly summarize Paprika, Dr. Atsuko Chiba uses a machine called the DC Mini to treat her patients by entering their dreams with a digital avatar named Paprika. It soon becomes apparent to Dr. Chiba and her team that someone is using the DC Mini to enter the dreams of others to influence their minds with malicious intent. Chiba and her team investigate in both dreams and the real world as dreams begin to spill into reality. At its core, Paprika is a mystery, but embraces the unique artistic opportunities of its dream-laden premise to put an utterly unique spin on the mystery concept.
It's thematically appropriate that one of the recurring songs in Paprika's soundtrack is called "Parade", as one of the major scenes involves a literal parade of bizarre dream figures spilling over into the real world, and because Paprika overall feels like a constant forward march of images and sounds. It can be overwhelming and disorienting – but that's the whole point. Satoshi Kon became famous for the visual style used in Paprika, and the film is a perfect demonstration of his talent for art direction and animation. Kon fully embraces the opportunity for surreal and bizarre imagery and animation afforded by a story driven by dreams spilling over into the real world.
Paprika isn't necessarily a scary movie, but many of the dream sequences are genuinely unsettling. The animation, art direction, and use of sound in these scenes expertly establishes to audiences that something isn't quite right, slowly building up to the reveal of how exactly the dreams and reality are merging. Dream sequences naturally lent themselves to the Uncanny Valley principle of things that look almost but not quite fully human being especially unsettling, and Kon's art style commits fully to making the most of that. Still, Paprika does mitigate the frequent aura of eerie uncanniness with genuinely funny jokes and visual gags.
Paprika's Soundtrack Perfectly Compliments Its Story
Experimental musician Susumu Hirasawa has released 17 albums of his own, along with a comparable number of anime soundtracks. Western anime fans will likely know him for his work on the anime adaptations of Berserk. Hirasawa previously provided the soundtrack for Kon's other film Millennium Actress and for his anime series Paranoia Agent. It's a perfect match. Kon's films are known for their unique, surreal art style, and Hirasawa's musical style is so unique that it involves playing several instruments he built himself from scratch.
Although Hirasawa's entire soundtrack for Paprika is fantastic, there are two standout tracks, "Parade" and "The Girl in Byakkoya". The catchy but creepy "Parade" plays during various key moments in the film, as well as on the Blu-ray version's menu, which gives viewers the perfect demonstrate of what they're getting into. "The Girl in Byakkoya" isn't necessarily any less surreal than "Parade", but is a lot softer and gentler and serves as Paprika's theme song during the opening credit sequence. Hirasawa's soundtrack stands out as one of the best in anime. The music fits with Kon's art perfectly and the sound and visuals combine to Paprika both truly beautiful and bewilderingly surreal.
Paprika Can Be Too Weird For Its Own Good
Paprika is a fantastic anime movie. Even so, it's not entirely without its flaws. As undeniably stylish as it is, sometimes, those stylistic choices get in their own way. Deliberately presented as surreal as possible, the dream sequences naturally don't operate on real-world logic, featuring a lot of quick camera cuts and sudden jumps in visual esthetic. Especially during a first viewing, it can be hard to keep track of what exactly is happening and what exactly the visual metaphors are supposed to represent. Of course, that just encourages repeated viewings, and Paprika is definitely worth watching more than once.
One of the most common complaints about Paprika from the audience is the film's inclusion of a romance angle that feels tacked-on, largely inconsequential, and isn't presented with the build-up it deserves. The criticism isn't unwarranted, but the romance angle is innocuous enough that it doesn't really have much impact on the rest of the movie for good or bad. It is clumsy, but it's also pretty easy to ignore. It's certainly not enough to hold Paprika back from being a classic.
With Satoshi Kon's unique art style and directing fully embracing the visual possibilities of the dreamscape and a unique soundtrack by Susumu Hirasawa perfectly suited to the animation, Paprika has deservedly gone down as a classic of feature-length anime films. Although the premise has inspired later movies like Inception, Paprika remains so utterly unique that it really can't be compared to anything else. Despite the superficial similarities, Paprika's unique qualities make it so much more than just an anime version of a Hollywood movie.
