Film Review: Paprika (2006)

Paprika is a Japanese Anime film directed by Satoshi Kon in 2006 and is based on a novel written by Yasutaka Tsutsui which goes by the same name. Kon started out as a manga artist, creating work such as Toriko (1984), it was not until 1997 until he made his directional debut with Perfect Blue. Since then he has directed many other anime films and has won awards such as the Public’s Choice Award at the Montréal Festival for Paprika. Kon also likes to use the female gender as a theme in his works, he stated that female characters were easier to write because he is not able to know the character in the same way as a male character.

The plot of Paprika is centered around a group of therapists and a device called the DC Mini that allows other people to see your own dreams. However, when this device is stolen chaos ensues as the thief starts to enter other peoples dreams and wreaks havok on the public's psyche's. It is then a race against time to stop the thief before the dream state and reality merge into a mixture of conscious and unconscious. 

For a newcomer to anime, Paprika is a very hard animation to follow. From psychedelic dreams containing marching musical frogs to other scenes of characters merging into huge golden robots, Paprika tries to create a theory around dreams and reality. It is difficult to understand when you are viewing reality from a dream, and also who Paprika actually is and where she came from. Personally I have never had a dream quite as psychedelic as the ones shown in this film but nonetheless the animation of the film is very visually striking. The bright bold colours and amazing transformation scenes create a very eye-catching piece of work. Although a beginner to the anime genre, I'm sure more viewing of this particular style will open up the wonder that is the anime world.