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Sep 6, 2018
Life is hard. Life has a structure, wake up, eat breakfast, go to work or school, eat dinner and sleep, rinse and repeat. It is repetitive, endless and hard. In this hustle and bustle of life, we forget most simple things, things that shape us, things that we want, the thing’s that we desire and work toward, that thing is beauty and change. A warm summer breeze touching the skin gently as a mother, A cold winter wind refreshing our senses and sending a shiver down the spine, a cool shower of rain on the face refreshing us and nature with rejuvenating power after hot
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and long summer(For Indians), the half moon hidden behind the clouds like a shy child, setting sun painting the sky with his setting glory creating the most beautiful painting or simply a look at the vast endless blue sky to remind us how tiny we and our problems are.
Daily life can become stale and boring when did we last looked up to the sky to marvel at its vastness when did we last marvelled at the colours of the dying sun, when did we last felt the cool light of moon calming our skin, probably a long time ago and most probably we don’t even remember. Yuru Camp is anime about camping. It revolves around the basic of the basic desires of a human being. The desire to seek change, a desire for seeking inspiration and meaning in the life. This desire drives us to grow but we lose our roots, what better ‘change’ than to see sun paint the sky each day with the different colours and clouds taking different shapes and position to make the characters and objects on the largest painting ever painted on the largest canvas. What better inspiration than nature which constantly changes and shapes our surroundings. Of course Yuru camp is not that complicated but it is based on that desire and I will leave you with a recommendation to try it out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 1, 2018
This world suck doesn't it. Everyone wants an escape to another world, the world of fantasy, the world of comfort, the world where we are most powerful. This feeling gives birth to the fantasy and the Isekai genre and Death March throws that at your face. It throws all fantasies about the different world onto your face like throwing meat at the dog's face and says "Just eat it quietly and be satisfied", and that is what I like about it.
Death March doesn't hide its true form. Death March doesn't give a fu*k about emotions, ethics, drama, world building, story, characters, or any other thing that you expect to find in a
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good anime. From episode one it screams that it is going to be a loli and fanservice anime, it is going to have a Gary Stu as the main character and he is going to have a harem with every girl in love with him, it spits in your face that hero is perfect and he is never going lose, hero is going to be a black slate so you can draw yourself in that situation and you know what I love it, I love when a work of art is honest with itself and its views, I love when an anime scream that it is not perfect and it is not trying to be perfect. I love it when an anime say's to your face that It is fan service for the sake of fan service, it is fantasy service for sake of fantasy service. I love when an anime say's that you are not going to get any value out of this but it will entertain and entertain it did.
I love Death March because of sheer honesty of what it is trying to deliver. It is not trying to deliver some fake ass emotional story about getting trapped in another world, it is not going to follow emotional and phycological aspects of getting trapped in another world, not it is going to explore philosophical aspects, Death March doesn't give a sh*t about any of these things. It quenches's the thirst for fantasy, for going into another world, for being strongest person.
So is Death March worth watching? Yes but for entertainment alone, Is it good? No, it is pretty shitty anime with no substance but it delivers what every Isekai anime should deliver and that is quenching out thirst for another world, sadly not many are able to do that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 2, 2017
Movies are very limited in scope due to their length, what anime could achieve story and theme wise is cannot be achieved by the movie as anime spams hundreds of episodes and movie only has only 2 hours at best. On the other hand movies have excellent budget making them panicle of Visuals and due to the short length they have adopted unique storytelling telling techniques. You can easily see and feel the difference between an Anime and Movie story structure which are wildly different. The story structure of movies can be great it is unfortunately easy to hack. That brings me to perfect blue
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and let’s begin with some positive points.
Perfect Blue is very well directed, every scene is well thought out and well directed to match theme of the movie, Satoshi Kon did a very good job of directing this movie. As you will expect from any movie, visuals and animations are fluid and staggering. The dark and unsaturated tone of the visuals blends well with the theme of the Movie. I am not a big fan of dark and bland visuals but they do their job well. Overall visuals of the Perfect Blue are outstanding and animation is somewhat innovative. Now we take a step forward to the story and I have no praise for it.
The story of perfect blue is simple to understand and it is like a story that is simple but trying to be complex and serious and this is where I say that it is very easy to hack a movie. By hack I mean is to create a shallow piece of work and show it as a deep and thoughtful work. Just like a mirage has an illusion of water, perfect blue has the illusion of integrity, deepness, and maturity but just like a mirage, it is an illusion. Now let me clarify myself and let us understand the structure of the story and its theme.
Every story follows a theme or every theme follows a story and if both get disconnected in one way or another story fails to make a point and it is unenjoyable, the story that is not visuals. Let just take Death Note as an example as many of you should have watched it completely. Death Note follows the theme of justice, it asks the question like “What is Justice?”, “Are criminal’s human?” etc. But it never leaves its theme of justice and when it leaves that theme in the second season all of the drama and tension falls to the ground and Death Note feels like a typical criminal vs detective anime and you may agree with me on this. Anime which is based on a particular theme can lose its luster after diverting from it. But only having the strong theme is not enough you have to show it with the story.
Perfect Blue is a patchwork of many themes and ideas which people can call mature. The theme such as identity crisis, dark parts of the film industry, mental illness, stalkers, rape so on and on. Now I have no problems with such themes but I have the problem with the intent behind it, these themes are there to deceive viewer to see the movie as more mature, deep, dark and realistic than it actually is. What I am saying is that perfect blue insults its theme and uses it for marketing purposes than to actually make a point or at least to provide some entertainment and oh god critics and reviewers love this kind of stuff. Let’s take a theme to understand what I mean.
Stalking is a real-world problem that celebrity and even common people face. Stalking is shown in a very narrow sense and only form point of view of the person who is the victim. There is no exploring the issue and in the end, that stalker is nothing but a mad and purely evil person. I am not against single-minded approach but Perfect Blue states form the start that it is taking these things seriously but fails to do so and same is with every theme. Perfect blue changes its theme’s so quickly like an octopus changing its skin color. First, it is all about identity than about stalking then about rape and mental illness, due to this Perfect Blue fails to be integral and never address what it is trying to conceive. This make’s whole movie a mess of ideas and nothing more.
Characters in perfect blue are just as one dimensional as the movie. One wants to be a singer and an idol but somehow decided to pursue an acting career, another what to be her I don’t know why, another wants to follow her and bed her for no reason at all and second one kills everyone close to the first one and I don’t know why. There is only one explanation to all this that all three of them are seriously fucked up in the head. I didn’t find any characters loveable and I hated everyone including the main character.
All I can say that Perfect Blue is a movie that was made to win awards and critical success, it is made to perform and nothing else. It is made to look dark, edgy and mature for an inexperienced audience (Yes I am insulting my own viewers but not those who are reading it right now OK ^). I have no other words for this movie than a fools play without any value and meaning, the movie just wanders around in an endless pit of darkness and that is the movie nothing more and nothing less. But that was no more than my opinion and an opinion of a lonely blogger has no value but Satoshi Kon does.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 17, 2017
What makes a great anime movie? Is it visuals, great storytelling, great and relatable characters, mind-bending themes and ideas or just the name of a famous director and studio. Whatever it is, we all love movies and anime. When I think about anime movies one of the first which comes to my mind is Summer Days with Coo and it is not because of complex storytelling, visuals or name of the director but it is because it is the only anime movie that genuinely made me cry and word “genuinely” is very important. Coo is not a movie of fakeness or pretending, it is a
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movie about reality and humans, It does not pretend anything but show directly what is true and that is the greatest asset of Summer Days With Coo. To understand this we have to understand the story structure and characters of this movie.
Characters in Coo are quite different than rest of the rabble. By that, I mean that they don’t have a specific trait like brave, loving or anything near it and they don’t follow normal convention of movie characters when they take action and when they do take action which will be almost always be motivated by the situation. There is no villain in this movie nor there are any heroes and what we might think is a hero do not follow general rules of a hero, ie. they are not purely selfless, well expect Ossan. In short characters in Summer Days with Coo are humans and nothing more and that is the greatest beauty of this movie. A hero is a hero because of the situation made him and villains are villains because situation made them, there no good and bad just people with different situations and needs. That is why I said there no fakeness or pretending, these people who are in the movie act genuinely like people in that situation, just like you and me. There is no trait defining them, no horrid past poking them, no high goal driving them, they are just normal people nothing more and nothing less.
Story structure is defined by a single action and multiple reactions to that action. Like when you drop a rock in a claim pond and watch ripples react with each other to form different patterns. The movie can neither be called story driven or character driven. it is the initial action that forms the story and characters react with that story making their mark on it and story also making its mark on them. Its beauty cannot be explained by mere words. Summer Days with Coo is a movie that can put nearly every movie I have watched in shame, in the storytelling department.
Again this simplicity and realism also reflect in its vision. It is rough, ugly, detailed, clunky and realistic in an odd way. Everyone looks normal, there are no extraordinary beautiful characters and yet there are detailed and beautiful backgrounds, this gives the movie a unique feel. Some may find visual to be repulsive but what hidden behind them is gold.
Summer Days with Coo is a truly unique and beautiful experience and everyone should give it a try. It is a movie filled with Simplicity and Beauty to the brim and there could be no doubt that it is one of the best movies I have ever watched. So go and give it a try and let me know.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 16, 2017
There are thousands of anime and movies dedicated to the philosophical questioning of reality and most famous in them are Ghost in the Shell and Matrix, those two are the ones who bought this genre into the mainstream and made it popular. Zegapain follows the same principle as them and yet it is more appealing in the philosophical and storytelling sense. In its core, Zegapain is a philosophical anime.
Pacing is what sells the show for me, it is much more practical storytelling than exposition which is spread throughout the series runtime. Story structure Zegapain is like a philosophical lesson, never in its entire runtime, we
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know everything about the world. The World slowly reveals itself through questioning by the main character and answers following an action or an enlightenment. This creates a perpetual urge to learn about the world and philosophy behind it and slowly it reveals itself by answering those questions by showing it to us rather than exposition. This allows everyone to understand even if you find this type of anime hard to understand hence opening it to a wide audience. It creates a unique experience where you get to learn every episode and not a single episode feels wested. This pacing allows Zegapain to explore Philosophical questioning of Reality without getting lost in its complexity. This pacing is, however, can feel slow if you do not like thinking or you understand everything in lighting speed which was the case for me.
Characters of Zegapain are there to support the pacing which is especially true for main character Kyou Sogoru. Kyou is what you may call a viewer protagonist, as like major Shounen main character he is dumb, friend loving, brave and does not ask questions quickly which allows series to have that sweet-sweet pacing. And there is Ryouko Kaminagi who is loving, openminded, asks questions quickly and finds the answer to them herself and she is my favorite character in Zegapain. Others are not worth to mention because they rarely drive the story forward and are there to support these two. In total, I can say that Zegapain does not have impressive characters but they do support story pretty well, In the end, Zegapain is not a character driven show but a story-driven anime.
Visuals do not impress me, they are clunky, messy and have the feel of mecha to them which I don’t like though mecha lovers will find it likable. Again the Visuals exists for sake of existing. Music, on the other hand, is a completely different story, Op and Ed are amazing though OSTs are mostly forgettable.
In the end, Zegapain is very unique anime which revolves around philosophy and in the philosophical department, it stomps every famous thing I have ever seen. there are anime which can beat it in it but those are obscure once and are not easy to understand while Zegapain makes this subject much more enjoyable and easy to understand. If you liked anything like Matrix then Zegapain is a must watch as it will destroy everything you have watched and I recommend it to everyone even if they are not interested in this type of subject.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 22, 2017
The attack on Titans is probably the one of the most famous anime in the history of Anime, the popularity of it cannot be underestimated and just like the Shonen of the old days, attack on Titans provided multiple people a get way into anime, it is a go to anime for many newbies. And with the end of the second season, it is time to reevaluate this anime.
Note: This post may have some spoilers, reader’s discretion is advised.
As a typical Shonen, attack on Titans follows the path of a hero trying to save the whole world with his friends. And unlike a typical Shonen
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attack on Titans uses a reality-based approach to its storytelling, at least until plot demands some Miracle. However, this approach to storytelling is not new to Shonen anime, but it is more refined and mature in the attack on titans than any other shounen anime, well except for hunter x hunter. The Attack on Titan uses the gore and its environment as a tension building equipment, giving the viewer both excitement and suspense at the same time. However, this storytelling method has some shortcomings, it is mainly due to Eren surviving a deadly situation with some stupid super powers and did I tell you that he can now also control Titans, It is so OP that it would put even Madara to shame. This not only breaks the belief of an unforgiving world but also reduces the tension which was build up to this point in the series, with any sense of danger for our heroes gone. This was truly a turning point for the series, as it transitioned from a unique shounen anime to a typical shounen anime where main characters have the power of plot armor and they cannot die. By my view, the story could have continued where Eren’s friends could have continued the fight and rather than using the muscle of Titans they could have used the muscle of their brains at least for once, but no matter it is what it is. This part did not reduce the enjoyment of the series as much as it reduced its uniqueness in my eyes.
Characters in Attack on Titans are quite supportive and rigid, they are there to support the hero, in this case, Eren. It is like that they do not have any personalities but their personalities are lines of supporting Eren in every circumstance. Most of the time it is understandable, but seeing as every character has these characteristics, make those characters bland and boring. It seems like the whole world revolves around Eren which is normally not a bad thing but seeing people supporting him without any consideration of his nature makes me question the logicality of nearly every character in Attack on Titans. As for Eren, he is very typical Shonen Hero, dedicated to his friends, comrades, and to the cause, which he thinks is just but as usual unable to see the bigger picture. After watching so many Shonen anime, at least for me these characteristics of the Hero has become annoying and Eren is no exception to that. Nearly every character well except for potato girl seems bland and nonunique, no characters are genre breaking and lovable at least for me, maybe it is because I watched too much Shonen anime in past which makes me sick of these stereotypes. But for anyone who is new to anime, these characters might be gold. However as Attack on Titans is not a character-centric show these flaws doesn’t affect it as much as it will any other anime.
Well choreographed action and thrill are what makes Attack on Titan good. It is very hard to find a well-choreographed Shonen show as Attack on Titans and mixing it with unique concepts or at least art style and Titan(kind of like Zombies) will put most of the thriller anime to Shame. Fluid actions and unique art style make Attack on Titan very enjoyable show to watch, Attack on Titans may be lackluster in other departments but it is very strong where it should be and that what makes it special. The attack on Titans stays constantly active, moving like a river never giving you chance to be bored, it is attention grabbing and it is very powerful in its visual aspects.
Now let’s talk about the second season a bit, every problem in the first season was transferred to the second season and every strength in the first season was removed from the second season. The first season fails to explain many things and it ended in mystery, the second season tries to alleviate that problem but it fails to do so. The second season is nothing but a massive badly done plot dump and nothing more. The second season also tries to invest in its empty characters, however, there is literally no connection between viewers and characters, there is no reason for you to feel emphatic towards them. I can understand why Mikasa is so obsessed with Eren because of flashback which was given to us, but I can’t understand why in the hell Ymir is so obsessed with Krista. Their character motivation is a just mess, without understanding the past I can’t connect and can’t feel sympathy for either of them. Problems with the second season don’t stop there, while whole season feels like a huge plot dump and boring one at that, they had given 12 episode for explaining the world of Attack on Titan and they couldn’t even manage to do that. It is ridiculous that they had 12 episodes to explain everything and at the end of the series you only manage to answer one question that humans are Titans and which was quite obvious from the start of the series, because what would they be? if not glorified Zombies. Which takes me to the next point.
The concept of Attack on Titans may that be the world, the Titans, 3d maneuver gear, unique art style, fluid fights and detail that they put into every scene is incredible at least in the first season, there is so much potential to be had in the concept of Attack on Titans and not to mention its high budget and truly all these things outmaneuver all these flaws exceptionally, yet I feel that so much potential has been lost in this series and especially in the second season where both action and visuals feel bland. There is not a good amount of thrill like the first season, nither there is incredible detail in the second season and there are no memorable character movements like the in the first season. The attack on Titans just like Sword Art Online took off based on its visuals, action, and concept and this just further proves again how powerful a concept can be to make a anime feel good even when its execution was rubbish.
In the end, Attack on Titans is an average Shonen anime. However, Attack on Titans was able to distinguish itself from your run of the mill Shonen anime with its great visuals, concept, art styles, an unending thrill. In my opinion, it could have been much better if it was able to address these issues which I stated in this post. For me, Attack on Titans is nothing but a Titan in the chain.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 6, 2017
So everyone is writing about Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, so I thought, I may as well write about it.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is not a comedy anime, nor it tries to be. Don’t be fooled by that comedy tag because it is not a comedy anime in any sense and If it is a comedy anime then it is pretty bad one. It is a moe-slice of life anime. So, what makes it tick?
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid works on two planes, first are characters and other is setting. It is an anime about characters interacting with the setting, which is not a new idea per
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say, everyone uses it but let us see how it works in Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.
Now as an anime Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid has nothing standing for it. It doesn’t have a story, it doesn’t have unique characters or does it have good world building for fantasy anime, but what it has is a unique premise on the paper at least and Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid uses its premise to its fullest. The show asks a simple thing. You have a maid dragon, right? then use her dragoness to its fullest. It doesn’t hold back using its uniqueness in its premise, it doesn’t drive towards normal but use it differentness in it highest possible capacity. That is why Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid stands out of all other “unique” anime that came before it. There is no lack of “unique” anime but the lack of using that unique to it fullest.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid doesn’t shy away to mix and experiment. It mixes the genre so well that you couldn’t even tell what genre is Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is, except the slice of life. Driving the show was a slice of life, a comedy with heavy yaoi undertones without any seriousness which I loved. Normally this subject is shipped with a huge baggage of seriousness but not here. While the tone of the show remains consistent but the last episode had a completely different tone that it felt like completely different anime altogether and that is saying something. It is not normal for anime to change its tone this way, but it gives us a very satisfying ending which could not have done otherwise. Which just say how experimenting this anime is.
As I said that Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is all about how characters interact with the setting(nearly everything is about that anyway). Anime provides very generic characters with generic traits but there is a difference that they are all dragons and because they are dragons they become unique characters. Even when they have generic trait they think different than a human, they are different than humans in every aspect of their thinking. You can see this from their day to day life with their human counterparts. Show simply take these generic dragon characters and puts them in human environment to see what happens, Which is the main appeal of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a simple anime about a cute human looking maid with dragons mind doing maid works in a dragon way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 7, 2017
Ah Life, how beautiful it is (or wretched depending on your situation), every slice of life anime tries to replicate this beauty of life and most of the time they fail, to capture the essence of life is not an easy thing and cannot be confined to single tone and nature. While the most slice of life anime tries to replicate life in a confined environment with confined story structure Kamichu tries it a bit differently.
Kamichu improvises life rather than replicating it and set its environment, the whole world. While this is nothing new and many prestigious animes like Mushishi and Natsume Yuujinchou do it
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but Kamichu adds a sweet touch of imagination to it while adding and utilizing moe elements. Kamichu is more free with its premise than any other show I have watched, rather than sticking to one aspect of life Kamichu put its finger in every pot, be it a love story, cute girls doing cute things, a small backyard adventure with the friends, adventure to save world or just rolling around in bed doing nothing and sleeping whole day. Kamichu does everything and it does everything very good which really surprised me because normally an anime which tries everything fails miserably in most of the things.
What makes it strikingly different from another slice of anime is that the world feels bigger, freer and more organic. It is not confined to school, backyard, workplace or home, it transits between places very freely and none of the places feels forced. Kamichu’s color palette is dull and smooth which is very odd for a slice of life animes but it works great in Kamichu, It sucks you in few minutes without any effort, its dullness enhance the animation and immersion, It can be brilliant when it want to. I think this color palette is what makes Kamichu works, it just sucks you in the world itself, you become the living part of the world.
Kamichu is however not without any faults. Some episodes are better than others and there is a lack of consistency in quality. As I said Kamichu takes a free view towards slice of life genre which allow it to roam free within the genre, the lack of consistency is mainly caused by wide genre shifts. That said it is not an anime which everyone can enjoy, it is a calming and adorable anime with very good animation and background art but it is not an anime for you if you cannot immerse yourself in it. There will be things that will annoy you because of its vast scale but positive points will eventually outweigh negative. Specials of Kamichu are far more consistent and good than anime so definitely give them a try.
Kamichu is a fresh breath in a slice of life genre, I regard it as one of the most innovative anime to ever grace slice of life genre. It is definitely anime to watch if you are long time slice of life fan.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 18, 2017
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Humans have two sides, the animal side which keeps us alive and human side which builds societies, laws, art. This side makes us what we are. Shiki tries to touch this subject. However, Shiki fails to achieve that on so many levels.
Shiki has one of most boring starts I have ever seen in anime, first episodes are sluggish and uninteresting. While viewer knows what the hell going on from as early as episode 3, characters in anime simply can't figure it out even with such huge evidence. Every character is god damn idiot. Even these Shiki's are idiotic they don't even try
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to hide their presence.
Characters in Shiki are annoying at worst and uninteresting at best. Given the Shiki's premise, it should be a very character driven show. However, characters are the worst part of the show. It seems people working on this had the competition of How can you make each character as unrealistic as possible while making them as annoying as possible? This is unacceptable. It is not like that Shiki didn't have enough episodes, rather than showing how each character is a douchebag, they could have shown the relationship between various characters making climax more heartbreaking. If characters had enough development for me to care about them, then this would have been very good anime, sadly that is not the case. The only likable character for me was Tomio Ookawa, the person who was killing Shiki's left and right and killed his dead son, probably the smartest character too.
Shiki liked by many because it shows moral ambiguity, let me debunk that myth. Now imagine that this entire village either died or people turned into Shiki's. These Shiki's still need to feed on other people and when they do, that person either dies or become Shiki. Now this will spread like an epidemic, how long do you think human population will last as more and more people will turn into Shiki's and others die. Shiki population will grow with increasing rate and human population will decrease with increasing rate. Soon there will not be enough humans to feed all Shiki's and hence Shiki's will die out. The conclusion is simple that Shiki's are unnatural as they dig their own grave, either way, they are doom for extinction. There not a single carnivorous in the world which would naturally do that kind of thing. Hence by definition humans have more right to live than Shiki's. Because of slow reproduction of humans, Shiki's will eventually run out of food. This premise is very well handled in Parasyte the maxim. There is no moral ambiguity here.
For me, Shiki is a mess of stupid characters playing kingdom kingdom.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 16, 2017
We all are blessed with power of imagination, we all crave something unique, something powerful, we all crave of what cannot be achieved, we all want to touch what cannot be touch, we want to build something that has never been built, we all want to become immortal through our work, because that is who we are that is what makes us human. Imagination is a powerful tool that can change the world, bend reality, it can make us look really stupid or smart beyond imagination. Imagination is, however, a double-edged sword, It can be both bad or good, it can be organized or disorganized,
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it can win hearts for good of the world or for devastation, Imagination also has the power of illusion and trickery.
You want me to summarize paprika in one or two sentences? Take your dog, get some colors and a big paper, let that dog run along, let him dip himself in those colors and let him do whatever he wants with that paper, Done? good, now take that paper and try to sell it on street, did it sell? No? well paint yourself and make a name for yourself and then go to a gallery and display that painting your dog made, you will soon be acknowledged as the one greatest artist ever lived. That is in the nutshell is Paprika.
Why do directors exist? do they exist to enhance the story? or do they exist to show how good they are at directing? Should a director show off his skills while simultaneously trashing the story? Without a story, directors cannot exist and without director’s story can not be accessible. Directors job is to make the story his own and through his skill and hard work make it more effective and better. Just like music is useless without stealing listeners heart, just like an animation is useless without telling a story through animation, just like that, a director is useless without making story good and accessible. look at Erased, It is a bad story without actually any suspense, but good music, animation, and most importantly good direction make it better than the raw story. Director can make a bad story good with sheer skill. A director is a conductor of the orchestra, no matter how good instrumentalist are if conductor sucks then performance is going to suck.
Paprika is a mess of animation, it is a mess of music and it is a mess of characters. Paprika creates the illusion of complexity for the normal viewer who knows nothing of how illusions work, “movie feels complex so it must be good, It makes me feel smart if I like this complex movie” people with this kind of ideology may hop over it if they want to this post is not for them. There is a subtle difference between complex and complicated, complex things make sense and are enjoyable but complicated things are complicated for sake of being complicated they make no sense. Why in the end could Paprika swallow villain? why do the world of dreaming and real world merge? who the hell is Paprika anyway? Is she part of that scientist’s lady or a program? Why has villain so pitiful dream? It doesn’t make any sense. Well if someone says it shouldn’t make sense, that is the point, well then why to watch this movie, go to sleep and dream, I am sure you can have some wacky dreams, or just don’t clean you room for few month for you to not able to make sense of your room, can you live like that?
On one hand, the movie tries to be a sci-fi, on the other hand, it tries to a philosophical movie questioning that “should human interfere in nature?”. Paprika also tries to touch phycological aspect of human life but later to all boils down to an all powerful and purely evil villain trying to the destroyed world. Paprika changes subjects faster than politicians change their statements, it just makes it a horrible mess. All respect I had about Satoshi Kon has gone down the drain, I think Satoshi Kon just want to flash his skill without regards to consistency or story. Making a scene transition every few seconds doesn’t make you a good director, making a story shine like a sun will make you a good director. Most of the time simplicity is better than complexity and complexity is always better than complicated. See ya.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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