In a distant, familiar future, our dreams can be breached, shared and "hacked" via a specialized piece of hardware. This seems to function as a potent means of psychotherapy, but when a prototype falls into unknown hands, the ramifications are potentially catastrophic. Sure enough, before we've even narrowed down a list of suspects, the line between fantasy and reality grows blurred, smudged beyond all recognition. Surreal, trippy phantoms invade the waking world, drawing fistfuls of unsuspecting day-sleepers happily down the rabbit hole in their hallucinogenic parade through the city. Even more experienced staff members, such as the titular dream agent Paprika, can't always discern tangible from artificial, which makes for some unpredictable twists and a playful relationship with the viewer's perceptions.

The last film of Satoshi Kon's tragically short career, it should go without saying that Paprika is gorgeously animated, with a ridiculous level of detail and a very pronounced, unusually fluid sense of motion. Anime can often lean too much on sudden movements and long, lingering static shots, but Kon's cast is constantly doing something. Their world feels lived-in and awake, even when its contents are a mere illusion. Ferociously creative, proudly odd and unrestrainedly beautiful, my biggest complaints are that the dialog is often smothered by rambling, incoherent victims and, as a result, the plot can be quite difficult to follow. A wonderful experiment, overflowing with ripe ideas and memorable scenes, but a good fifty percent of the subtitles can be ignored and the resolution leaves something to be desired. Would be a fantastic film to experience on psychoactive drugs.

I gave this a six out of ten because it never stopped being entertaining, while at the same time, nothing was happening. The hell does that mean? Well, the movie is a mind bender of visual delights, but I never had a clue what was going on.
I mean, the story kind of makes sense, however there is no world building. It's like this is a sequel to a movie that doesn't exist. Maybe this was adapted from a manga, I don't know. Regardless, it is still the filmmaker's job to tell a complete story.
After I watched _Paprika_ I read the synopsis, like, "oh, is that what I just watched?"
Let's see if I can break this down: _Paprika_ is an anime, sci-fi thriller. It operates on literal dream logic, so it is insanity from start to finish. The obvious comparison is going to be _Inception_, which came out four years after this. So, in that regard, _Inception_ is a better version of this movie. I can also tell that _Everything, Everywhere, All at Once_ was inspired by this.
I get the sense that this movie has a loyal fanbase who love it dearly, but I just didn't get it. I didn't get to know the characters, so I never cared about them. I didn't understand the villain's motivation.
Seriously, I know if this were a series that explored the people and the world within, I'd really like it.
As is, it's just a mess. If you have ADHD, and enjoy bright colors, one-dimensional characters, and don't need a plot, you're in for a treat.

Paprika sprinkles its spicy originality across a sprawling vibrant fever dream. Dreams are windows to the imaginative capacity of the subconscious. Manipulating memories to fabricate worlds unbounded by the physical laws of reality. An endless wave of colours and possibilities, requiring no legitimacy for their existence. In psychology, dreams are a method for interrogating the mentality of its subject. Recurring nightmares could be a sign of stress-induced anxiety, fear or mental disorders. The late Satoshi Kon, in what was his last full feature, harnessed the concept of Tsutsui’s novel and challenged the limitations of Japanese animation once again.

Paprika is the equivalent of a hallucinogenic warped mind-bending drug-induced fever dream that tests the attentive abilities of its audience. This is as “anime” as Kon’s work gets. Bashfully bonkers. Colourfully confusing. And plenty of Paprika. Whilst ‘Perfect Blue’ is his most accessible feature for adults, Paprika tends to engage itself with fans of the art form instead. That’s not a derogatory trait to have, as it allows Kon to exercise his visionary ingenuity one last time, but the narrative requires patience. A quaint approach that resembles the personality of doctor Chiba, the head scientist of a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment creatively entitled “Dream Therapy”. But when a dream recording device is stolen, a plague of nonsensical dreams start to merge with the realms of reality. A parade of dancing frogs, strange dolls, wiggling electronic appliances, colossal Shinto gates and golden cat statues just to name a few composites of the ominous fever dream that plagues the minds of unsuspecting dreamers.

Infiltrating such a cluster bomb of visual splendour would be no simple task for Chiba’s dream alter-ego Paprika, when at one point she is groped by a colleague who physically splits her fleshed shell in half (not nearly as traumatic as it sounds though...). Yet beneath the mesmerising dream-bending extravaganza is a narrative centralising on the sophisticated theme of control. Taking one’s life back. Detective Konakawa represents this exquisitely when trialling out the “DC Mini” device to treat his anxiety. The recurring nightmarish dream regarding his homicide case prevents him from being in control of his life, unable to watch films at the cinema due to past trauma in his childhood. The amalgamation of present and past within his dream perfectly illustrates the haunting abilities that our subconscious infects our mind with. From a non-scientific perspective, it’s a large reasoning for the development of mental disorders.

Of course, the underdeveloped affection Chiba has for her obese child-at-heart genius colleague Tokita somewhat negates the central narrative on psychotherapy, but still focuses on the action of taking control. She finally manages her emotions during a time of distress, and that’s exactly what Paprika revolves around. The whole dream within a dream concept, which apparently was inspiration for Nolan’s epic ‘Inception’, is just a science-fiction shell that enabled Kon to express his creativity without diminishing the novel’s sense of originality. Not to mention Hirasawa’s euphoric score which inventively utilised a vocaloid name “Lola”.

Will you fully understand the story on your first watch? Unlikely. Even with the occasionally clunky dialogue that explains the psychotherapy concept. This was the first anime feature film I ever watched (excluding the likes of Pokémon...), and now four watches later I finally understand every single detail of Kon’s cinematic piece of expressionistic art. It’s science-fiction at its most gentle. It’s psychology at its most cerebral. And it’s anime at its most “anime”. Satoshi Kon, you’re a legendary visionary, and always will be.

"The Internet and dreams are similar. They're areas where the repressed conscious mind escapes."

Not for children or the faint of heart.

'Paprika' doesn't hesitate when descending into a trippy nightmare with it's untamed imagination. It's like an anime comic book coming to life in a Salvador Dali style of surreal. Even the square frame can't contain the madness of the dreamworld.

Once the song 'Susumu Hirasawa - Parade' started playing, I knew that things were gonna get weird, real fast.

However, not to say the movie doesn't hold any beauty in it's dreamlike setup. All colors and animation aside, the beauty itself comes from the imagination and the amount of detail Satoshi put into the movie, which was mesmerizing.

The soundtrack's great as well. It's so full of energy and joy that it doesn't matter if I didn't know what the lyrics are actually saying.

I think director Satoshi Kon said it better himself:

"If you look at a dream overall, it's very difficult to discern the meaning. However, as time goes on, there might be certain meanings in the background. Movies that you can watch once and understand entirely -- that is the type of movie that I don't really like. However, if you are able to understand 70 to 80 percent of what's being relayed, and there's still some percentage left that would allow for your own interpretation . . . that's the type of movie that I do like. There might be a certain part that you don't quite understand, but there is a portion that rests in your heart."

R.I.P