anime

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Renzaburō Taki has been chatting up Makie at a Tokyo bar for months. Finally, she agrees to take him home with her. As soon as they arrive she strips off her clothes and they have passionate sex. As soon as he is finished she shows her true colors. She’s a demon. She morphs into a spider-like creature with long appendages and a mouth-like vagina that’s full of teeth. He manages to pull out before she chomps his member off and she flees out the window.

Outside, in the dark edges of the city live the creatures of the Black World. They are demons from an alternate dimension who can look like humans when they need to and live among us. Centuries ago a truce was made between the humans and the demons and they’ve lived peaceably together. Within a few days, a new pact must be signed, but there are rebel factions on both sides who want to stop that treaty from being signed.

Taki is a member of an elite organization known as the Black Guard designed to keep the peace between humans and demons. He’s assigned to protect Giuseppe Mayart, a 200-year-old mystic who signed the last treaty and will be instrumental in ensuring the new one is signed as well.

Taki is teamed with Makie a Black Guard from the Black World. They go through a series of adventures battling an assortment of demons trying (and often failing) to protect Giuseppe.

Wicked City is an inventive, beautifully designed bit of animated horror. Taki acts like a gumshoe out of some old film noir. Makie is cool as a cucumber. She’s not exactly a femme fatale, but she has that ice-cold attitude. The look of the film is a mix between neo-noir and steampunk. The demons are pure Japanese tentacle monsters.

I loved most of it. The story is good, the characters interesting, and the filmmaking is mostly spot-on. I love a good mix of crime stories and fantastic monsters.

However, if I may issue my first-ever trigger warning in a movie review the film is quite misogynistic. Nearly every man oggles Makie and whenever she is sexually assaulted (and she is sexually assaulted more than twice) the film lingers on her naked body. It is obsessed with her breasts. Even while being gang raped they make her moan with pleasurable noises.

Now I’m not against sex in cinema, and I’ve enjoyed the male gaze in more than a few movies. I’m fine with characters who do evil things and there are times when sexual assault and rape can serve a purpose. It sometimes does serve a purpose here. But the way those scenes are filmed made it more than a little gross.

If you can get passed that though, it is quite a good film. The world-building is excellent and some of the demons are truly terrifying, and weird, and imaginative. The animation is beautiful (and weird, and imaginative). Definitely recommend it for those who think they can stomach it.

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I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I remember them for just a few seconds as I’m walking downstairs in the middle of the night to use the toilet (for I am of the age where I walk downstairs in the middle of every night to use the toilet) but by the time I get there the dream has been forgotten. Like mist, it fades away no matter how hard I try to capture it.

I’m not one to put much stock into dreams and their significance. Once in a while, I’ll remember a dream and it will seem to have some deeper meaning. During my brief tenure in graduate school, I had a dream about my grandmother, some hot air balloons, and a bunch of turkeys which guided me through a major decision, but mostly I think dreams are just your brain playing Etch-A-Sketch while you’re sleeping.

Paprika is a Japanese animated film from the mind of Satoshi Kon (who also made Perfect Blue). It is a strange, beautiful film that is all about dreams, reality, and our relationship to movies and pop culture.

Taking place in the near future scientists have invented a machine that allows others to view (and even record) people’s dreams. It was built as a psychiatric tool, but it has been stolen by a terrorist. The devices, called DC-Minis, are prototypes and lack restrictions, thus anyone (including terrorists) can enter anyone else using the machine’s dreams.

Our hero is Doctor Atsuko Chiba, the head of the psychiatric department developing the DC-Minis. She’s secretly been using the machine to help people outside the purview of the research facility. When she does this she uses the alias “Paprika.”

One of the people she’s been helping is Detective Toshimi Konakawa who has been having recurring dreams about a murder case he has been unable to solve.

Together (along with Doctor Toratarō Shima the chief of staff for the institute and Doctor Kōsaku Tokita, the childlike inventor of the DC-Mini) they try to solve the mystery of who stole the device.

I think. Honestly, the plot of this film was beyond my grasp. Like a lot of films that deal with dreams, Paprika embodies dream logic to tell its story. Things are constantly changing, morphing before our eyes. Characters jump into painting and movies on a whim.

There are a lot of movie references within the film. Not to specific movies (at least none that I caught) but to genres like mysteries and romances. In doing so the film seems to be toying with the idea of reality versus fiction and how movies and books and stories sometimes seem more real than reality.

Or something. Seriously, I’m not sure what I just watched, but I sure as heck enjoyed watching. The animation is simply gorgeous. And weird. And wild. And trippy.

Go see it.