The soundtrack is not one of Susumu Hirasawa’s best, but it does have more variety than his other albums. The track “Lounge” and “Welcome ot the Circus” are beyond Hirasawa’s realm of standard faire (he hates jazz, making “Lounge” that much more remarkable). Without argument, “Parade”, “Girl from Byakkoya” and “Meditational Field” are his most prominent and memorable works in Paprika. You cannot hear “Parade” without picturing the pandemonium parade in your mind or hear “Meditational Field” without picturing Paprika darting in and out of billboards and computer monitors. Hirasawa gained many new fans with the release of Paranoia Agent and understandably more with the release of Paprika.

While Paprika will most likely be admired for its animation (some scenes took three months to complete!) and remarkable soundtrack, most people will continue to be turned off by the incomprehensible storyline and lackluster characters. It is true that there are no memorable characters except perhaps Paprika herself, but to say there is no character development is wrong. Nonetheless, it is by fault of having so many characters critical to the plot that the development seems to suffer.

However, the fault lies with the viewer who puts too much emphasis on secondary characters. The main characters are, as Satoshi Kon points out in a commentary, those who are bathed in light instead of covered in shadow. People assume Atsuko Chiba is the main character and should have more development, but in actuality there are three main characters — Drs. Chiba and Tokita, as well as the detective Konakawa. Since Dr. Chiba is actually two characters — herself and her alter ego Paprika — there’s even less time to spend developing the characters. People tend to praise Perfect Blue because so much time was spent developing the main character that they could accept the lack of development of all the other characters in the movie. This time around Satoshi Kon spends more time defining and developing multiple characters using subtle references.

If you feel a character in Paprika does not have adequate development, you probably aren’t paying enough attention to the dialogues and background scenes. The same is true of the plot. Satoshi Kon deviated from his norm when drawing up the storyboard. Each scene is connected by a shared background feature. He tells us to keep an eye out for this transitional effect in the opening credits when Paprika darts in and out of billboards across the city.

The most glaring and perhaps hardest to follow transition is when Dr. Shima starts ranting in disjunctive thought then runs down a hallway, crashing through a window wihle laughing madly. That’s when reality and the dream world first mesh in Paprika. The effect on the brain at that point is jarring. People these days expect a narrative, but Kon denies us that privelege and instead uses dialogue to hint at the story. In the beginning of the film, Paprika explains the first half of REM sleep is like an artsy film, while it’s not until the later half that things become coherent. When the real world and dream world merge, the world enters conciously into the early stage of REM sleep, thus rendering reality into an artsy film. In this way, the plot remains coherent and developed, much unlike my review.

Overall, Paprika is an intriguing spin off of a famous Japanese story with an exceptional soundtrack as one expects of Susumu Hirasawa, but with a predictability that Satoshi Kon fans would notice. Such predictability is not a bad thing, but rather makes the film that much more enjoyable to fans of his earlier works.

Story: 4/5
Soundtrack: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Visuals: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5

That having been said, though, I got to see the movie WITH SATOSHI KON HIMSELF INTRODUCING IT AND ANSWERING QUESTIONS AFTERWARD, so I can’t complain. (:

-Tom