Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Classic: Paranoia Agent
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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If you ignore the full boxset listings and try to track down the four single volumes separately, you might have better luck. I managed to pick up all four for a friend of mine several months ago, and while it was still far more than I'd want to pay for a 13-episode series normally (though ironically probably still less than the original MSRP), it was still substantially less than I'd ever seen the complete boxset going for. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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thanks |
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Beobachter
Posts: 18 |
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A stone cold masterpiece and my favorite anime ever, hands down.
It's amazing how packed with sub-text and meaning the show is, starting all the way from that OP with its sneakily evocative lyric. And yet, it never gets pointlessly obtuse for me at any point; unlike many other symbolism-heavy shows out there, it has surprising level of (relative) accessibility. Someone who likes to decode and unpack visual + thematic stuff would have an absolute blast with this. |
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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Oh, cool new feature!
This is going to make me want to watch Paranoia Agent again. Guess I'm lucky I bought the LE box with Maromi plush and further volumes ages ago. Gosh, Pioneer/Geneon was my favourite company. Why is this show not rescued for North America! But, everybody who can watch it, enjoy especially the first time. I'd probably pay a lot today too for it if I could. It's just that good. |
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kirisaki_kabuto
Posts: 29 |
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Reviews of old shows per episode? Hm... Now, my opinion has absolutely no weight, I'm well aware, and it is also clear that ANN's staff is clearly set on making reviews a central part of the content on the site and me writing anything about it will have as much of an impact as a single drop of water falling over the ocean. I can't really understand the reasons for such focus on reviews, but I'm sure that they came up with such a plan with something in mind and with good reasons for it. As inconsequential as my opinion is (and perhaps because of it) I'll still write it here.
I find reviews for a single episode an abomination (pardon my hyperbole here). Their usefulness can be argued for ongoing shows, though I still think that making a review every three or so weeks/episodes would serve the same practical purposes (and serve them perhaps even better) and actually offer a better look with more actual content and context to go over, without favoring pointless over-analysis to make up for it. These reviews offer viewers a peek at the sea of ongoing shows and can be useful in picking series to keep up with. It can later on keep users informed so that they know if a show they dropped gets better or even worse. That much I can comprehend, even if I am still opposed to the format. Reviewing classical shows is a fantastic idea. So many new fans (say people who started to get into the medium in the past 3/4 years) often skip out on anything that came out before 2010 (with some obvious mega-popular exceptions) and end up missing what I personally consider to be the best years for anime. They miss out on classics that could potentially change their perspective on the medium. People nowadays, I feel, are overly obsessed with what's coming out right now and what's hot this moment, focusing on following the seasonal shows (something I believe is not everyone's cup of tea). I've met so many people that say anime is all the same and they got tired of it. Afterwards, I ask them if they've seen certain series that came out 5 or more years ago and most of their replies are negative. I usually tell them to watch that instead of the hottest hit of the moment (just to clarify, I have nothing against recent shows and personally enjoy a lot of seasonal series weekly, I just mean to say that these new shows shouldn't be the only ones or even the priority) Having some people review some older shows on the main feed, especially some from the 80s and 90s, would be awesome - but these should always be reviews for the series and not for each and every single episode. It's been 11 years since PA came out. What does it matter if any single episode was good? If you want to argue that a show is inconsistent, you can say so in a series review, there's no need to go over each episode. For people on the fence about buying the series what matters is if the show as a whole is worth buying or not, not if the first episode is bad, the second good, the third so-so and so on and so forth. This format only makes sense for something like memories, ani kuri, genius party and the like, where each story is standalone and has inherent value in and of itself. A series is a series, it is more than the sum of its episodes. If you can do a review for the whole series (i.e. if the show is finished) you should do so and forego the analysis of all episodes individually as if they were meant to stand on their own. It's fine if you keep a bigger picture in mind and state how the episode feels within the series, or a synecdoche-like approach, but that is, in my opinion, pointless and very misleading, containing very little importance to a critique of the whole, especially when you try to quantify your evaluation of each episode. I just think that, instead of having 13 reviews of Paranoia Agent, it could have been significantly more interesting, and each review more pertinent and more relevant, if we had 13 reviews of different older shows (or 6, or 4, considering it takes longer to review a show than an episode). It would bring more, and more diverse, older shows to people's attention, perhaps catering to a wider variety of tastes. But I guess that maybe that wouldn't generate as much discussion (i.e. comments), which probably helps the website make money since it makes people come back here to comment in defense of their own argument or simply against others. Well, that is obviously just my perfectly inconsequential opinion and I'm sure plenty of people would vehemently disagree with me. I hope I didn't offend anyone with my comment, and apologize if this isn't the most appropriate place for it, since it is more of a comment about the format than the actual review. |
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walw6pK4Alo
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Something like PA works as a weekly stand-alone by-episode because it's fairly episodic, but I could see other shows working better as being reviewed in arcs so that fully ideas can be conveyed. But that also depends on the show, where some arcs can be half the series or only two to three episodes. Like Crest of the Stars for example has about 4 arcs or so: the initial invasion, aboard the Basroil, marooned on crazy count's space station, and then the sneaky bit on the enemy planet; so it would make the most sense to just lump what you can together.
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kirisaki_kabuto
Posts: 29 |
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I don't think PA is episodic per se. It focuses on different characters and their points of view and stories, but it's supposed to be connected and come together. They are parts of the same story, they complement each other. As a critique, should one really analyse it by making a composition about each individual episode? What's the point? The series has unity and it should be seen as a series, not an anthology because it isn't one. Analyzing one episode at a time misses the point. I watched PA a very long time ago, but as I recall it, there is only one episode that would potentially warrant the "standalone" tag and it's closer to the end.
For something like the Stars saga (Banner and Crest) you shouldn't divide it into arcs. It might be too big for a single review, but I think it would only warrant one for Crest, and two/three for Banner (first and second seasons makes one and the movie makes the other - the movie is significantly different from the series in many aspects so seeing it as its own thing is acceptable, but I guess making separate reviews for seasons one and two could be reasonable as well). A review is much more relevant if it covers a series as a whole. What I want to know of a series I haven't seen is whether or not it works as a series. As someone who's already seen it, I would want an analysis that avoids going through every episode's details and instead manages to grasp and summarize the show's recurring themes, it's high and low points when it comes to characters and story and what its (general) flaws might lie. Do I need to know that episode 1 was a 3.7, 2 was a 4.1, 3 a 3.9 and so on? A review should review a piece of fiction as a whole. Not doing so can only be warranted for anthologies and series that are just too long. Episode per episode is not really a review, it's more like a commentary. Well, that's about all I have to say. I've already clogged this comment section far too much with longer-than-planned comments. I figured this would be an unpopular opinion but I just felt like sharing for a bit. |
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Bonham
 Posts: 419 Location: NYC |
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Well, Kon isn't exactly the most subtle director in the world... not that that's a necessarily negative (though he can be preachy at times). His style is basically an accessible meeting point between Hitchcock and Lynch. The first episode of Paranoia Agent is one of my favorite introductory episodes in anime. It originating as a patchwork of ideas shows up in later episodes (for better or worse), and I have some problems with it later, but it's still one of the most entertaining anime out there. Looking forward to Nick picking it apart as the reviews go on. |
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tobeast777
Posts: 68 |
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In my case it was the first anime that drew me to adult swim and the world of anime. It was so weird, how could I not watch it? |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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There was always something unsettling about the way Maromi moved in that scene, and I wasn't ever sure if it was just me or if it was intentional. I still don't really know what it is that makes her so unsettling, considering you have Sanrio characters that move in that top-heavy, clumsy way and don't come off as unsettling.
Probably because it was soundly rejected by the Adult Swim viewers.
Paranoia Agent is both episodic in that every episode tells its own story from beginning to end, and serial in that each of these episodes interconnects to at least one other episode. It's a similar deal as with Gravity Falls, and no one is arguing Gravity Falls is not episodic. Individual episode reviews, I think, would still be fine for a show like Paranoia Agent. It's not as if the reviews for each episode will be from a different person. Each review for subsequent episodes, I'm guessing, is going to be a cumulative viewpoint, an assessment based on ALL of the episodes thus far, and not just each episode as if they were the first. |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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I personally enjoy the episodic reviews a lot. Reviewing an entire series does not allow the same level of depth and careful critical thought that one can get out of episodic reviews. You can notice and discuss small but important details and stylistic choices in an episodic review. You can discuss atmospherics and dialogue choices.
I am glad to see the classic episodic reviews, and hope ANN continues to do it with other classic shows. Paranoia Agent is definitely a towering presence for the current generation of anime fans, definitely deserving the title "classic" in every sense of the word. Also, the dub was outstanding in my opinion. You won't be disappointed Nick. |
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Waffitti
 Posts: 55 |
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Paranoia Agent sticks more to me than other Kon anime, the extra run time a half-hour series has gave him a comfier space to sprawl his themes & express them through different ways. The episodic nature of the series I feel came out of a movie mentality (get all the narrative beats done in one sitting), which in the end helped the series out.
The same applies to the soundtrack (I wrote a bit about the opening theme & some other related stuff here). This has the least "ambient remix BGM" feel of the Hirasawa-Kon OSTs, and in a way helped birth out the Vistoron album, which deals with the same themes as the series (if only translations of the lyrics were available...) and brought out Hirasawa's punk spirit from 1979. Switched-on Lotus, Hirasawa's other album released in 2004 also comes up, but only in the last episode. Episode 1 has an easter egg for Susumu Hirasawa fans: The scene in Tsukiko's cubicle is backed by Gemini 2. Could have made for a nice bonus track for the US CD, even if it doesn't gel 1:1 style-wise with the rest. |
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whiskeyii
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Man, I'm really stretching my memory here to remember what was (and wasn't) dealt with in this episode. I do vaguely remember being a little surprised with how quietly this episode starts. It has such a strong sense of normalcy coming off the heels of Episode 1. I always kind of felt that while Episode 1 set the theme and the plot, Episode 2 is when you start getting a handle on the cast. I remember Ichi and Usshi and the spoiler[exploration of their mental states], but I can't remember if spoiler[the tutor] is introduced here or not, or if that happens next episode. ^^;
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gedata
 Posts: 615 |
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spoiler[The tutor was introduced in this episode briefly as one of the few people Yuichi had left to look forward to seeing after losing all of his admirers] |
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 712 |
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Man, this show really presses all the right buttons for me as a psychological mystery. And as an emotional trip, it's excellent. It makes me feel genuinely angry and frustrated at, and fearful of and for all the characters. There's just something that strikes a chord with me about this show, especially the direction.
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