Ever since I heard that Satoshi Kon was a bit of an auteur I’ve been meaning to watch some of his movies. As luck would have it my secret santa recommended Paprika. On my first watch I was not disappointed: a kind of story that doesn’t occur too often told through loads of possibly metaphorical imagery, accompanied by fantastic music. However, I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what the story wants to tell me, so I watched it a second time. Now I have some kind of idea, and I’m not really sure I like what I see in it. [Beware ye life, here be spoilers!]

What first gave me an idea was the contrast between the childish genius Tokita and the rational but arrogant chairman Seijiro. Tokita has a highly developed imagination that can think of the absurdest concepts combined with an intelligence that enables him to make them reality, but at the same time he is highly irresponsible. When he thinks about his inventions, he only considers what he personally wants to achieve with them and neglects to prepare safety protocols to prevent abuse, he eats as if his body will never have any malfunctions and when they find out that Himuro is trapped in the dreams he goes in on his own, not waiting for the others. The chairman is also an intelligent person, but he uses it to think about the impact technology will have on people. He is very well aware that the technology of his company can be abused, and that they have a responsibility. His fault is that through his rational thinking he developed an arrogance that makes him think he is above others, that he is the only one who can prevent abuse of the technology and therefore he should be the only one who’s allowed to use it. Now skip to the ending: while it can be questioned how much exactly Tokita contributed to Paprika winning, he is clearly on her side, he is one of the heroes. The chairman on the other hand is obviously the villain, the final boss, and he loses. The major difference between Tokita and the chairman is between the childlike innocence and the adult rationality, and this contrast seems to tell me that the former is good while the latter is bad.

Now let’s have a look at detective Konakawa. The movie starts with two mysteries for him: the meaning of his dream, and the case he’s working on at the moment. Both seem to be unsolvable to him. Over the course of the movie he starts to remember his love for movies, which goes hand in hand with his understanding of the dream. This culminates in the scene where he shoots the chairman’s henchman and gets a cheesy ending shot, which is him dreaming of becoming a movie star again. After that he magically finds the solution to the case off-screen. If this was on its own I wouldn’t be bothered, but in the light of the above I see a common theme, namely that the return to the innocent dreams he had when he was young is all he needs to solve the problem of his cop life, and rationality doesn’t really influence it. (By the way, this is not a question of what he does off-screen to solve the case, it’s a question of what is shown to us on screen.)

Now I’d like to have a look at the duality between Chiba and Paprika. Both take on responsibility, and they do it in pretty much the same way, which makes them blend into each other a bit. There are three major differences. The first is in their character: Chiba is a rational, always serious person, concerned with the effects of the technology on people, while Paprika is more playful and a bit cheeky, and more concerned with the things that go on in the dreams. The second is in powers: Chiba only has the power her job gives her and the influence of her words, mostly on Tokita. Paprika on the other hand has some kind of magic; she can transform into others (Goku, Tinkerbell) and use their powers, and she can show up next to Chiba to help her out, because why not. The third is in their role in solving the conflict: Chiba disagrees with Paprika and goes another way, just to be immediately swallowed up by the Tokitabot. In contrast, Paprika consciously and willingly spices the Tokitabot up to summon the giant Chiba and defeat the chairman. Here too playfulness wins over rationality.

A different thing that bothered me – maybe is a little bit connected to the above – is how as Chiba becomes a bit more like Paprika they say that she “comes to terms” with her “true self” (at least partly) in reference to her affection for Tokita growing and becoming more open. Is it just me being an angry wannabe-feminist who gulped at that comment? And then there’s the issue how it’s revealed that they became a couple: the message to the (more mature) Konakawa tells him that she chose the (more childish) Tokita. Additionally to fitting into the theme I discussed above, it’s scarily easy to fit this into a “who wins the girl” mindset.

It could be argued that instead of supporting childishness this story is rooted in Buddhism, especially Zen, with the theme of overcoming pure rationality. Anyway, with this I by no means want to discourage you from watching the movie, nor from proving me wrong. It’s a quite well-made movie, and I would love to see a different interpretation that would allow me to like it more.