Paprika

Paprika.

Let me start over, i watched Tokyo Godfathers a little while ago, and i had heard of other works by Satoshi Kon, i wasn't aware they were all by him. I really enjoyed Tokyo Godfathers its nice story, and the japanese aesthetic makes the cheese of it being a christmas movie easier to deal with, i probably had some kind of problem with orientalism, but it helped me enjoy the film so sue me. Back to the point, i watched an episode of Every Frame a Painting, which is a great youtube channel, which talked about the way Satoshi Kon used transition. it was informative, and interesting, but it reminded me that Paprika was on my watchlist.

I got around to watching Paprika, and boy was it an experience, it was so colourful, and dense, the backgrounds were cool, there was an obese character which is a first in an anime for me, its not really quite as good as the other things i listed but it made a nice change for the genre. But what i really loved was the subject matter itself. I find that the saturation of animations about mental health, particularly on the course, is waaaaay too high, and thats a shame because i quite enjoy it as a subject matter, my final piece in foundation was about mental heath. So why did i like Paprika? It took the subject and looked at it in a new light, well, not really, but it was about the mind which is cool. The whole element of this device for a counsellor to go into your dreams to determine the method of care needed was cool, but it was just the idea of exploring the mind. There's a game that i recently played called Psychonauts (i still haven't finished it but heyho) and the term Psychonaut really speaks to me, an astronauts explores space, a psychonaut explores the mind. Of course theres a bunch of drugs that you can do that with or whatever, but quite frankly the idea of tripping on shrooms for 10 hours doesn't interest me, but the way Paprika explores this idea of psychonauts, in such a beautiful and entertaining way really got to me and i thoroughly enjoyed the film. I definitely want to incorporate more surrealist elements into my work, or at least work on a very surreal project, that is still enjoyable for those that arent pretentious and don't have some kind of degree in psychology.