Anime: Mousou Dairinin

Why do I do this? I recently covered Ghost Hound, a title I found very hard to review, and here I am writing about Paranoia Agent, an anime that I find even harder to talk about. Sigh

Mousou Dairinin is a series that works way more on a conceptual level than at its execution, and it’s also the definition of a series for an acquired taste, as its writing is not very good for the hardest to please most critical viewers, and its narrative is almost unapproachable for a casual audience that just wants to have a good time. Also, being a work with Satoshi Kon in it raises the expectation high in terms of directing and atmosphere, and only one of them is truly achieved in this series. It doesn’t help that this is a show that’s best to watch after you already watched all the movies from the director first to get used to his style for a single, rather short entry before jumping to a full series.

Let’s start with the easiest part which is the animation as a whole, easily one of the best you’ll find in any anime series, not a single quality drop as far as I’m concerned, very well made backgrounds, expressive and detailed motions, great special effects, great use of lighting and shading, great changes from brighter to darker colors whenever needed, and at times different art styles are well integrated within the series both visually and narratively. Plus it has the usual exceptional directing that can be expected from Satoshi Kon, just as he did with his movies before this series, he really captured how distorted the characters perceive reality by either messing up the visuals completely with added first person perspectives, or with a quick succession of scenes transitioning into one another. The only complaint I have here are the designs, which feel derivative from any other work from the director, they are not bad, I appreciate how realistic and varied the character figures are, but they definitely give the idea of being rehashed from somewhere else.

The sound is good but not amazing, and that’s the exact same thing that can be said about each part of the whole department. Voice acting? Good but not among the best you’ll find in the medium. Sound effects? Same thing. Music? Same thing, again, especially coming from Susumu Hirasawa. The opening is weirdly catchy, as it should, the visuals give you the idea that every character is uncontrollably laughing while losing their minds, thus it transmits the idea of paranoia quite well, and the song sounds uncomfortably upbeat for its super weird lyrics, for what’s being displayed on screen, and for the show it’s used for. The ending is simple and repetitive yet it also gives you the feeling of something that’s cute and relaxing at first approach, yet it hides something sinister underneath, while every important character peacefully sleeps around the main mascot of both the series and the world it takes place in, very fitting with the overall feel and themes of the anime, I’d say. With that said, there is a very well made sound mixing in here, especially during the darker and more intense and suspenseful moments, too bad the whole show isn’t like that.

But what is it about? A kid with a bat hitting people in the head, changing his targets on every episode. What feels like a simple episodic series at first, ends up being an interconnected psychological thriller, as every victim is related to a previous one, and there are two police detectives interrogating them and searching for clues to get to the bottom of the mystery and incidents. That’s not all, as every character gets an episode dedicated to showcase their lives and all the mental pressure they go through and the dark secrets they are hiding. Even though some are more important to the answer to the mystery than others, this approach makes every single one of them serviceable as plot devices and fleshed out on a basic level. There’s more though, as every character has technology and gossips/rumors making their lives harder on one way or another, which along with their subsequently more fragile psychological stability, ends up making them have suicidal thoughts, as means to escape from reality and the difficulties they face on a daily basis.

And that’s basically the core idea behind the show, to explore Japan's mentally stressed and overwhelmed, overworked and suicidal society, and how lies and fake news propagate with ease and can ruin lives or at least makes them harder. It also shows how said society deals with that through escapism, through both its use of technology and consumerism, of the cute main mascot from and within the show, as well as just ending it all as a mean to avoid dealing with the struggles and responsibilities one might have. Something very important to talk about for the time it came out at the beginning of the 21st century, that’s perhaps even more relevant now.

I’d like to show this with a quick description of several episodes, without spoilers:

-Episode 1. The first woman and first victim, one of the most important characters in the show, designer of the main mascot from and within the series, hated by her coworkers and pressured to come out with an equally or even more successful successor to the pink dog she popularized. Being the first person to be attacked, she is questioned a lot about the incident and even suspected of making up the whole story, both on her work, by the detectives, and on social media.

-Episode 2. The first kid and third victim, a narcissistic piece of shit suspected and rumored of being the teen with the bat, falsely accused of being a bully and later on being bullied himself, through a photo of him that’s shared on the cell phones of everyone at his school.

-Episode 3. The second woman and fifth victim, private tutor of the previous kid, a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and a prostitute at night. Both personalities try to overcome the other and talk to each other through her phone. This is the best and most Satoshi Kon episode on this Satoshi Kon series.

-Episode 4. The second man and sixth victim, a policeman extorted to work for the mafia to protect his family, under an alias of sorts, he uses a weird mask and stuff, and his personality changes a lot while doing it so. This is quite of a subversive episode of sorts, as the outcome wasn’t like the usual of the previous episodes, and the series dares to take a path that is seemingly going to end the plot in less than half the duration of the show, an interesting but risky move. Also there doesn’t seem to be any implication of technology here.

-Episode 5. I could bet this was one of the most hated and frustrating episodes to watch as it was airing, since the tone is completely different from the rest of the show, thus it comes off as extremely bizarre in an already uncommon series. It is about a kid who sees the whole world as Dragon Quest, while also a parody of sorts of said franchise. Nothing else can be said about it without spoiling a big part of the anime.

-Episode 6. The first girl and seventh victim, who communicates with her father through her cellphone, and she learns that he uses cameras to spy on her. It is directly linked with the fourth episode and adds the technological aspect that said episode was missing. It also flips the whole case up until this point.

-Episode 7. One of the detectives is starting to be affected and becomes paranoiac himself, as he keeps listening to the testimonies and searching for clues on his own, he starts hallucinating because of the static of all the radios he uses for that.

-Episode 10. The fourth man and eight victim, out of the ones shown on screen, as at this point the conflict reaches a much bigger scale than what it’s actually shown on screen. This asshole keeps fucking up the anime of the mascot and blaming everyone else, the connections with technology are many to name, but is the one that has the most distorted view of reality, he does so many horrible things that are shown as quick flashbacks as he is falling asleep while driving. Probably narcoleptic. The episode is also a somewhat self-satire of anime production.

-Episodes 11 to 13. Yeah no, as if I were to talk about the episodes that give the answers and closure to the whole show, as well as a catharsis for some characters.

As you may notice, I didn’t talk about episodes 8 and 9, and that’s where the first problem of this anime lies, since those episodes felt like filler. The first has three online suicide friends, something that apparently exists in Japan and the Dark Web. It makes you think that it’s going to be important but it’s mostly comical in a twisted way and it tries to fool the audience that the criminal is a paranormal force, it’s not, it’s something even crazier. The second is just some women telling some made up stories about the kid with the bat, it’s meant to show the level of gossiping and paranoia up until that point but the rest of the episodes do the same with much better execution and results. These two could easily be skipped without losing much, the characters don’t even appear in the opening and ending like the rest of them, and it makes it feel like the series has an issue in its pacing and amount of episodes.

The second issue is how the anti-suicide and anti-escapism message and answer for the mystery are directly told to the audience with no subtlety, different from the works of the director so far, I’m guessing because he wasn’t on charge of the script.

The third problem lies on the message itself, which is very simplistic and will feel misguided to most western viewers, of which I’m one of. As was discussed on several episodic discussions of this series that I’ve read on different sites, particularly on its eight episode, it’s important to understand that suicide is seen in a different way on the Japanese society and culture. Whereas in the West is commonly thought of as an act of selfishness and cowardice that should be avoided and persuaded from, over there it’s conceived as a way to pay for all the failures in your life, that nobody else should be sticking their noses in, so it’s the not very different but also the ultimate way of handling them, by giving your life on a last failure, basically.

And since Paranoia Agent is a Japanese series made by Japanese people, its message and criticism are not directed towards the problem itself, but the individual, as expected. Let me explain, the anime shows many different harsh scenarios and situations of many different people, and instead of seeing it as a collective problem, it still keeps the blame on every individual, it’s weird that it sees many different sources for what’s a common issue, while somewhat connecting every singular conflict, yet it ultimately concludes and decides that the problem is within each person as an isolated case. This means that the message of the show ends up being: “yeah, we know there are many issues within our society, you might suffer from some of them yourself, but you just have to tough it up and face them”, which is not exactly bad, but it isn’t very different from telling a depressed person to just cheer up or an addict to just stop consuming whatever they are addicted to, it’s a good but very simplistic and reductionist and not very empathetic message. It exposes a problem but it does not offer a very critical response to said issue, though I guess it’s expected for its era and I guess it would probably be presented differently nowadays.

The fourth issue are the characters, which although greatly used narratively as great plot devices that are even fleshed out on a basic level, all they have is a backdrop story, no one is very memorable nor have much personality outside their mental issues, and no one has a development, also only the most important ones have something that can be considered a catharsis, and even then one of them just seemed to have become totally delusional and repeats the cycle of another character, whose actions are completely incomprehensible, in a seemingly circular manner. The rest are shown again at one point in the series, thus you get to see what happened to them, but since the events in-between are missing, you don’t get to see how they ended like that, making their struggles and their respective solutions easier and simpler than they were previously presented.

The fifth problem is that it’s meant to be an allegorical series, instead of seeing it as something that it’s actually happening. There’s nothing strictly bad with using symbolisms, especially when they actually mean something instead of being just cool or artsy visuals, but this way the writing comes off as totally unrealistic and nonsensical if seen in a literal manner, almost supernatural or fantastical in a setting that’s otherwise perfectly normal and mundane. Also, this way some of its biggest events come off as uneventful and easily fixable, those storms that take place in the show? Don’t worry, they don’t actually happen and everything is back to normal in the end.

It’s even harder to accept because of the way the series is presented, reality is often twisted as a result of someone’s state of mind in the works of Satoshi Kon, but in almost every one of those, the characters are limited to a small set, often even just one of them, In Perfect Blue, it’s because of the protagonist slowly losing her sanity because of the fear and the pressure, her famous persona and the different image of her that she shows publicly giving her an identity crisis. In Millennium Actress, it comes in the form of the fading and blurry memories of a senile old woman who was also an actress, so her recollections of her life mix in her head with the movies and roles she played. In Tokyo Godfathers, the main homeless trio lies to themselves and others when they talk about how their lives turned that way, and how responsible they are for that. Paranoia Agent plays out in a similar way, but with a much bigger scope and an approach and reasoning that doesn’t feel as close, human and personal as his previous works, as it also partially makes the struggles to be quite external instead of entirely or mostly internal. Unfortunately he would do something similar with his last work Paprika, as dreams and reality blur with each other, only to be solved with an asspulled power up and everything going back to normal like nothing happened.

Bottom line, Paranoia Agent presents some of the best concepts and themes ever in anime with neat visuals and directing, serviceable atmosphere and a great use of interconnected plot devices to deliver an ok although weirdly presented and delivered message, but the writing and characterization are almost an afterthought for that, in a series that feels slow and very hard to digest and accept. I consider it to be worse than Tokyo Godfathers but better than Paprika. Worthy as a complementary one time watch to Satoshi Kon’s previous movies, but not much else.

Similar and better works

-Satoshi Kon’s previous filmography (including Magnetic Rose)
-Boogiepop wa Warawanai, in plot structure and some themes
-Shinreigari, in plot structure and some of its topics
-Odd Taxi, in plot structure and main character arc

Paranoia Agent (PA) was Satoshi Kon’s attempt to make a series based on his weird ideas for a story and the result is not as powerful as his movies. What can I say, his talent is not that good for long viewing as it is for short bursts of craziness. Not that PA is a bad series or anything; it’s just that the bait of the story can’t keep the fish on the hook for 13 episodes without eventually baffling most viewers in a bad way. Sure, it is made to be confusing and mysterious as hell but even that has its limits. Powerful emotions work best in small outbursts.

The production values are good; nice work given to both animation and soundtrack. The opening video is rather misleading but does indirectly telling you what the series is all about and seeing the characters acting normally in a normal city at first, may even hint you there is something off going on here.

The story is basically a mystery that escalates to metaphysics and even urban fantasy. Some guy is attacking people, an investigator starts asking around, stuff happens, and before you know it WTF IS GOING ON HERE??? I am not going to be specific about what exactly happens in the story, as all the fun lies in the viewer being left completely in the dark all the way to the end. I will just mention the obvious quirk of the show that makes it so interesting.

Each episode is presented from a different POV. That means, each event will be shown through the eyes of a different character each time, and each one will be offering his own little pebble into what is going on with the mystery and the reason behind the attacks. Practically, the show doesn’t have a central character, as it constantly shifts amongst them all the time. Which I must say it is not just uncommon but also prevents anyone of them from turning to a boring stunt. Although some are clearly a lot more important to the mystery than others, there is still nobody completely useless; thus the cast is perfect in terms of storytelling.

The characters themselves are usually not what they seem at first. Although they begin as simple eye witnesses or minor investigators of the mysterious attacks, when the plot centers on them you get to see their dark secrets and how they are practically completely different than what they appear at first. That counts as character immersion and it is a big plus. I can’t say there is development or catharsis for most though, as they usually are off the spotlight after the episode they are the protagonists. There is only one person who gets that (not saying who) and it is because there lies the solution to the mystery.

Now about the ACTUAL mystery in the story, it is mostly interesting rather than well presented. It will keep you interested to see what is going on but there is a high probability you will start to get bored towards the end because the story will keep shifting left and right, as it keeps confusing you without actually gradually revealing anything. And then the final episodes that do that will most likely make you go WTF with the answer. It is simply far-fetched. Cool but just unreal and unlike any other of Satoshi’s works where the perpetrator was always an everyday guy.

Overall, PA is great for its concept and not for its cast or story. The mystery may keep you hooked into finishing it and the constant shift of protagonists may keep you from feeling bored yet at the same time you may feel like there is no actual focus or strong enough objective to care. I personally don’t remember most of the characters exactly because there was very little time invested on each of them, even if they added something to solving the mystery. Satoshi was always making character-centered stories and this is not the epitome of the term; it is working against the viewer liking them for getting to know them.

It is a good series and I recommend it but not if you care too much about characters being likable or the story making complete sense in the end. The concept is great though.

Humor was simply one of many scents used to hide the smell of mediocrity and as shown with it's ratings it has done that well.

Story

For the first four episodes the plot builds really well and it raises your anticipation to see the next. It follows a couple detectives as they search for an individual going around at night hitting unsuspecting people with a bat. The show has a eerie feeling that it does great work on when it decides to bring it out. With the coming of episode five you might as well throw that plot out the window along with any hope of this being half of what you expect. It becomes episodic and loses almost all ties to the plot and a series complete with 13 episodes can not afford fillers. I would say Paranoia Agent tried to be a Mindf*ck so bad but it's not, it confuses you, uses outrageous metaphors to deliver the most simple messages. Over and over again each episode is delivering the same message in a new way, but it never delivers the plot. I think they forgot to tie in the weak story until the last two episodes which in my opinion is by far a couple of the worst in any Anime I have seen. And then they show what it was all over oh my god! I don't expect a lot of viewers to catch onto the metaphors, they'll have idea's of what they mean and so they won't be the one left in the dark they'll give Paranoia Agent it's overrated score and talk about it being thought provoking. Good job to the developers. 3/10

Animation

Some of the Animation I enjoyed and was one of the highlights of the series.. when it stayed on track. Many times in some of the wacky episodes the animation just plumeted to the gutter. Reaching the end of the series maybe it was supposed to be creative but I was treated to a episode full of cardboard characters! It never reaches the detail it had in the earlier episodes sadly. Which is why at first glance it looks great but don't look deeper. 6/10

Sound

Yes the sound is the best part of the show! As I said before it does an eerie feeling really great and has a jingle I can not get out of my head when I hear it. If I had to complain it would be the music not being played enough. It really set the mood for certain situations, it just would have been nice to hear more. Usually great musical scores would lead me to giving an Anime higher ratings than it deserves but not in this case. Not by a long shot, what does that say about everything else. 7/10

Characters

None of the characters I really grew attached to because at some point I felt they ruined them. Whenever one was particularly catching my interest either the show had already cast them off or the developers were high that day. Character development although it's their is very small in the sense that most of them get one episode to make you care. I believe one I was beginning to like and then they quit showing her. Just maybe an image every once in a while. They all had problems which was important to the series but some problems were so minor it made the ways they behaved feel so fake. 4/10

Final Thought

I know they tried to lighten the whole show with comedic value that may at most got chuckles from me. However it's not Primarily a comedy. Humor was simply one of many scents used to hide the smell of mediocrity and as shown with it's ratings it has done that well. Oddly I'm glad to have watched Paranoia Agent, it made me question how good I was at understanding the Mindf*ck genre. Now I'm a little more secure in my opinions and may just type some more of them on the site.

OVERALL SCORE 5.0/10.0

Overall
Paranoia Agent was a surreal thrillride, and one of the best animes I have ever seen.

Animation
Animation is pretty ordinary... Not that impressive or memorable.

Sound
The surreal theme of the show owes a lot to its excellent soundtrack.
Voicework is also great, and sound effects do their job.

Story
At first Paranoia Agent is a pretty ordinary looking street assault anime, but that only scratches the surface of one of the most brilliant stories in any anime ever.
The story was clever, funny, serious, philosophical and psychological all at the same time. It tries many different things, and succeeds in all of them brilliantly.
It's one of the most original stories I've ever seen, and the ending was satisfying.

Character
Paranoia Agent involves a lot of pretty ordinary characters, but a lot of character analyzing. That makes even the most uninteresting characters seem deep and interesting.

Value
Thanks to its relatively small episode count, it is easy to pick up and rewatch.

Story-20/20-The whole series keeps the tense atmosphere.. While there is a lot of weird events.. everything is comprehensible.. The series gets very complicated.. but everything is able to be clearly understood.. I was always amazed and how everything happend.. and still made PERFECT sense... The story progress in sections.. the first couple episodes is about the victims.. and then we build on each incident as the detectives study more and more about each case.. then the storyline ignores them and jumps to other areas where the same "things" are happening.. and finally the story goes into the future.. and wraps everything up.. A lot of the times you are laughing.. when you know you shouldn't be.. you know the situation isn't suppose to be funny... but it is anyways..

Animation-8/10-They did a really good job at creating the tone of the series.. While it is horror.. its nothing too shocking.. and they do add a lot of "not scary" details... There is not a lot of focus on background OR characters.. its just the way everything is placed.. or what perspective we are watching from.. They have a lot of different art styles the series goes through to show the different mentality each person has.. which helps a lot for character development... The anime is creepy.. and yet "not creepy" at times.. and they are very tightly intertwined so people always feel weird since they are in a strange setting.. but it quickly changes.. very unsettling.. They also do a lot of scenes where they set up an event.. and have you imagine the ending.. like you see a person raising the bat.. and they swing.. and your brain connects the ending..

Music-9/10-The OP is just freaky.. the way the music plays its really cheery.. and when you see everyone smiling.. you start feeling a little dizzy.. for the smiles seem so fake.. so unrealistic.. its just feels weird.. which is perfect for the series.. the ED is great too.. a very Slow.. and mournful melody.. it creeps you out.. cause its like everything is dead... The soundtrack is awesome.. for they build up suspense quickly.. and then drops everything.. a very nice support of the horror part of the series..

Characters-20/20-Wow.. the characters are the sufferings of the people personified.. You have a girl who is struggling to create the next "animation trend", you have a humble woman with a wild and dark personalitysplit personality.. you have the corrupted cop trying to do his best for his family... and you have the popular kid who loses everything when he is framed as being the attacker... An episode is devoted to each of those characters as we learn about what they are going through and what results from them... You also have the two detectives who are trying to solve the case.. you have the rash and unrestrained veteran and the calm and gentler newbie.. You then go on a hop and get a totally new cast that are only shown for one episode that help build up the storyline and the mystery...

Value-19/20-This story is a very good example of how a horror/mystery series should be like.. the music and animation help out the story to give the audience a very good feel of horror and mystery...

Enjoyment-20/20-After each episode i was just like wow... I can totally see why this is horror/mystery.. and i always waited anxiously for the next scene to unfold.. while trying to guess what is going to happen.. This is a great series to kill time... or to just start on thinking about stuff.. This series hints at a lot of weird stuff.. but never really crosses the line physically...which makes it really fun to watch..

Overall-96%

Beethoven and Tchaikovsky had problems. So did Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve written my best poetry while high as a kite. So did Rimbaud. Sylvia Platt committed suicide. There was something odd about Robert Mapplethorpe. There’s definitely a correlation between genius and instability. ….Perhaps Satoshi Kon is the exception. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Two cents say he’s a goddamn drug addict. Whether or not he’s a genius, however, is up for debate.

Sometimes there are moments in anime when viewers will either be disturbed or amused. The end of NARUTARU had me just rolling, not because it was funny, of course. But because there’s only two reactions to things like that: laugh your head off or be shocked as hell. I just happen to be one of those sick beings that will laugh like hell. If there’s one thing I praise this anime for it’s its triumphant use of ”dark humor.” Sometimes I will just crack up at Shounen Bat’s dorky reaction to something. I mean, you think he’s going to be “scary” and all, but then he behaves in way that defies his reputation. It’s even funnier when his potential victims behave in an unexpected way. For example, the end of episode eight made me laugh. Hard. Under all the nuttiness though, this story is actually quite shallow.

It’s to this anime’s credit (and to its disadvantage) that it reminded me of both Boogiepop Phantom and Furi Kuri, both brilliant in their own ways. Like Boogiepop, Paranoia Agent used episodic characters to unfold its story. Each of Shounen Bat’s victims has their own individual quirks. Like Boogiepop, some of these characters are memorable: the arrogant and paranoid “Icchi” of the second episode and the little girl obsessed with the mysteries of death in the eighth. But then there are some that are easily forgotten, such as the woman in the third episode. Obviously she’s just thrown in there for…shall I say, fan-service? It’s not a Satoshi Kon work without gratuitous raunch. Even the ‘main character’ (loosely termed) is easily forgotten. None of the characters are particularly interesting, and fortunately, they’re not supposed to be. It’s what happens to them that will catch your eye. In any case, the ‘best’ (also loosely termed) character in the anime are the two detectives; they reminded me of the two cameramen in Millennium Actress. I found those two to be quite amusing, especially the whole interrogation scene.

Unlike Boogiepop, though, this anime dumbs down its last four episodes, finally ending with an incredibly simple explanation taken straight from a freshman psychology textbook. It also spells quite a few things out for you. By telling viewers things like, “Shounen Bat attacks people that try to escape reality,” and “Shounen Bat appears to those who are cornered and have nowhere to go,” it certainly doesn’t warrant even the annoying “if you didn’t get, you won’t like it” tag. Not to mention they were just telling us the obvious to begin with. I had one of those “Well, duh” moments while watching this. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it can’t be good. Paranoia Agent's a no-brainer for it leaves very little to my imagination. It's too easy, especially if you’ve seen the director’s previous works...or are a fan of the genre. In any case, this show needs to crawl out of its crib.

Not only does this anime share a likeness to Boogiepop, but I found this anime to share similarities with Furi Kuri, as well. Furi Kuri takes a rather simple idea and tells it in a ridiculous and nonsensical manner. Paranoia Agent does just this, take a simple concept and tells it in a surreal way to trick viewers that the anime is "deep" or "complex." We have a boy throwing up mathematical formulas. We have stuffed pink dogs that talk. We have Kon’s favorite concept: blending reality with the imaginative. If you’ve seen Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress already, you’ll be quick on the ball with this. I no longer give a damn whether or not these events are really happening or not. That’s irrelevant: It’s real to the characters and that’s all that matters. Telling the story this way is fine; it makes it interesting, after all. But unlike Furi Kuri, though, it doesn’t have the characters to back it up. Nor the novelty. Boogiepop and Furi Kuri are brilliant and strange. Paranoia Agent is also strange, but sadly, that’s all it is.

All in all, if you’re looking for something that looks different, by all means, try this one out. If you’re like me, however, you would find very little to think about other than the name of the drug Kon's on.

Animation
Like Miyazaki, Kon has a distinctive art style that he uses in all of his work. You’ll start to see “Mima” everywhere. I never really liked his character designs; the guy can draw the ugliest characters. But if you like the more realistic art style, more power to you. The videos for the OP and ED are….interesting. In the OP, the characters are cracking up. In the ED, they’re asleep.

Sound
The OP is rather odd. You’ll either be annoyed by the “Aiiiiii yeeeee ahhhhhh (insert very rhythmic singing here)” or you’ll have it in your head. In my case, it’s both. I’m terribly annoyed that I’ve been humming it all day. I don’t like the ED. It’s basically two notes repeated over and over. At least it goes with the video….

Story
I really enjoyed some random episodes for 1-9. (not all nine of them). I didn’t like 10-13 at all. The second half of the eleventh episode put me to sleep, and ten, though it tries to parody the anime industry, was quite boring.

Value
This anime isn’t bad; I just didn’t like it all that much. If you’re a fan of the “anime on acid” genre (like me) then watch this. But like Pretear, this comes with a double-edged sword. If you’re a fan of the genre, you may want to stay away. If you’re a fan of the director, go right ahead. He seems to be quite popular despite that Millennium Actress is his only good work. (Excellent movie, by the way. Go watch it.)

edit: Tokyo Godfathers is good, as well.

This has been licensed by Pioneer. Pick up that box if you like this enough. But "Shounen Bat" has been changed to "Lil Slugger."