It's about the bomb.
[This is the first in what may be a series. Should I have started with a more well-known anime like Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball or Pokemon? Maybe. But I just watched Paranoia Agent, and you should, too. You can stream the full 13 episode series for free on Veoh.com. You won’t regret it.]
[Also: this is a SPOILER FREE! article. Hopefully it’ll make you want to watch the show.]
First, a story…
Back in college, a friend of mine asked me to take a course on modern Japanese literature with her. Being my snarky self, I said, “Why should I do that? I already know the answer to all the books. If I took this class, I guarantee all of the essays would have the same exact thesis:
‘It’s about the bomb.’”
Whether or not I was right about modern Japanese literature, the interesting thing to me is how little this thesis applies to anime and manga. There’s the odd exception, of course; Grave of the Fireflies jumps to mind, as does Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress. (Grave of the Fireflies is about two children trying to survive through World War II; Millennium Actress is about an aging actress who lived through the war.)
For the most part, though, anime goes out of its way not to mention nuclear weaponry. Never never never. The most blatant example is the famed Neon Genesis Evangelion, in which the main characters continually use nukes but never refer to them by name. No, they’re “N-2 mines!” Nothing nuclear about ‘em! Those mushroom clouds over there? Just a trick of the light! (In case you don’t believe me about the nuclear weapons taboo in anime, here’s an article about it on TVTropes, appropriately titled “Nuclear Weapons Taboo.”)
So I was shocked by Satoshi Kon’s anime series, Paranoia Agent, for two reasons:
1. It is clearly about the bomb.
2. None of the reviews or articles I read about the show acknowledged this fact.
Pan’s Labyrinth, the gorgeous film by Guillermo del Toro, was on TV again the other day, and just seeing certain scenes brought all the feelings I had upon my first viewing flooding back. I should say at the outset that it is easily one of the best fantasy films in recent memory. Nevertheless, I left the theater with a niggling discomfort. Where the discomfort came from I didn’t know. Until now.
Big old spoilers after the jump.