Papurika
Tags: comedy, fantasy, boring, violence, alternate reality, atmospheric, flashback, psychedelic, philosophical, sci-fi

Plot synopsis:
In the near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called dream therapy has been invented. A device called the "DC Mini" allows the user to view people's dreams. The head of the team working on this treatment, Doctor Atsuko Chiba, begins using the machine illegally to help psychiatric patients outside the research facility, using her alter-ego "Paprika", a sentient persona that she assumes in the dream world.
Paprika counsels Detective Toshimi Konakawa, who is plagued by a recurring dream. Its incompleteness is a great source of anxiety for him. At the end of the session, she gives Konakawa a card with a name of a website on it. This type of counselling session is not officially sanctioned, so Chiba, her associates and Konakawa must be cautious that word does not leak out regarding the nature of the DC Mini and the existence of Paprika. Chiba's closest ally is Doctor Kōsaku Tokita, a genius man-child and the inventor of the DC Mini. Because they are unfinished, the DC Minis lack access restrictions, allowing anyone to enter another person's dreams, which poses grave consequences when they are stolen. Almost immediately, the chief of the department, Doctor Toratarō Shima, goes on a nonsensical tirade and jumps through a window, nearly killing himself.
Upon examining Shima's dream, consisting of a lively parade of objects, Tokita recognizes his assistant, Kei Himuro, which confirms their suspicion that the theft was an inside job. After two other scientists fall victim to the DC Mini, the chairman of the company, who was against the project to begin with, bans the use of the device completely. This fails to hinder the crazed parade, which manages to claim Tokita, who went inside Himuro's dream trying to find answers and intruded into Konakawa's dream. Paprika and Shima take matters into their own hands and find that Himuro is only an empty shell. The real culprit is the chairman, with the help of Doctor Morio Osanai, who believes that he must protect dreams from mankind's influence through dream therapy. Paprika is eventually captured by the pair after an exhausting chase. There, Osanai admits his love for Chiba and literally peels away Paprika's skin to reveal Chiba underneath. However, he is interrupted by the outraged Chairman who demands that they finish off Chiba; as the two share Osanai's body, they battle for control as they argue over Chiba's fate. Konakawa enters the dream from his own recurring dream, and flees with Chiba back into his. Osanai gives chase through Konakawa's recurring dream, which ends in Konakawa shooting Osanai to take control of the dream. The act actually kills Osanai's physical body with a real bullet wound.
Dreams and reality have now merged. The dream parade is running amok in the city, and reality itself is starting to unravel. Shima is nearly killed by a giant Japanese doll, but is saved by Paprika, who has become an entity separate from Chiba thanks to dreams and reality merging. Amidst the chaos, Tokita, in the form of a giant robot, eats Chiba and prepares to do the same for Paprika. A ghostly apparition of Chiba appears and reveals that she has been in love with Tokita this whole time and has simply been repressing these emotions. She comes to terms with her own repressed desires, reconciling herself with the part of her that is Paprika. The chairman returns in the form of a living nightmare, reveals his twisted dreams of omnipotence, and threatens to darken the world with his delusions. Paprika returns to Tokita, throwing herself into his body. A baby emerges from the robotic shell and sucks in the wind, aging as she sucks up the chairman himself, becoming a fully-grown combination of Chiba and Paprika. In this new form, she is able to consume the chairman's dream form and end the nightmare he created before fading away.
In the final scene, Chiba sits at Tokita's bedside as he wakes up. Later on, Konakawa visits the website from Paprika's card and receives a message from Paprika: "Atsuko will change her surname to Tokita...and I suggest watching the movie Dreaming Kids." Konakawa enters a movie theater and purchases a ticket for Dreaming Kids.

Review: Examples include a marching band of inanimate objects, dolls and animals, a giant aquatic leviathan with a man's face and humanoid toys that act as vessels for their dreamers bodies.But what makes the film necessary viewing is not the visuals alone, it's the core of the story and varied themes that it poses.
I won't give away anything because I don't want to spoil a single scene, but I'd say that I see it as a movie about the power of movies over our life/dreams, and about the love people like me have for the Seventh Art. I don't know if that was Kon's original idea and honestly I don't care - it's not every day that you find a movie that amuses and says something to you in such an unpretentious way.
If you've ever seen and enjoyed Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, it'll help you understanding what's going on in the film.The cop forms a relationship with Paprika, a dream character who becomes his guide in helping him understand what happened in his past that makes him feel such shame in the present.
The music fascinated me, it was magnificent.I was strongly compelled to watch the movie.The story is based around a lovely lady named Paprika, she has mastered the ability to sail into others dreams and help them with their problems....
More lucid dreams from Satoshi Kon. I saw this two days ago at the New York Film Festival.The plot: What happens when we acquire technology that allows us to migrate the boundary between dreams & reality, and what happens when that boundary blurs?
The Animation: Stunning; Madhouse always does good work and Kon's movies always produce some fun reality bending sequences.The Music: Susumu Hirasawa who did the Paranoia Agent soundtrack came up with the score here too.
All do a fabulous job as usual, but Hayashibara really shines in her Paprika role.This film has great animation, music & actors, but the plot is really just a thin veneer for the lucid dreaming sequences that permeate so much of Satoshi Kon's work.
The story is complex so, if you want to know what all the fuzz is about read another review en check the film.it's my new love: Paprika 9 a.o.10.
But its never, for one moment boring, and i strongly suspect there are multiple deeper meanings going on here, this is a movie that will stand up to multiple viewings to try to decode all the sub plots and metaphors.Even if you are not a fan of anime, if you just like dazzling film making that will stretch your imagination - Paprika is for you (and no, i have no idea why she is called Paprika)..
The following review has been translated by Google:If dream and reality mergePaprika is one of the most unusual, most beautiful and craziest films, which I saw for a long time, decorated by an incomprehensible picture force and under from a fantastic music.
But Paprika production of Satoshi Kon, a further brilliat film director and draughtsman from Japan, which have responsibility among other things also for Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia agent and Millennium Actress.
Having myself entertained myself with lucid dreaming for about a year(not so much these days though), and being fond of well-made anime movies, I instantly knew I needed to watch Paprika.
From the opening credits to the end credits, the music embodies the story, embracing the art fully, but it's crafted to avoid drawing attention to itself, making it all the more wonderful, listening to it on its own.All in all, this film is worth the buy, and I anticipate watching it many times, especially if I'm feeling down or uninspired.
The style and incoherence of this film will give them the added bonus of feeling like they "got" something deep, when in reality the movie is devoid of substance."Paprika" might be worth seeing for the visuals alone if you haven't seen anything similar before, but only because it comes in at a short 90 minutes.
They're a Japanese studio but paired with a writer on the level of Charlie Kaufman or someone of similar creativity and story-telling skill, they could accomplish something truly revolutionary.A note to the aforementioned anime fans: Do your genre a favor and stop drooling over movies like this so blindly.
The characters fall somewhat flat, especially our heroine Paprika, however this was a much more interesting anime than most, with a story which will interest those looking for great Japanese animation that does not derive from the Manga tradition(this film was based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui), and which does deliver in cinematic beauty and whimsy, this is for you.
Paprika was originally conceived by author Yasutaka Tsutsui who is renowned for his futuristic tales, but it took his friend Satoshi Kon director of such films as Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers to bring bring his dream to life.
With the help of the mysterious alter-ego Paprika, and a police detective who is himself a patient, the team try to infiltrate this unconscious world to track down the missing machine and the person controlling it.While Miyazaki may have the lions' share of international recognition for his masterful Japanese animation; in the west, science-fiction anime is for the most part still the reserve of a particularly geekish brand of teenage boys.
It's a bit of a head rush in parts, but still takes the time to establish meaningful characters with complex motivations.Sci-Fi stories of dreams and subconscious have of course been around for years, and in the concepts and visual ideas present here, one can detect hints of Strange Days, Brainstorm and Blade Runner.
All is not light in the film, as it concerns a theft of the device and the use of it to control others.Things do get very strange and somewhat incomprehensible, but in a very fascinating way that compels you to focus intently.The mixing of reality and dreams leaves a lot to think about, and will probably require more than one viewing of this film..
I found this movie to be a lot better than i first thought it would be and the animation was so well done, and then the story just perfect tho very different and a little odd but still so good.But the first thing that caught me was the soundtrack, i fell in love with it from the start.It isn't really a movie for kids a little more adult because of the little complicated story and a few sexual scenesTo not spoil anything i will only say: its a kinda fantasy story about a woman who goes in to other peoples dreams and help them out with all kinds of problems but something happens and this woman called "paprika" and a few who she works with tries to find out whats really going on with the world.
In "Paprika," a revolutionary device called a DC Mini - think like a Bluetooth headset with stiletto attachments - is stolen from a research facility where a group of psychiatrists are experimenting with technology that allows them to enter peoples' dreams.
When this theft happens, dreams literally collide head-on with reality, as the figments of peoples' imaginations are sprayed all over the real world.Atsuko Chiba is a researcher who along with the DC Mini's portly developer, a laboratory gnome, a homicide detective, and Chiba's gorgeous, dreamy alter-ego Paprika must enter the world of dreams to uncover the sinister plot behind the device's theft."Paprika" is one ambitious, fabulous-looking, and wondrous marvel of an Anime' (Japanese animation) feature.
But this is a facet of sci-fi that "Paprika" director Satoshi Kon, working from the novel by Japanese science fiction writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, has experimented with before, both in his earlier "Perfect Blue" (1998) and "Millennium Actress" (2001), the latter film of which I haven't seen, but parallels to those earlier films can be seen.This is certainly one of the most beautiful-looking Anime' features I've ever seen.
But with all the stigmas attached to animation from Japan, it's easy to see why American film-goers might be a little hesitant to give this film, or any others like it, a chance at the theater.I guess American movie-goers might think it's poison for the mind.Dream on!10/10.
I probably would have just dismissed this movie as "just another anime" if I had not been told about it from a friend, and I was not disappointed.Paprika uses beautiful and astonishing animation and truly unique imagination to bring us an adventurous story into the dreams of its characters.
Of Satoshi Kon's movies, it was Paprika that impressed me the most though Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are very impressive films too.
It has the power to control the dreams of people and as the story progresses it gets worse.PROS: An amazing soundtrack, story, animation, visuals are some of the qualities of this film.
But the device they use ends up getting stolen and weird things start to happen.But the thing I really love about this film is the animation.
It was really incredible it goes from movie references to bizarre things.So overall, "Paprika", is an amazing anime film that's worth watching if you're an anime fan or not.5/5.
When watching this anime, particularly in the parade scene, you will be amazed at the color and the imagination used to create these wonderful and rich dream sequences.
Like previous commenters said, it is quite weird, but it gives you a lot to think about if you chose, and if you're not into analyzing films, there are plenty of beautiful visuals to feats your eyes on.In a Q&A after the screening, Kon said that this would be the last of his films mixing dreams and reality, and hinted that the ending could be a topic of his next work..
When I was reading reviews about Paprika with such high ratings i thought i would be watching something valuable, even anime art movie.
Paprika takes advantage of all the strange things that can happen when a person enters the dream of someone else.This movie has become the last movie for the late director Satoshi Kon who've died of pancreatic cancer in 2010.
Naturally you are awake while watching the film, and it makes no sense like nightmares don't once you are awake, but it still creates that weird nightmare like feel to it.Even though this movie is mostly about dreams, I love how they were able to bring movies into it.But yeah, let's be honest, this movie is visually so beautiful!
Even when this movie gets so very freaky, it still looks amazing.Paprika is an interesting film and I wish I could write more about it, but unfortunately I think it would need a second watch - at least.
PAPRIKA is an exhilarating, mind-bending look at dreams and the nature of reality that is also one of the weirdest, most visually inventive things I've ever seen.
Aside from the story, which is very confusing at times because of not knowing what takes place in the dream world and what doesn't, the aspect I most liked in this film was the visuals.
Paprika, along with Millennium Actress, represent the greatest achievements of Satoshi Kon and certainly one of the landmarks of animated films.Paprika bests many movies from the great Hayao Myiazaki and is perhaps on the same level of classics such as "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro".The plot is extremely creative and compelling, showing the viewers a somewhat hard to catch mix of dream and reality, which was never done so well.
Awarded Best Film honors at the 2007 Anime Awards in Tokyo, Japan, "Paprika " tells of a group of well-meaning scientists who invent a machine capable of controlling people's dreams - only to discover that the dreams, in a retaliatory measure, have actually begun controlling them.This cautionary tale about the abuse of science and technology may be confusing at times - not surprising given its near-constant merging of dreams and dreamlike states with "reality" - but the concept is an intriguing one, a tribute to the fertile imaginations that concocted it: writer Seishi Minakami and co-writer/director Satoshi Kan (working off the novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui), along with a handful of first-rate animation artists who have brought it all to miraculous life on film.
The execution is smart and visually compelling, filled with eerie scenes of abandoned amusement parks and bizarrely incongruous images (refrigerators dancing, toads playing musical instruments etc.) that effectively capture the bewildering and often discomfiting nature of dreams and nightmares.In addition, the characters are well-rounded and complex, the storyline endlessly inventive and challenging, and the moral and ethical issues dealt with in a manner that is both thought-provoking and evenhanded.Indeed, "Paprika" is so imaginative and visually stimulating that even non-anime fans may find themselves irresistibly drawn into the amazingly kaleidoscopic world it unfolds before them..
I saw this recently at the MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival), This is my 2nd time seeing a Satoshi Kon feature since "Perfect Blue", I've got to say, it's an interesting yet confusing plot, but the visuals, suspense, setting and an intriguing script, as well as small pieces of humor.An enjoyable paranoia anime for fans and non-alike.It may strange, delusional and mixed up, but isn't that what a dream is?
What we are left with is a lot of self-important psycho-babble that sounds like it is coming from the lips of an overeager college freshman, and characters out of Anime 101 whom you never end up caring about.Overall, not a horrible movie, but do yourself a favor and watch "Perfect Blue" instead.
However, the ideas that are present throughout the film can be seen in Inception and it isn't hard to see what could have expired Nolan to make that film, along with the concept that the further we progress in the film, the vaguer the line between dream and reality is.Overall, the film was a pleasure to watch for me, the animation style is simplistic and beautiful, whilst also well-thought of.
This movie accurately portrays just how absurd dreams are and Paprika shows what happens when we allow our subconscious to run amok, causing chaos and confusion, sometimes in beautiful ways.
Characters were very fun to watch and the story, whether absurd or grounded, is engaging to follow along.Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in Kon's work or wants to try something a little out of the norm for anime..
So, it's up to one of the therapists, Paprika, to enter folks dreams in order to stop the maniac.The animation is what you'd expect and the film quite good...albeit a bit confusing and very strange.
Bursting with untapped imagination, flowing with limitless creativity & presenting its story in an unabashedly freewheeling manner, Paprika (also known as Papurika) is part fantasy, part sci-fi & part mystery film with a bewildering plot that never makes any sense yet it manages to provide a cinematic experience that's dazzling, audacious & unique at the same time.Set in the near future, Paprika presents a world in which technology exists that allows users to see other people's dreams & is used by psychologists to help their patients by entering their dreams.
Chaos ensues when the device is stolen & used by the thief to distract people with their own dreams even when they are awake, thus forcing the titular character to find the one responsible before it's too late.Co-written & directed by Satoshi Kon in what is his fourth & final film before his tragic death in 2010, Paprika is captivating from its opening moments and is a surreal work that blends the worlds of dream & reality unlike any other example before.
The movie is not only breaking everyone's imagination but also limits, abilities, leaving the audiences in the confusion of not knowing what's actually real.When you think about it, this plot is kind of similar to 'Inception' US movie, but with higher graphic feels and more whimsical scenes, Papurika has pushed this concept of dreams up to a new level.I'm not a really good at writing but I have forced myself to compliment something on this fascinating movie.
From watching the title character maneuver through the opening credits to watching various characters' dreams, one can tell that Satoshi has an imagination unlike any other.One of the other things that makes this stand out from many traditional pieces of anime is that this film has a lot of heart that goes far beyond the complicated science driven plot.
Along with the plot of the dream invasion "Paprika" also shares the quality of eye-popping visuals with "Inception" in the form of Japanese anime.
The race is on, with our heroes getting the help of a mysterious girl named Paprika, who seems to be able to move with in dreams in ways that are completely unnatural.I liked this movie.
Kon blends the real and the dream in ways that can only be done through animation (see his earlier films for how good he is at it).
I know for some, myself included, the plot line may seem a bit of been there and done that (ie Dreamscape) but Kon's visual sense pushes the film from a run of the mill retread into something worth going out and seeing.(As I said I'm not going to go into some of the wild things that Kon has cooked up for his dream world since somethings should remain a surprise.) For those looking for some of the darkness of Kon's Perfect Blue or Paranoia Agent, its not really here, actually the movie is frequently very funny.
Its not the best thing that director Satoshi Kon has done, but its a good time in the movies (which it celebrates)..
Many of the images just wouldn't work in any form except anime.While the story itself follows an investigation into the theft of three devices that enable users to drop into people's dreams, the movie is also a homage to both films and television.