Paprika (2006 film)

Paprika
File:Paprika (2006 film).jpg
Directed by	Satoshi Kon
Written by	Seishi Minakami Satoshi Kon
Produced by	Masao Takiyama Jungo Maruta
Starring	Megumi Hayashibara Akio Ohtsuka Koichi Yamadera Tohru Furuya Toru Emori
Edited by	Takeshi Seyama
Music by	Susumu Hirasawa
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Entertainment
Release dates	Sept. 2, 2006 Nov. 25, 2006 (wide) Dec. 6, 2006 May 25, 2007 June 15, 2007 Sept. 3, 2007
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

This article is for the 2006 film Paprika. For the 1991 film Paprika, see Paprika (1991 film)

Paprika (パプリカ, Papurika) is a Japanese animated science fiction film, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel Paprika, about a female research psychologist involved in a project to develop a device that will permit therapists to help patients by entering their dreams.

The film was directed by Satoshi Kon, animated by Madhouse Studios and produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The music was composed by Susumu Hirasawa, who also composed the soundtrack for Kon's award-winning film, Millennium Actress, and equally lauded television series, Paranoia Agent.

Its world premiere took place at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2006. It also competed at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival from October 21—29, 2006 as the opening screening for the 2006 TIFF Animation CG Festival.. It was also shown at the 2007 National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC, as the closing film of the Anime Marathon at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian, and at the 2007 Greater Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival. It was also a part of the 44th New York Film Festival, playing on October 7, 2006. Furthermore, it played at the Sarasota Film Festival on April 21, 2007, in Sarasota, Florida. It saw theatrical releases on November 25, 2006 in Japan and May 25 2007 in the United States.

Plot

In the very near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called PT has been invented. A device called the "DC Mini" allows the user to act as a "dream detective" and view inside people's dreams, exploring their unconscious thoughts. The head of the team working on this treatment, Dr. Atsuko Chiba who begins using the machine illegally to help psychiatric patients outside of the research facility, using her alter-ego "Paprika," a persona she assumes in the dream world. Paprika is literally a "dream girl," with her cute face and red hair, she is the more playful half of the serious, though attractive, Chiba. It also seems that Paprika is the most expert of these "dream detectives."

The movie opens with Paprika counseling Detective Konakawa Toshimi from within his own dream. He is victimized by a recurring dream sequence. In this dream, he wanders through the audience of a circus act. Undercover agents seem to tell him important information that really has to do with film making. Then the conductor of the circus points to him, counts to three, and Konakawa magically appears in the center of the ring in a tall narrow cage. After a shadowed man points him out saying "There he is! Get him!" the cage is rushed my the myriad people at the circus, all bearing Konakawa's own face. Konakawa then finds himself living a few of his favorite films with Paprika at his side, culminating with him trying to catch a criminal attempting to escape down a hallway after shooting a man; he runs after the man but the ground gives way. As he makes it to the door the screen washes out and a man's voice asks "Where's the rest of it?". It is at this point that the dream ends, and is a great source of personal anxiety for him.

This type of counseling session is not officially sanctioned however, so Dr. Chiba and her associates must be cautious that word doesn't leak out to the press regarding the nature of the DC Mini and the existence of Paprika. Unfortunately, before the government can pass a bill authorizing the use of this new technology, three of the prototypes are stolen, sending the research facility into an uproar. This is particularly unnerving because in their uncompleted state, the DC Minis allow the wearer to enter any person's dream unchecked. In the wrong hands, the potential misuse of the device could be devastating, allowing the user to access any mind that has been under any kind of psychic therapy treatment/connection and completely annihilate the dreamer's personality while they are asleep or even waking. Tokita Kosaku, the inventor of the machine, assists Dr. Chiba and their chief, Dr. Shima, in searching for the thief.

The first clue comes when Dr. Shima is involuntarily psychically linked to a patient's dream through the outside use of a DC Mini. After sputtering a bunch of gibberish, he runs through the window, nearly killing himself. Upon examining this dream, Tokita recognizes his assistant, Himuro, which confirms their suspicion that the theft was an internal job. In the meantime, Dr. Chiba uses her alter ego to wake Dr. Shima up and save him from the sickening dream, consisting of a colorful parade of inanimate objects, singing and dancing. As a result of this incident and two later employees falling under a similar influence, the Chairman (of the company) working on the DC Mini, bans the use of the device completely. But it is too late.

Konakawa decides to visit a website Paprika gave him the address to contact her. Here, two bartenders draw him into a quiet bar where he and Paprika begin to explore the magical dreamworld. Konakawa reveals that he was once an amateur film maker. He and a friend actually made a simple cop and robber movie in which Konakawa chased his friend, the robber, amongst flashbacks showing how the two had once been friends. Konakawa and his mysterious friend had never gotten around to actually finishing the film, which ends with the robber turning to Konakawa, smiling and dashing away as Konakawa raises his gun uncertainly to fire. Konakawa left his friend who was accepted to a film school but died before he could attend. As Konakawa reveals this, the crazed parade dream begins to seep into the room. Amongst the hubbub, Paprika spots Tokita who tried to infiltrate Himuro's dreams by his self and was captured in the dream. Tokita pushes by her, revealing that the dream is in fact spreading more and more.

Upon waking, Chiba decides its up to her to find the mastermind behind the whole affair. Entering through Himuro's dreams, she follows a chain of frightening clues to find that Himuro is only an empty shell. Tracing the "roots" that controlled him, she finds a great tree bearing the Chairman's face! After being chased by a barrage of attacking roots, Chiba wakes up. Her and Shima make their way to the Chairman's house, only to find out that she is still in fact dreaming! The Chairman claims that he is in fact the "protector of the dreamworld," guarding this last haven against the inhumane horrors of reality and technology. Again, she is chased by the Chairman but also finds out that the researcher Osanai agreed to give the Chairman his body and become the Chairman's lackey, as long as he got to have equal powers over his own dreams. Chiba/Paprika is eventually captured by the pair after an exhausting chase.

Paprika wakes, pinned to a table by pins in a room surrounded by pinned butterflies, of which she is one. Osanai has brought her to his one safe place, away from the chairman because he loves her and doesn't want to see her lost/dead like Himuro and Tokita. He explains that he actually loves Chiba, without the cute-girl mask. After a somewhat sexual ordeal of peeling back Chiba's Paprika disguise, he picks her up. However, he is interrupted by the Chairman, whose head sprouts on his shoulder (the two share Osanai's body, housing the Chairmans spirit). As the two argue, the Chairman trying to kill Chiba and Osanai protecting her, Konakawa bursts through the wall from his cinema dream. Snatching the naked Chiba away from the two fighting men, he is chased through his recurring dream ending with Osanai running down the hall as before during the hallway homicide dream. But this time, Konakawa draws his gun (as in his amateur film) and shoots the escaping badguy. This kills Osanai and the Chairman sees him sinking into a black hole in the ground, grabbing his hand, the Chairman too is pulled in. All seems well.

Chiba, thinking the dream is finally over, runs through the research facility with Shima only to see the giant doll about to knock down the footbridge they're on. The dreams then begin to seep into reality, including Paprika who now exisits outside of Chiba. The demented dream grows and grows, like a cancer, infecting each new person and adding their own dreams to the parade. Dream and reality begin to blend until they are indistinguishable from one another, à la Perfect Blue. Soon the whole city (and the world) is in chaos except for Chiba, Paprika, Shima and Konakawa. Chiba sees dream Tokita (in the shape of a robot) and decides to help him, however he simply swallows her, but claims he's still missing "the spice...Paprika!" Paprika seems more interested in finding the source of the devastation. She and Shima dash through ads and posters until they find an all consuming black hole. Tokita sees them and races towards Paprika, wanting to eat her. At the last minute, Konakawa with the help of the two waiters from Paprika's site blind the robot Tokita.

A ghostly apparition of Chiba appears and we slowly realize that she has in fact been in love with Tokita this whole time and has simply been repressing these emotions. She comes to terms with her own repressed desires, reconciles herself with that part of her that is Paprika, and is thus reborn in the dream world. The Chairman then crawls out of the black hole in a gigantic black form. He darkens the sky and reveals his twisted dreams of omnipotence. Merging his dream-self with that of Osanai, he becomes a seemingly unstoppable force, and begins to merge the dream world with reality through the power of his own delusion.

Paprika realizes that everything has it's opposite "Light and dark, reality and dream...man and woman." As winds of change blast through the streets, Paprika returns to Tokita, where Chiba is. Disappearing into the robotic form, a ghostly apparition of a baby comes out of the robotic shell, like a womb. Sucking in the wind, the child grows until she sucks up the chairman himself, becoming a full grown beautiful combination of both Chiba and Paprika. In this new form, she is able to consume the Chairman's dream form and end the nightmare he created.

In the final scene, we see Chiba at Tokita's bedside. Konakawa and Shima leave the two as Chiba puts her hand in Tokita's. As Konakawa and Shima walk down the street, Shima asks if Konakawa ever figured out the meaning to all this. Konakawa, turning to his reflection and seeing the figure of his film friend, realizes that he in fact became the character from their original film, the cop.

Voice Actors

• Megumi Hayashibara as Atsuko Chiba (千葉敦子 Chiba Atsuko) / Paprika (パプリカ Papurika)
• Akio Ohtsuka as Toshimi Konakawa (粉川利美 Konakawa Toshimi)
• Daisuke Sakaguchi as Kei Himuro (氷室啓 Himuro Kei) (Incorrectly stated as "Hajime Himuro" in the press sheet [1])
• Katsunosuke Hori as Dr. Torataro Shima (島寅太郎 Shima Toratarō) (romanized as Toratoro in English version materials [2] and Toratarou in Japanese version materials [3])
• Kōichi Yamadera as Dr. Morio Osanai (小山内守雄 Osanai Morio)
• Kouzou Mito as Pierrot
• Mitsuo Iwata as Yasushi Tsumura (津村保志 Tsumura Yasushi)
• Rikako Aikawa as Nobue Kakimoto (柿本信枝 Kakimoto Nobue)
• Satoshi Kon as Jinnai (陣内)
• Tohru Furuya as Dr. Kosaku Tokita (時田浩作 Tokita Kosaku) (romanized as Kosaku in English version materials [4] and Kousaku in Japanese version materials [5])
• Toru Emori as Dr. Seijiro Inui (乾精次郎 Inui Seijirō) (romanized as Seijiro in English version materials [6] and Seijirou in Japanese version materials [7])
• Tanaka Hideyuki as the Chairman
• Yasutaka Tsutsui as Kuga (玖珂)
• Satomi Koorogi as Japanese Doll

English Dub

• Taylor JoliCoeur as Atsuko Chiba/Paprika
• Breckin Meyer as Toshimi Konakawa
• Michelle Ruff as Himuro
• Vic Mignogna as Dr. Torataro Shima
• Jason Liebrecht as Dr. Morio Osanai
• Robert McCollum as Dr.Kosaku Tokita

Soundtrack

Main article: Paprika Original Soundtrack

Trivia

• "radioclub.jp", a site referenced in the film is a working site which displays a fake 404-style error message in Japanese. The message warns the viewer that he or she cannot access the site while awake and that you need to have the DC Mini installed, providing a link to the official film's website as a place to get one.
• Advertisements for Director Satoshi Kon's three previous films are clearly visible when the Detective Konakawa goes to the movies.
• The tall and short bartenders in "radioclub.jp" are voiced by director Satoshi Kon, and author of the Paprika novel, Yasutaka Tsutsui, respectively.

See also

• List of animated feature films
• Satoshi Kon
• Madhouse Studios
• Sony Pictures Classics
• Milan Records

External links

• Paprika official website
• Paprika official website Template:Jp icon
• Official page at MySpace
• Paprika at IMDb
• Paprika ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Paprika Japanese Theatrical Trailer at YouTube
• Paprika U.S. Theatrical Trailer at YouTube
• Paprika at Rotten Tomatoes
• Paprika at MetaCritic
• Paprika review at Cinepinion