Hey, this is Tyler Crook, the co -creator of Harrow County and the creator of The Lonesome Hunters, and you are listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone, welcome to episode 160 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. I'm your dream detective with a dark past, Chris Hacker. And joining me this week is the grand marshal of this nightmare parade, my co -host and BFF, Aaron Knowles. All right, everybody.
If you already don't know what that is, we're going to tell you. It's hard to emulate that music. There's a funny reason for that, Aaron. We'll talk about it here later on during our Next installment in the Midnight Rewind this week for episode 160, we were talking about 2006's Paprika. Aaron, we talked about we wanted to bring back the Midnight Rewind after a very successful Princess Mononoke sort of retrospective celebration. We really enjoyed ourselves. So we thought what was next?
And we ultimately decided to just pick the most confusing anime of all time. Most confusing. I feel there's definitely there's definitely more confusing ones out there. music wise, definitely hard to emulate paprika. There's, but man, I don't even want to get ahead of myself because there's so many things to say about paprika. Paprika is like one of those movies that you expect people to be talking about, like after like a film festival.
Yeah. You know, some high brow director, you know, like put out some cinephile made something that like nobody understood. And they now like years later or moments later, after they watched it, they're like, my life is different. Yeah, it's changed me. I'm different on the inside. Yeah. I mean, that really is paprika. We'll get into it. And if everyone that's curious during all of our midnight rewinds, we're only covering the film. We're not doing News and Notes.
We're not doing Christmas Corner, Aaron's Arcade, anything else. It is just going to be 100 % paprika because we honestly, Aaron, need the time to discuss this film. There's a lot to uncover, a lot of layers, right? Like like Shrek. So yes, yes. Much like much like paprika Shrek. a lot of things to contemplate. They should have called this movie Parfait. I love a Parfait. I'll have a Parfait. All right.
But before we get into that minute rewind, Aaron, will you please tell the folks, tell the listeners how they can support the Oblivion Bar podcast? All right. So the best way besides word of mouth, besides sharing, besides reviewing, besides all those free ways of life is a, no, it's life is a highway, but anyways, free ways. Okay. Of supporting. The the oblivion bar pod. Okay, we have our patreon which is patreon
.com for slash oblivion bar pod for your support You get access to so many things the grid which is our weekly episode that is the oblivion bar pod after dark unfiltered Untamed it's like a wild cave, man. Just going What's it going like, you know, and it's just it's all I think that's accurate He's talking about the stock market. Yeah, but anyways, it's our Weekly bonus podcast, it's just a bunch of fun.
It's us talking about anything and everything, not really having a format, just kind of, again, brain dumping in this digital sandbox that we have created for ourselves. You also get access to episode transcripts. You can see what we're talking about before the show was even aired. You get early access to the normal feed episodes. You get a special shout out at the end of those episodes, which you'll hear later on from me. I love doing it. It's very special to me.
And honestly, it's just, it's, it's the best way to support the show because we put, we take everything we get from Patreon and we put it back into the show. If you talk to any of the other Patreon members that you'll see exactly that we put everything back into it because we want to make a better product for all of our fans, all of our listeners. And also we just released episode 130, which is our most recent episode to the public.
So if you want to get sort of a teaser of what we offer over on Patreon on the grid, you can go listen to that for free. Just literally go to our RSS feed. Now that you're listening to this on. and go check that out. We talk about all of our original art that we own. So that was pretty fun episode. Chris sent it to me and you know, we were, I was listening to it and I'm just like kind of giving him the play by play of that episode.
And it's like, I'm not going to call it word vomit or just like going off at the, at the, at the hinges off the rails. but it's fun to like look back, listen to it and kind of discuss what came out of our mouth. Yeah. Cause again, there's no format. It's not like this where one could argue that even what we do here is sort of sporadic and all over the place, but. Imagine having no one could imagine like no format whatsoever. That's what that's what's on the grid.
So once again, patreon .com forward slash oblivion bar. But Aaron, again, we need all the time that we can we can get with this episode. We need to dive in headfirst into the dream world that is Paprika. Hey Aaron, how do you like to read your comic books digitally? Chris, it's funny that you should say that. I just started buying and reading my comics on Omnibus. Ooh, interesting. I actually heard from a little birdie, it's actually backed by some of the top publishers in the medium.
It also hosts an extensive back catalog from Image Comics, Boom Studios, Dark Horse, Ahoy Comics, Titan, Vault, and many more. And most importantly, Omnibus supports in -app purchases. That little birdie is called X now, but also Omnibus has officially been made reading and buying comics digitally the easiest it's ever been. Wow. That's incredible. And you know what I'm going to do, Aaron? I'm actually going to go right now to my iPad iOS device and download Omnibus.
And also right after that, I'm going to go follow them over on social media at the Omnibus app. Omnibus for fans, by fans. This whole planet suffers! Is an adventure like this for anything in the world? In such a short time, it's unbelievable. Are you saying he has that kind of energy? All righty, here we are for our second Midnight Rewind. Aaron and I love that intro, by the way. I'm pretty sure we're going to get copyrighted with that again, but I don't care. It's worth it every time.
I just love it because I created it like I made that. So it wasn't like I just like took all that from. I mean, obviously it is, you know, little parts of different highlighted parts of the anime, but I created it. So I'm going to keep it. It's a it's a it's a an homage. Yeah, it's an homage. Right. So welcome back everybody to our next installment, our second installment of Minet Rewind, where again, this is something that Aaron and I wanted to do.
We wanted to highlight some of our favorite animes throughout time. Aaron is much more of the anime weeb as I am, like more than I am. Like I am sort of the, I'm the bystander here. I mostly just kind of set, I set the transcripts up, but I want Aaron to sort of take control of these episodes because he is much more of the subject matter expert when it comes to Eastern animation. I can remember sitting down on the couch with my dad.
at watching like midnight, you know, midnight, anime, midnight, sessions of anime on the sci -fi channel. And it's just a core memory, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing feeling, even though some of them I learned quickly are probably not ones that a kid of my age should be watching, but I didn't care. it was amazing. So I think that's kind of a, that's sort of the benefit, I think, just to kind of briefly go on a quick tangent right off the top of the segment.
That's sort of the benefit of anime and that Eastern animation is that they don't really hold the hand of the youth that are probably watching this. And I wouldn't say that paprika or, you know, most anime even is really for children necessarily, but I think you can enjoy it as a young person and still pick up a lot of the adult themes that are in it. There's a difference.
I think there's a very distinct difference between Western and Eastern animation for, and I think that's the main difference outside of, I think also a giant quality difference. Eastern animation is far better looking, a lot more. well done than I would say Western animation. Absolutely. I mean, it's a strong part of their cinematic revenue. And it has been for the longest time because of manga, because of anime films.
And for the longest time, obviously, you know, I mean, let's not forget, you know, America's only been around for a couple hundred years, man. And so if you think about it in that amount of time, like anime has been prominent and we're just like thinking that, cartoons are for kids.
So we only put a kid amount of, of money in a kid amount of, you know, industrial backing and, and support behind it where again, Japan and all these other countries have this massive support structure because they know how important it is to their, to their, you know, their industry.
And we've talked about it before, but the Japan animation movement started, you know, like it's been around forever, as you just said, but I think it really hit here in the U S right around the time in the nineties, or I would say like, late eighties, early nineties with Funimation, Bandai, Saban Entertainment. They began licensing anime out into syndication, which made it more popular for young people like you and myself to watch it on Midnight Run and Toonami.
And I think as we've said before, there's a strong argument for 2024 anime is the most popular it has ever been. When you go to New York Comic -Con, you go to San Diego Comic -Con, you don't see a giant Batman. You see a giant Goku. Anime is huge. And I think. Just the other day I was at Barnes and Noble and when you go to the graphic novel section, there are four to five, not even four to five, one or two shelves for American comics. And then there are four giant manga section areas.
I mean, yeah, exactly. Look at these conventions that we go to and I guarantee you, you're going to see Demon Slayer. You're going to see all these like Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto. Don't yell at me. We don't want any emails after this episode. Don't send us. We don't want them. Send them. You know, tweet us. We'll get the engagement.
Yes. But that's the thing is like you go to any of these conventions and you will see nowadays, you will see a lot more people dressed up as anime characters than you will like a lot of American superheroes these days. So it's great to see. It is honestly great to see anime coming into the States and really making a prominent success for itself. Right. And I think the last point we'll make before we get into paprika is that these minute rewinds are meant to just be a discussion, a celebration.
These are not a review, not a review. We're not going to give it a rating like we normally do with most of our films, television series or video games. This is strictly just a moment for Aaron and I to talk through some of our favorite installments or some of our sort of lesser dark horse favorites in the anime world. You know, again, we picked pencil, smart and okay for our first installment. We're talking about paprika for this installment.
At some point we're going to get into some silly ones, some things that aren't as celebrated, but I think it was important to Aaron and I that we both picked coveted, loved installments in the anime, in the annals of anime history, because I feel like it deserves discussion, right? Cause when looking into the film of Paprika, there's not a ton of discussion about this movie.
Like it is, it is known among the masses as one of the greatest and yet very few people are talking about it in a significant way outside of the fact that it's resembles. Inception, which we will talk about later in this discussion. So I'd also love to challenge our listeners as well. If you have a movie that you think an anime film that you think that we should talk about, send it to us. Let us know.
We have a growing list because we again, I've sent Chris multiple lists of just fun movies because again, I grew up watching these. This was this was kind of a an escape for me. That's a particular genre that I really enjoyed. And again, it kind of motivated me to. My dream and hopefully I'm going to do it this coming, you know, this coming February for my birthday. I want to go to Japan for my 40th birthday. God, 40 years old, man. I am old as fuck. Old motherfucker. You old motherfucker.
But yeah, like the chairman in this movie, just the old tentacle. Hey, that's yeah. And he literally was a chairman. Anyways, should we get into the summary, Chris? Well, I want to you said something so spot on that just perfectly transitioned us into sort of our initial thoughts of paprika, which is you said escape. And I think if there's nothing that is more of a central pillar in this movie, it is escapism.
And I'll sort of give my initial thoughts here just off the top is that Paprika to me, when I watched it, of course, I was like, what the fuck is happening? What is going on? And I think as you go on throughout the movie, you start to realize that what the filmmaker is trying, which we'll get into here in just a moment, what Khan is trying to say is that the relationship between cinema and our dreams, whether that be... actual dreams or metaphysical dreams.
Escapism can be a tool that can be blunted. If we escape, if we use escapism too much, it becomes sort of a downfall. And that was sort of my takeaway is that the line between our dreams and what we want in this world can be blurred and almost unattainable if we lean one way or the other. So of course, outside of that, which we will obviously dive into, it's a beautiful film. I mean, this movie came out in 2006. And it is this is my favorite version of anime.
Was it Dragon Ball Super Superhero not too long ago where it was a different kind of animation? And I made a very distinct point of sort of pointing out that I didn't love that this right here. And of course, like the hand drawn, overworked version of Studio Ghibli from the 80s. These this is my favorite version of just animation in general, not just Eastern animation, but just animation in general.
So there's a quote in this film that I wanted to to to read, and it comes from the main character. Well, Not necessarily, by namesake only, the main character. It's from Paprigan. She says, the internet and dreams are similar. They are areas where the repressed conscious mind escapes. And that really stood out to me because I really felt that this movie was a metaphor, especially now with how prominent the internet is in our day -to -day life and what we use it for, which is escapism.
And we almost... If you, if you talk to anybody who is a, who is trying to just like go for that, that grind, trying to make their dreams come true, what are they doing? They're, they're probably sleeping very little. So their dreams are not their escape anymore, but what happens when people weaponize your dream or your, the place where you escape to.
And that's where this movie kind of stood for me was we're entering this, this era and this age of society where almost every single thing that we use. that we enjoy is being weaponized against us. And this to me was the metaphor of this movie was that what happens when we start trying to take control of a realm in our lives that means so much to us and is so helpful to not only our health, but our minds, and then use it against our enemies.
And also you made a good point there a moment ago when talking about the internet and that it seems as we continue to rely on technology and the internet becomes more of a central pillar in our lives. We are more connected. Like Aaron, you and I, we live in different States. You live in New York. I live in Indiana. We're connected, but we're further away. Like had we not had the internet, maybe we would see each other more in person.
Maybe we would make a more F we would make more of an effort to see each other on a more of a constant basis. And that goes across the entire, you know, the entire spectrum of the internet, whether that be social media or the way that we ingest news or the way that we retain knowledge, because believe it or not, we're not experts on anything. And the only reason why we know anything is because of the internet.
We don't have encyclopedias anymore and we don't really have to know anything because I can just go and have the retain the nest. The need to retain knowledge these days is, is non -existent. That's why, you know, kids are given tablets in school. Kids are given computers and laptops, which I'm not saying I'm not that boomer. That's like kids should be researching in libraries. No, when we were coming through schools, we didn't have to use cursive as much.
when my parents were going to their schools, like cursive was the big thing because cursive was what was professional and looked good where nowadays if you know, when I was going through school typing, typing was the biggest, you know, tool that you needed because everything was done on computers. And these days like kids don't, they don't even learn how to type. They don't even learn how to like use full form letters. Yeah. They don't have to.
Cause they are born with a keyboard in front of them. So they like, they have all of violence and news and everything is in their pocket. So they are grown up. knowing how to use a keyboard compared to us who had to take typing classes and whatnot. I wonder what that is though. I'm curious. You brought that up. I wonder what like the new, is it coding maybe? Is it? Yeah, I would say it's coding and it's well, that's the other thing is, you know, design. Yeah, design.
They don't really teach strategic thinking anymore in classes either. But like the thing that I would be curious about is so I know growing up for me again, we're kind of getting off the topic here, but like video, we'll tie it back in. Yeah. Video games for me were an escape. because there was an amazing story that usually all the games that I played hadn't like final fantasy and gears of war and halo.
They have these amazing in -depth stories that took you literally to other worlds as an escape the internet. You could watch a movie. You could dive into a story, whatever as an escape kids today. I would love to know what they're using as an escape because with all the stress and everything that's out there, what are they using to, to escape? Because the, attention span is almost so minimal these days that there's not really.
So like I would like, I would like to know what that escape is that, you know, is so important. And we remember what it was like to have to tune in every Tuesday to watch a new episode of The Office. Nowadays kids can turn on Netflix and it's like they're war and peace. They can just watch Dwight Schrute go from being 26 at the beginning of the show to being 40 at the end of it. It's just, it's wild the way we ingest media nowadays.
And It's funny, you made a comparison to you keep setting me up. So thank you for that. Where one of the characters in this movie, Detective Kono Koa, and forgive me, I'm just going to get a quick banner disclaimer here. We're going to butcher, at least I'm going to butcher every single name that I can during the discussion of this movie, both as voice actors and also the characters themselves. But Detective Kono Koa, his sort of relationship to the dream world is through film.
Like he talks about how he doesn't love film, but that's not true. He loves film. Right. And Paprika is sort of teasing him throughout the movie that yeah, he it's his over reliance of film is where the is where the line is blurred between dream and reality. So again, we'll talk. We need to get into the story. I want to make a point really quickly just to kind of tie that before we move on to the summary is that that is my escape.
Just exposing my underbelly right at the beginning of this discussion is that everyone that listens to the show often, Aaron, you definitely know this is that I go to the movies a lot. And when I've moved. to other cities that I've never been to. What do I do? I go to the movies all the time. It's just what I do. When I moved to St. Louis from Indiana, I went to the movies three, four times a month, maybe more, honestly. I do it now.
When I was going through cancer, the first thing that I did both after surgery and after I got the chemo, I went to see a movie. Because it's the ultimate escapism. It's a connection, right? I feel connected to a story when I'm watching it on the big screen. And I think there's a direct conversation happening in this movie to that exact thought that, Cinema is at least in the opinion of again. I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher the name here Satoshi Khan He believes that film is the ultimate escape.
I think that's the central conversation He's trying to have here is that film and dreams act as the same deterrent of our escapism That's sort of I'll leave it there We'll continue on here But Erin go and give us a summary of paprika just for some reason and again spoilers ahead if you have not seen paprika I mean truthfully you could listen this entire conversation and still Wow idea what it's about. Yeah, just be absolutely Bamboozled by what you actually see on the screen.
Yeah, it just yeah, that's the next like like spoiler banner type announcement here is We could tell you every detail about this movie and the moment that you push play you're gonna be like fuck Am I watching going on like they didn't they didn't they didn't explain this to me. Nobody told me about this There's a problem with my checking in my savings and So think about checking my savings on this effort.
Yeah So adapted from Yasutaka Tatsui's 1993 novel of the same name and set in a, quote unquote, distant future of 2012, a newly created device called the DC Mini, no affiliation with the universe, allows the user to view people's dreams. Paprika is about a battle between a dream terrorist who steals a device that allows others to share their dreams and causes nightmares for everyone. So think of, if you're a Pokemon fan, think of Darkrai. That's what he does. He just shares his dreams.
So the research psychologist, Dr. Chiba Atsuko, attempts to enter the dream world and become Paprika, a dream detective alter ego to investigate these cases. So when you think of Paprika and Dr. Atsuko, think of like, I don't even want to call her like Batman because there's not like a, there's not a clear like. differentiated.
They're almost like two separate like personas in the same body because and that's the cool thing about this movie is that at certain points they actually engage with each other in the real world. So I don't think that's a terrible comparison though. I think that one of my favorite Batman stories is Batman ego where Bruce Wayne and Batman have a conversation with each other and sort of come to grips with the differences in the way that they approach life.
And I think that there's a very similar conversation here happening between Dr. Asuko and Paprika. Paprika is sort of She's sort of gleefully curious, right? Where it seems like Dr. Asuko has sort of been beaten down by life and she just wants to get to the bottom of it. There's no journey here. So the question, that's what I wanted to ask you is did you watch it with subtitles or did you watch it dubbed? Okay, perfect. Yes. Thank you for bringing that up.
Cause I meant to put that in here somewhere. I watched the dub version. Okay. So I watched the subtitled version. And we all know, like that's one thing if in case you don't know, in the Japanese anime, like realm, you can watch very different films, dubbed versus subbed.
So where there might have been a conversation that like had a different implication in the, in the dubbed, it might've had a completely different, again, outcome or discussion topic or just translation in general in the subbed version. So what's interesting about that is that I so I watched it was the dubbed version, but the subtitles were subtitles from the Japanese film.
OK, so I'm reading different words as I'm watching the film and I want to point out really quick while we're talking about it. I had never seen this movie before. This is the very first time I'd ever seen it when you recommended that we talk about it or I can't remember if you recommended if I recommend it. Regardless, I didn't own it. Never seen it. I bought the 4K. I bought the steelbook 4K for this because I just knew that regardless of whether I like the film or not.
It was worth at least owning in my library because it is an anime classic. And while watching it, I think that if you're going to watch it in today in 2024, I highly recommend it because I don't think it's streaming anywhere. Highly recommend to be okay. to be is showing it. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you want to watch on to be, that's fine.
But I think if you really want the best version of this, check out the four K it is a beautiful sort of remastering of this already incredibly looking incredible looking film. So one thing, a quick note about Suey. is he's well regarded as the father of postmodern science fiction in Japan. He also faced a lot of criticism for refusing to shy away from writing about things that were considered taboo in Japan, such as being critical of the Imperial government.
So that's something that kind of thing about when watching this movie and seeing how it kind of ties into the actual film, it doesn't really translate. I don't think too well into the movie, but that's just, just, you know, something to think about. People have sort of conflicting thoughts on him because. He has gone through a lot of controversy throughout the year, throughout the years.
Of course, he was, as you said, they're sort of the pioneer of postmodernism in terms of science fiction, but he also has had some weird views, some weird comments out in public. Like he says at one point he was criticized by posting a tweet referring to the status, a statue of peace, a memorial of victims of sexual slavery in World War II, stating that girl's Q everyone let's go ejaculate on in front of her and shower her with semen on Twitter. So clearly the man. has interesting ideas.
Let's just say he's the modern HP Lovecraft of the Japanese science fiction world. Like he, he is, he's got some interesting ideas, but seems like a pretty uncool guy overall. Yeah. You, God, you're a bad person. Like all the way through to your core. Yeah. Yeah. But of course that's going to be a no from me dog. It's good. But I will say the director again, Sasatoshi Khan comes in and sort of. brings it all together, right?
Like he, he takes this idea, this already sort of brilliant idea from this very ill man and you know, makes it better. Well, let's just be honest. It is, which has been done in the past. Let's just, you know, let's just, acknowledge the fact that there's been a lot of creative people with some fucked up thoughts that kind of wrote and create some, some pretty amazing stuff. And luckily they had somebody translate it and create something else.
One of the biggest things that we don't really get explained like well about this, like when you're going through this film is like, is, is this a dream? Are we, are we, are we exploring dreams or exploring nightmares? And what is the, where is this going? Well, I think that's interesting because I don't think they want to. I don't, I think that was the point is that the blurring of reality and fiction was meant to. Reference a dream.
I mean think about the last, you know, think about the last time you hit rim and you Had a crazy dream and you think where what is this? Like is it a memory?
It's like a mixture of a memory It's a mixture of an impulse It's a mixture of a fear of a of a goal like there's so many things that go into a dream and I think that's sort of the genius of this movie is that the blurred lines that they Again, as you just said, I love the idea that they're not explaining it to us We have to sort of think about it scene to scene, right? There's a movie that I love and this is what it very much reminded me of.
It's a movie called, I'm not pretty sure I brought it up on the show before called Waking Life, where it's a movie that's recorded and captured like in, in with real actors having real discussion, real people having real discussions about basically being fully conscious within your dream realm, within REM sleep and the experiences that people have had or have been able to, the things they've been able to accomplish by being damn, there's an actual term behind it.
But anyways, that's what this reminded me a lot of is the fact that DC mini device from this movie allows people basically to experience the fiction of their dreams in almost reality terms in that waking dream kind of, you know, like I guess conscious level. So it's so interesting to have a almost no Irish detective who like, you know, kind of mystery movie in that realm.
Yeah, it's a perfect blend of, like you said, noir and science fiction, because a lot of times when you're dealing with a norm film, it's so grounded in reality. Right. And like there's there's like people are like so mirror to the real world in that way. And then science fiction, of course, is generally a high concept science fiction idea like this is usually so far out there that it's so heady. And you're like, where what is how can I ground myself in this story?
How do I put myself in the POV of the main characters? And what I think Paprika does so well is that it mixes the both. It's an investigative story about this extremely heady, high concept science fiction idea. Yeah. And I think that again, Satoshi Kon, the director, set out to prove that fiction and reality are not opposing concepts, but both homogenous in the sense that they are both like painted things.
And the interesting thing that that resonated with me and something I kind of thought about a lot in the past. And that's, you know, again, That's I think that's the kind of the kind of the foundation of a great film is it gets you thinking about things that are not that are not of that film. You know what I mean? Yeah. And this movie had me thinking the fact that reality itself is relative to the person experiencing it.
These things that we experience on a day to day basis could absolutely be almost dreamlike to somebody else who has no idea what our reality is. And so unreliable narrators. Yeah, we're all exactly. And so it's really interesting to be able to put that kind of concept into a movie.
And then like we've been talking about as the movie progresses, blur that line more and more and more to the point where just like society today, the more we blur the internet and the things that we experience on our devices and our reality, the more we blur it, the less we actually experience our own reality. We're experiencing other people's reality.
And that's what this, again, that's what I feel like this movie is kind of bringing and putting in front of us is the fact that a dream or a nightmare, it does not matter what it is, because when you start experiencing somebody else's reality, it can quickly become either or. And we don't trust it either. That's the other important aspect is that the more that we begin to rely on on these aspects, we start to distrust other people ourselves, which we again, we see in this film. And I thought.
was really interesting. One of the aspects I really loved was the parade sequence there, where in the novel, I think nightmares are sort of shown in a different light, but this film is only an hour and 30 minutes long. So it's not that long. I remember at one point when we got when I could sort of sense like my cinema brain was starting to click and go, wait, we're getting towards the end of this film. I'm like not gathering any of this. What's going on?
Once we were getting towards the end, I think what they had to do and I think that's sort of what Khan was sort of hinting at is that. the nightmare sequences, the parade throughout the entire film. We see this parade going throughout the city and that is a nightmare. That is the nightmare because it's a mix and mash of all these different things. Khan said he found it difficult to portray various dreams in different ways as in the original.
So Khan decided to focus on a dream image that would be a symbol that would be symbolic throughout the film. And that would be instantly recognizable as a nightmare when it appeared. According to Khan, the parade scene was something that he and Sumo again. Sorry, you got it, man. Here, here, Sawa. Yep. Okay, perfect. Composer of the film, they created this concept together.
And of course, Aaron sort of articulated this at the beginning of the conversation, this crazy parade noise that is haunting that we'll talk about how they created that here in just a moment. But yeah, that's not people, by the way, just so you're aware. That's a spoiler for what we're about to talk about. That's not anyone singing. That is artificially created. So Aaron, let's talk about the director here.
Yeah. Satoshi Kahn. Frigo was actually Khan's fourth and final feature film before his battle with pancreatic cancer took his life. Unfortunately in 2010, he is best known for his acclaimed anime films, Perfect Blue back in 1997, Millennium Actress in 2001 and Tokyo Godfathers in 2003, which if you've never seen Tokyo Godfathers, again, that is another one that isn't another iconic anime film that you need to go back and watch.
And, you know, you'll see, you'll feel the similarities, but at the same time, that is such a unique film that you need to experience. I think Perfect Blue is something we're definitely going to cover also here. It is in a similar vein as Paprika of a what movie? What is happening? That might be most anime. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
But I think very specifically, like when I think of heady sort of let's talk about multiple things anime, I think of truly the first two things I think about are Paprika and Perfect Blue. And I think Aaron, if you, when you continue on here, you'll, you'll sort of see the influence that was taken because As Americans do, what do we do best, Aaron? We take good ideas and we steal them and we make them our own. And we whitewash them. That's right. That's how dad did it. That's how America does it.
And it's worked out pretty well so far. That's what we do. America. We, what do you call it? We appropriate people's... We take really good ideas and we make them worse, but they're still good because we don't know that they're other good ideas. Yes. So directors Darren Aronofsky and Guillermo de Toro. have seen Khan as a major influence on them throughout their careers.
Aronofsky specifically said that many scenes and concepts in Requiem for a Dream, which that makes sense, and Black Swan were influenced by Khan and that he still wants to make a live action version of Perfect Blue. If you've seen Black Swan, it is Perfect Blue. It's that. I mean, it is exactly that movie. It's just to a T and in a very similar way that Paprika closely resembles another film that we will talk about here in just a moment.
Their concepts are so intrinsically similar that you're like, there's no way that they couldn't be aping this. Like there's no way that that that Aronofsky and this other director again, we'll talk about here in a moment. There's no way that they didn't take these ideas and make them their own. Yeah, exactly. It's not funny, but it's funny. It's funny, but it's not funny. Yeah. Satoshi Kon was an uncredited assistant artist on Katsuhiro Otomo's iconic manga Akira. That's that's pretty cool.
But cool. The film was co -written by Saishi Minakami. Minakami is a prolific screenwriter who has worked on series like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, A Certain Magical Index and the Beyblade series, which I've heard is good. I know we we think of Beyblade. We're like, that crappy toy that your mom would buy you instead of my top attack top. Get them 40 points. Centrifugal centripetal force centrifugal. I don't know what it is, but don't get him spinning blade. I've heard it's good.
I don't know. I've got good things. I'm kidding. If you're a baby Beyblade fan, I'm sorry. A Beyblade babe, blade, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, no, no, babe, babe, successfully tied in paprika to and blade blade to hot rod. Wait, babe, no! Babe, no! Babe, no! All right, let's talk about the production house. We got madhouse. A lot of people now, of course, Aaron is a is a total weeb. So he's familiar with madhouse. I was not. And I had to look up and see why madhouse was so prolific.
Founded in 1973, madhouse was a is currently a staple in the anime industry. They have animated such series as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Perfect Blue, Vanima Hunter D, Bloodlust. What I say, Vanima. Vanamay vampire vampire hunter D try gone D G D G charaht charaht. I don't know. A black lagoon death note paprika. Of course. Wolf children parasite. The maxim the first season of one punch man.
The second adaptation of Hunter X Hunter Hunter overlord and the, I don't know what that, what does that, what does that write? Friar in fire and beyond journey. And I'm going to keep all this and I'm not cutting any of this out. so all of those things, which I'm sure, if you're familiar with anime, you know all what all that is and you love it all. And you own the manga and you have the poster in your room and you have the plush. I don't know what most of that is. I've seen one punch man.
I'm familiar with, I'm going to give you a quick rundown, Chris. Okay. All right. If you, if you enjoyed wicked city, you're, you're kind of gross, but also sexy demons. ninja scroll, you are old school anime fan. If you enjoyed ninja scroll, that's some old, that's like old school samurai. Okay. Perfect. You already know, vampire hunter D blood list. You're you're fucking like you you are an old head like me when it comes to like vampires and shit try gun Absolute you're my boy.
You're my try gun is one of those old school ones It's so good fashion stampede is one of the greatest anime characters ever DG charat never heard of it black lagoon. I have eh, that was okay death note I watched the entire thing. It is phenomenal. Yeah, do not let netflix one was gorgeous. Yeah the live action I even know that paprika duh, wolf trails never saw it parasite the maxim parasite is insane And the fact that they've made multiple Netflix shows you how good it is.
Yeah. So, and then also, one punch man is just phenomenal and fun. I love one punch man. I can't deny, Madhouse recruited and developed some of the most important directors and anime history. Again, forgive me. Creators like Morio, Osaka, Metsuzuki Kojima, and of course Sasatoshi Khan during the 1990s. Aaron, was that good? Was that pretty good? Eh, good night, Greg. Yeah, it'll do.
The composer, Susumu Hirasawa, he was mostly known for his work with Kahn and the animated adaptation of the Berserk manga series, which if you don't know, if you don't know what Berserk is, get out from under your fucking rock because Berserk is one of the most badass of animes and mangas of all time. Like we're talking the main character Guts, his name is Guts and he's like got like one eye. He is. So bad. Like, OK, I'm going to give you a quick rundown on on on guts.
OK, when he's a kid, like his parents are killed, his whole village is destroyed. He starts training with a sword. And as he trains with his sword, he wraps it in wood logs and trains with it. And then when he gets better at it, he makes the sword bigger and then adds logs and keeps training. So he's he's walking around like this countryside with this massive sword. And he's like this huge fucking dude. It's the most badass thing. Can I share a quick moment?
I went when I was in Washington DC and I met up with Brad Gullickson, good friend of the show, co -host of the comic book couples counseling. We went to Third Eye Comics, which is one of the most popular comic stores in the entire US. And at one point we got into the manga section and I was like, what is your relationship with manga? Is there anything that you would recommend? Like if I wanted to get into manga, what would you pick? And he immediately went to Berserk.
Like that was the one that he said. And he goes, highly recommend it. You've just got 60 volumes to read. So go crazy. Yeah. I actually read all of, well, majority of Attack on Titan, which was really good as a manga as well. But anyways, the Paprika soundtrack is notable for being one of the first film scores to use Vocaloid for vocals. Chris, you know what a Vocaloid is? You're about to talk about it. And it's exactly what we heard in the parade.
Yeah. A Vocaloid is a synthesized vocal track which makes it possible to create vocals for music without having... an actual person sing them. So scary. I feel like the best way to describe this and like the most layman's terms is just think of like a keyboard with like voices kind of attached to each like, like, you know, key. Yeah. And each note is like a different voice. So just imagine that. So it's like, again, refer to the parade song because that's exactly what it is.
Chris will enter it here. Hopefully don't get copyright. Copywritten. Again, hour, hour and 30 minutes. That's, I mean, it's a quick, honestly, it didn't really, it did not go slowly. Like I felt like this movie was at a hundred percent from the jump. There was no real like, I mean, there are, there are moments where you're sort of having a conversation between two characters, but it's all very important to the story. There's no, there's no fat on this. They, they cut all the fat off.
Aaron cast. Good luck cast. Okay. So Paprika and Dr. Atsuko Chiba is Megumi Hayashibara or for the dubbed Cindy Robinson. Kusaku Tokida is Toru Furuyo. We're getting a rare struggle from Aaron here. The dubbed is Yuri Lowenthal. It's so easy when they're not American. Toritaro Shima is Katsu Nusoki Horii. David Lodge Toshimi Kunokawa, which is the detective Akio Otsuka Paul St. Peter Himuro K is Daisuke Sakaguchi. That's Brian Beacock. You're gonna love this one.
Dr. Saejiro Inui Toru Imori is Michael Forrest and Dr. Morio Osanai Koichi Yamadera Doug Erholds. Yeah, you're fucking welcome. Pretty good. Yeah, that's I mean far better than what I've ever done but so okay say say the the actress who voiced Paprika in three two one Megumi Hayashi biara is one of the most well -known and prolific anime actresses of all time particularly in anime in the 90s her voice can be heard in series like neon Genesis Evangelion Good evening.
I'm a Cowboy bebop and detective Conan. She is also a very successful singer in Japan as well. That's awesome. Pretty cool. I All right, Aaron, we are here. We are here at what I think most people are probably expecting us to talk about, and we're going to, we're gonna talk about the similarities between this film and Christopher Nolan's Inception. Okay, before we start this conversation piece, okay, I'm gonna throw this out there. Did not think about this. Not once? Not a single fucking time.
Interesting. Not a single time. Okay, I see. And I think that - go ahead. Okay, I'm sure we'll bring it up. When did Inception come out? 2010. So this movie came out four years before Inception. Okay. So I'm pretty sure I saw this movie before I saw Inception. So maybe that's why. Okay. Yeah. It's like, it's like when people listen to the Beatles and they'll people who have never are like not huge music fans. And they listen to Beatles like, my God, I love the Beatles.
But if you go back, like say you're like a giant music head and you go back and try to listen to the discography of Beatles, you're like, I've heard that. I've heard that. I've heard that same thing with like, like Blade Runner. When you go back and watch Blade Runner, you're like, I've seen all of this done better somewhere else. You know, like it's just one of those things where history takes certain parts of a great thing.
And I think with inception, Aaron, I'm going to let you take this part because I'm curious. You again are not familiar with this. I did a deep dive with this. I have again, shout out to Brad Gullickson, who was one of the founders and runners of film school rejects. They did an incredible article on this from 2017 that talks about the Saloma similarities between paprika and inception and how it's just, if there's too many. similarities for it not to be connected somehow. Yeah. Go ahead.
My name is Paul McCartney and I'm a Beatle and I'm a Beatle and I'm a Beatle. I'm John Lennon. I can't do it John Lennon. So yes, like Chris said, you know, we're going to refer to a special article by a good friend of ours. The film school rejects the synergy of Inception and Paprika. from 2017, several critics and scholars have noted many striking similarity similarities that later appeared in the 2010 Christopher Nolan film inception, plot similarities, similar scenes, similar characters.
let me, let me see your homework. Yeah. Chris. Yeah. That, that, let me see that homework. Let me see that homework. I literally just use that same line because, Marvel is doing this new game. And it's basically it looks exactly like overwatch. It's basically overwatch with Marvel skins and I think I saw that as well. Yeah. Anyways, so fans have argued that Inception was influenced by Paprika based on similitaries too numerous to be coincidence.
The focus on dream sharing tech, Arianda's wardrobe to Greek mythology, physics defying hallways, not to be specific or anything. Significant dream elevators, really. and the choice of having a Japanese businessman be the one to hire Cobb and the dream team, among other things. So one undeniable link is the climactic dream sequence when Paprika is trying to escape the chairman and his helper and she defies gravity by running across the walls instead of the floor.
Yeah, that's where my sort of my movie brain went. Whoa, I've seen this before. And it was where the at one point, I think it's detective. What's his name? Detective Kanagawa is. So what's haunting him throughout this movie is that he has this unsolved mystery of this murder and his dream starts off at a circus and then eventually transitions into this hallway where it starts to sort of turn and warp.
All I saw was Joseph Gordon -Levitt beating some dude's ass in a hallway that's flipping upside down. Like that's, it's the exact same imagery, right? And then at one point, again, as you just said, there's an elevator scene where they're going to different dreams throughout these, throughout this elevator.
And as actually said in the French films, from the French film site, Excessive claimed in 2010 that no one cited paprika as an influence on Elliott pages character Ariana in the film a claim that was repeated by Phil Day Semlin of Empire But the film school rejects and anime news network noted that there was no direct quote from Nolan That has given support to this claim.
So I say all that and I think we cover all this to say that What I find really interesting is that Christopher Nolan has not ever commented on this. He's never directly confirmed or denied that paprika was a direct inspiration or sort of skeleton for inception. But I think it's the evidence is damning. There's just absolutely no way. There's no way with this, with the amount of coincidences it's, you know, there's, that's ridiculously too many to be ignored. Right.
Yeah. All right, well, let's get into our fun facts here and then we'll sort of surmise our thoughts on Paprika, because I think we've gone pretty in depth with this movie. Again, there's a lot to talk about and Aaron and I, if you couldn't tell throughout the recording, we were sort of spinning our wheels trying to decide how we wanted to talk about it. It's a lot. This is definitely a movie that you should just go see yourself. Yeah, there's so many different elements.
And one thing that always got me about this film until I think this watch that I finally understood was especially like Detective Konakawa's character. you know, because it took me a while to understand. He said that he killed himself. You know, he had this there. The whole intro to this movie is that is paprika trying to help Detective Konaka would deal with some trauma, something that's giving him anxiety, that's that's giving him problems doing his job.
And and she's doing that basically by it's like therapy. It's a type of like, you know, therapy where you're you know, you experience something like immersive therapy. And this is almost like the most most true form of immersive therapy. And one line it's in, it's like he's holding a smoking gun one time, because he's at the end of this hall when he's like, did I kill myself? I killed myself. And what I finally understood during this watch is that he didn't kill himself.
It's a metaphor for his dreams, because he actually shared, he and a friend during school had a shared dream of creating movies. And he thought by becoming a cop, because he couldn't face these movies, or face that goal and dream of movies, he felt that he had killed himself and his friend by betraying that dream. And then what he ends up realizing through Paprika's help and through the help of this DC Mini is that he didn't kill himself.
He actually fulfilled both of their dreams by making their film a reality and he becoming a cop. And that allowed him to process the tragedy of his friend who died and he didn't betray him. So I was like, that's such a deep, moment in this film. It's really interesting to finally have come to finally understand a pivotal plot point in a film after this many years. It's pretty amazing.
Yeah. And, you know, speaking on that, it's again, talking on the therapy plot point, Killian Murphy and Inception. The whole thing is about having him process the relationship that he had with his father to get him to sell his company to the chairman there and that film. So not to mention the relationship that that Cobb has.
Yeah. you know, with his dead wife and he's trying to like put like he's trying to put in his past because she dies and he's and he's still trying to like, it's almost the same thing. He's like, he's trying to deal with the fact that she's dead. Yeah. And he's trying to figure out like, where is it my fault? So that's a very similar. Don't go in the basement. Don't go in the basement. Yeah, don't go in the basement.
OK, so in 2010, it was announced that a live action version of this film was in development by director. Wolfgang Petersen, who has directed films like The Neverending Story, Falcor, I'm a love dragon. But there's no there's been no update since then. 14 years later, nothing. The tall and short bartenders on Paprika's website are voiced by director Satoshi Kahn and the original author of the Paprika novel, Yasutaka Tatsui. You weirdo. The weird mother.
And while trying to escape being captured, Paprika enters a room. with numerous classical paintings. One of the paintings she enters is Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau. The original is held at the Met. At the end of the film, Detective Konakawa is going to see a film called Dream Machine. This was the final film that Satoshi Khan was developing before it was left incomplete due to him passing away from, again, patriotic cancer.
When Paprika enters Tokita's dream, she surfs through the sky on a cloud dressed as a warrior. This can be seen as an Easter egg referring to Son Goku and his flying nimbus from Dragon Ball, but...
He she also is wearing a crown has a staff that seems to be a reference to the Chinese mythical fiction figure known as soon Wukong or the the monkey king See, that's what I thought it was because he yeah, because actually Goku is a past age of the monkey king because obviously he has the tail That's a really cool.
I mean, there's there's several comics or several books and movies on the monkey king Go check that out What a fucking cool character if you ever wanted to get into like a cool character. The monkey king is is like So cool. All right, let's get into our final thoughts here, Aaron What are your final thoughts on Paprika? Again, we kind of covered it somewhat in depth. I think we were missing someone's much smarter than you and I to be here in this conversation, because this is a challenging film.
This is something that requires discussion. As we said, it's one of the reasons why we wanted to cover it is because you and I wanted to sort of talk our way through it. But I feel like even at the end of this, even looking it up and watching it twice and discussing it with you here, I feel like there's still so much of this film that I have not discovered. And maybe that's a good thing about the film, right? But at the same time, It's it remains a mystery.
And I think both of us can say that we are often frustrated whenever we don't fully wrap our arms around a film and sort of gather what it's trying to say. I think, you know, there's there's this idea of like art house film.
I really feel like that's that's the cool thing about anime in and of itself is that there is an opportunity every time you watch it because, OK, unlike a live action film, where there is a lot of detail put into scenes, there's a lot of detail put into the costuming, things like that.
It's still done by like a group of like, just so many people with all some, all, I would say most having different visions where with an anime, it feels like everybody who's on a movie, like on a team like that, they all have to have like a very clear vision, but it's also done by hand. So they create so much more like little detail that's involved with it. So every time you watch it, you're going to find something new.
whether it's a little, like think of Disney films and all the little Easter eggs that are put in there. You know, some character, the father from Tarzan, he's being shaken upside down by monkeys and like a little pendant falls out of his pocket. That's like a reference to another Disney movie. You know, like things like that. There's only certain things that you can find in animes and there's only certain things that you can see each time you watch it.
And I think that's the beautiful thing about anime is that it's created to be. you know, just like Shrek would appreciate in Donkey, it's meant to be layered, you know, it's meant to be appreciated on so many different levels. You and I can watch a Dragon Ball Z movie or a Dragon Ball movie and be like, man, this is exactly like what we love when we were kids.
But then also seeing the emotional issues that go on between, you know, Chi Chi and Goku or Gohan having to be left behind or learning to be a better father than his dad, you know, we don't see that as kids. We like, my dad's going to go fucking fight Frieza. Fuck yeah. but we don't see that he's being left, his family's being left behind.
So much like Paprika and me understanding what's going on with Detective Konakawa, it felt like my maturity had brought on a new level of appreciation for this film. And I really liked that about that. So it's a nice realization to have. It's cool to understand the references. I think it's silly to be upset if anybody is upset that they're very similar because one could not be as cool. as the other without the other. Yeah, I love that.
I mean, I love inception and I think that Paprika is a better version of that. I mean, in a lot of ways. So yeah, that'll do it for our coverage of Paprika. Our second installment in the Midnight Rewind Saga has concluded, Aaron. Episode 160 is in the books. Next week we are off and then going into episode 161, we're going to just go the complete opposite direction, Aaron.
We're just, we're going to go from high brow anime, to maybe one of the dumbest comics that I've ever read, which is we're gonna bring back our comic spotlight and we're gonna be talking about Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe. Because of course Deadpool Wolverine's coming out at the end of July, we'll be at San Diego Comic Con when that happens. And I think a lot of people, us included, anticipate that they're gonna take a lot of elements from that story and bring it into the MCU.
So have you ever read? Deadpool kills the more maroon. I have not, but it's funny. The moment you say like one of the dumbest comics you've ever read, you've never read a comment called cocked you. That's valid point. Good. Yeah, you're right. I have not read that. Maybe I'll put it on my pull list. Don't I'll get the variant. No, don't don't wait your fucking time. It's literally it's literally about a giant Kaiju with a big dick going around and fucking this city up.
Literally and figuratively. All right. I'm going to secretly add it to my poll right now. But next, like I said, in two weeks, that'll be our our next episode. And we'll like I said, we're in preparation for Deadpool Wolverine, which we're very excited. The only Marvel Studios film of twenty twenty four. I don't know if you can hear it. There is a like a severe lightning storm like building up outside. Are you sure? Are you just dreaming it? This is a dream. That's a very good question.
We don't know. We don't know. Let's get out of here before the clown parade shows up. People are gonna have no idea what we're talking about. We're just like, subscribe to our podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, Audible, iHeartRadio, wherever you listen to your podcasts, your favorite podcasts, that's where we are because we know we're your favorite. That's right. Here we go. Thank you to our patrons, Alex, Alice, Aaron, Botta from Short Box, Brad B, Cassidy, Chris from the Bada Boom Pod.
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And last but not least, Chris, do not forget to tip your bartenders, 20 % or more, or... We will haunt your dreams. We will come and... heard that one. Maybe this is real. Or you get struck by lightning. All right, everybody, we will see you in two weeks for our coverage of Deadpool kills in Mario reverse. Until then, bye bye. Peace.