Paranoia Agent is a Japanese anime television series created by director Satoshi Kon and produced by Madhouse in 2004 and had 13 episodes. It is a psychological thriller that follows the victims of a mysterious phenomenon.
The story follows and begins with meeting Tsukiko Sagi, who is a character designer that created the iconic pink dog Maromi and is under a tremendous amount of pressure to continue to perform and repeat her results. One night on her way home a boy on skates comes up and attacks her. The police detective work hard to understand the case and initially believes that Tsukiko is lying about the attack but then another identical attack is reported by another person.
The attacker is named Lil’ Slugger also called Shōnen Batto in Japanese which roughly translates to “Bat Boy” and he is blamed for all the compiling street attacks in Tokyo. The boy’s face is a bit distinguishable, but his trademarks that all his victims remember are his golden inline skates, a baseball hat and his bent golden baseball bat that he uses to attack his victims. The detectives, Ikai and Maniwa, try to find the root of these crimes and stop it once and for all. However, they are not able to find any leads and their lack of answers and success leads to both of them losing their jobs.
As the show progresses and more pieces of the puzzle come into view, we come to realize there is an innate pattern to the way in which the attacks are taking place. Lil’ Slugger targets people that are not only weak, but that are going through crisis. It may be backwards but through the violent attacks, they actually result in some improvement in the life of the victim. Some people including the police start to believe perhaps he is a supernatural human witht forces outside of their comprehension that rescue desperate individuals through violence. These conspiracies and ideas spread like wildfire over the radio waves as people continue to plot and try to find a way to defeat this crazy assailant.
The interesting dynamic between the compounding fear as a whole from society actually ends up creating more intensified and awful attacks. An additional pattern emerges from the insight of fact and fiction as the heightened anticipation for a new release of the Maromi television ensues, it almost seems as if the fear and the anticipation is somehow mysteriously linked.
On the evening that the Maromi show airs everything comes to an end. The two ex-police men, Ikari and Maniwa, team up to battle Lil’ Slugger. They trace all their clues and storlines back to Tsukiko and she confesses that Maromi was actually based on real events. The puppy it is based on was hers and one day ran into traffic and was killed. She carried a great deal of guilt and never took responsibility for the puppy’s death and her subconscious created a story about a bat wielding skate wearing puppy. In this strange twist of events, we come to see that the character Lil’ Slugger and is a paranormal creation from Tsukiko’s guilt and fear. It is brought to life as she escapes her responsibilities and creates this character for her job, which becomes even more popular than Maromi. Once the truth is revealed, Lil’ Slugger is finally defeated.
Characters
Tsukiko Sagi
This character is voiced by Mamiko Noto in Japanese and Michelle Ruff in the English dub.
She is the main character of this series and is a well known and talented character designer. Her fame started when she created a cartoon dog named Maromi. The character is also found always carrying a copy of Maromi with her at all times and is Lil’ Slugger’s first victim. She is the one who is the initial start to the pattern and chao that ensures
Lil’ Slugger
This character is voiced by: Daisuke Sakaguchi in Japanese and Sam Riegel in the English dub.
This is the notorious character that the series revolves around. He is a kid who wears a baseball hat and attacks people on his speedy skates.
Detective Keiichi Ikari
This character is voiced by: Shōzō Iizuka in Japanese and Michael McConnohie in the English dub.
Ikari is one of the police detectives that works steadily on the Lil’ Slugger investigation. He is set in his ways and yearns for simpler times, but his partner Maniwa often makes fun of him for this.
Detective Mitsuhiro Maniwa
This character is voiced by Toshihiko Seki in Japanese and Liam O’Brien in the English dub.
This is the second police detective assigned to the Lil’ Slugger investigation and he is quite young and is a free thinker. He is a good balance to Ikari’s traditional way of thinking and doing.
Maromi
This character is voiced by Haruko Momoi in Japanese and Carrie Savage in the English dub.
Maromi is the cartoon dog created and designed by Tsukiko with big eyes, droopy ears and pink fur. He is a parody of real life characters from Sanrio and when alone with Tsukiko Maromi walks and talks to her.
Names
A lot of the characters in Paranoia Agent have different kinds of animal names especially in the segments that reference the next episode. In certain episodes, the characters have almost animal-like features and their names actually equate the animal. : “sagi” means heron, “kawazu” is an archaic term for frog, “ushi” means cow, “tai” means sea bream or red snapper, “chō” means butterfly(chō-cho can also mean butterfly, possibly alluding to her split personality), and “hiru” means leech. “Kamome” means seagull.
A very complex and integrated show that covers an interesting psychological exploration of the ways we process experience and how it comes to shape our choices, our behavior and our reality.