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Paranoia Agent,I need help...




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CardcaptorWatanuki



Joined: 02 Jul 2006
Posts: 14
Location: In Cognito
PostPosted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 10:37 pm Reply with quote
Paranoia Agent.

You might have seen this anime on Adult Swim right?
Well, I need a little help understanding it. It's a psycological anime and I don't really grasp it. Someone tried to explain to me the concept of the characters but I kept getting confused.Darn my little 15 year old mind Mad ...
Anyway...I understand that the show shows some disturbing sides to people and that Moemi and Little Slugger was a part of that girls imagination to cover up the truth about her dead puppy,but what I do not understand is if Little Slugger isn't real, but just a figment of the imagination, then how could people get hurt by him? Actually hurt and sent to hospitals? How can something that isn't real hurt you?
Can anyone help me with understanding this?
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voluptas



Joined: 22 Jun 2006
Posts: 28
Location: Japan
PostPosted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:16 pm Reply with quote
I think that it has to do with the fact that Maromi (sp?) is everywhere in the media and in people's hearts and minds. Since Lil Slugger is one and the same with the puppy and in the media as well, people began to see him as a way out as people saw Maromi as a comfort tool.
I'm sorry if this is still confusing. I tried to explain it but I'm not sure if this really explains what I mean.
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CardcaptorWatanuki



Joined: 02 Jul 2006
Posts: 14
Location: In Cognito
PostPosted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:27 pm Reply with quote
I understand what you are saying,but I am still confused on how something imaginary can hurt people even if it is for a way out....so I guess I still need some help with under standing that...
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logboy



Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 72
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:43 am Reply with quote
from my perspective, its about how communication devices, gossip and other ways of spreading information can encourage paranoia about crime to such an extent that people actually imagine that it happens more than it really does - there are people in the story using the reports of the crimes / attacks to explain difficult elements of their lifes to avoid telling the truth to people, and there are those that imagine being attacked but arent really, and theyre hoping for attention to help deal with their lives... loads of different stories all seemingly explained by shonen bat, but not in actuality.
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jqsilver



Joined: 27 Jun 2006
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:23 am Reply with quote
The director of Paranoia Agent, Satoshi Kon, is famous for exploring how imaginary things can become real. The idea is that if you believe something strongly enough, it can become real for you. In real life you can't produce baseball bat injuries just by imagining it, sure, but it's a logical extension of other types of stress related injuries.
You can also think of Maromi and Shonen Bat as ghosts conjured up by collective belief.
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Hoenheim



Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 44
Location: Santa Barbara, California
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:40 am Reply with quote
The way I understand it, people with really messed up lives need a way to escape, and Little Slugger is their escape. spoiler[at least in the early episodes, I think the people were just being suicidal and saying it was little slugger, like the pipe they showed that tsukiko hit herself with, which created little slugger. After that, when Yuichi in episode 2 got attacked, when little slugger skated away he made the kid's signature smile thing so that leads me to believe it was Yuichi himself, making himself believe it was little slugger]

You can also check out the Paranoia Agent wiki (with spoilers of course) that made me think about certain things differently
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CardcaptorWatanuki



Joined: 02 Jul 2006
Posts: 14
Location: In Cognito
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:39 pm Reply with quote
jqsilver wrote:
The director of Paranoia Agent, Satoshi Kon, is famous for exploring how imaginary things can become real. The idea is that if you believe something strongly enough, it can become real for you. In real life you can't produce baseball bat injuries just by imagining it, sure, but it's a logical extension of other types of stress related injuries.
You can also think of Maromi and Shonen Bat as ghosts conjured up by collective belief.


I was thinking that too.I believed that was why people were getting hut.That they believed to the extent that they were actually getting hurt by it, so that was very interesting seeing that pop up.
Also I think I am beginning to understand. Little Slugger and Moromi seem to be means of escape for people who seem to be going through difficult times in their lives right?
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straydog-sama



Joined: 03 Jul 2006
Posts: 39
Location: Newark, NJ AKA the Domepoli of Wulgusk
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 7:00 pm Reply with quote
I acn give you the remedy that i'm currently using.

It's a great show, but a show on so many levels.

do what I do, if can.
Buy all the episodes on DVD, and watch them over and over again.

It may not be the most complex tactic in the world, but it works.

That's how I grew to love Super Milk Chan.
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Hiei77



Joined: 03 Jul 2006
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:03 pm Reply with quote
Yes its hard to understand but i watch the reruns on Adult Swim over and over. Eventually you'll get it, and notice things and understand things you've never got before. I really like this show. My favorite episodes were the Yuichi episodes and the Radarman ending episodes. Great anime if you need a change for something else. It really makes you think, and its really refreshing. I was going to buy the complete box set the other day, but it was $100 dollars. I'll just stick to watching it on Adult Swim i guess.
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CardcaptorWatanuki



Joined: 02 Jul 2006
Posts: 14
Location: In Cognito
PostPosted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:46 pm Reply with quote
Yes.Thanks everyone.It is agood idea to keep watching them over.
I guess I will be able to understand it more and pick up some more cocepts that way Anime hyper
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pumirya





PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:32 pm Reply with quote
I didn't get Paranoia Agent the 1st time through,but after watching it again i now feel i have a better understanding of what the show is supposed to be. As explained by others the encarnation of litle slugger was at its core a escape device initiated by the characters in the story to escape a part of their lives or lives in general.I know thats not a perfect description,but i tried lol.
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DKL



Joined: 08 May 2005
Posts: 1962
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 3:20 pm Reply with quote
logboy wrote:
from my perspective, its about how communication devices, gossip and other ways of spreading information can encourage paranoia about crime to such an extent that people actually imagine that it happens more than it really does - there are people in the story using the reports of the crimes / attacks to explain difficult elements of their lifes to avoid telling the truth to people, and there are those that imagine being attacked but arent really, and theyre hoping for attention to help deal with their lives... loads of different stories all seemingly explained by shonen bat, but not in actuality.


Hey, this one is pretty good... I agree with this, but I'll add some stuff in... uh... in my review over at themanime.org, I also discussed how people kept looking to a false messiah, the neat answer to this though is that there isn't a quick way out and that to build on eachother's lies is pretty much what set everything towards a disaster

Yeah, modern-day stress... people do suck at dealing with it when you think about it

Paranoia Agent went about modern-day stress pretty well... like, Tsukiko:

spoiler[She first created Little Slugger (or more precisely, brought him back) since she couldn't come up with a new character design... although, she does in the end, that Fumeow thing, so we know she (and everyone else) has moved past the whole Little Slugger thing

Oh yeah, the neat thing about Shonen Bat/Little Slugger is that the MEDIA actually came up with the name and what he looked like... that was funny]


Yeah...

another great one from Kon... sure hope he makes another TV series, but I don't think that's likely (hell, I think Kawajiri only has one TV series *X-TV*... although, I'm entirely not sure)

Talking about Super Milk-Chan, is it just me or does that have social commentary integrated into it?

I remember seeing this one episode with the bums and how their houses were always burned... anyway, the episode as a whole seems to be talking about how the media exploits their suffering for profit (as shown by the reporter's specials where she always goes to poor households in order to sample poor food)...

man, that was friggin' weird... I haven't seen anthing outside of that, but that episode was just weird as hell

(Hilary Haag is fun though)
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Cow-Boy_Be-Bop



Joined: 15 Sep 2006
Posts: 670
Location: In front of the computer
PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:54 pm Reply with quote
pumirya wrote:
I didn't get Paranoia Agent the 1st time through,but after watching it again i now feel i have a better understanding of what the show is supposed to be. As explained by others the encarnation of litle slugger was at its core a escape device initiated by the characters in the story to escape a part of their lives or lives in general.I know thats not a perfect description,but i tried lol.


I only saw the series once and vaugly understood it until the last episode. spoiler[ I knew that maromi and little sugger were the same,but I still didn't know how, On the last episode ut shows how maromi was just as bad as little sligger because she was "controling" him. she was trying to convince everyone her way was the right way and little slugger will get you if you aren't happy. People who weren't following her way she would send the little slugger to. Then it would send them releif to get away from the wrong way and become perfect.]

Thats what i think, I was trying to be as clear as I could
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Tony K.
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 11441
Location: Frisco, TX
PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:02 pm Reply with quote
Cow-Boy_Be-Bop, like I said before, please do not revive threads over 1 month old. If you find the subject that interesting and want to start a new discussion, that would be fine. But please stop necroposting on old topics that are clearly out of date. Thanks.
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