I've just seen Paprika. I recommend you see it too. It's absolutely incredible, one of the best anime movies I've ever seen.
There are so many things I could say about it, so many ways I could talk about it. It's a movie about duality; male and female, reality and imagination, free market and altruism, action and complacency . . . and how those dualities relate or coexist or are more connected than we might suspect. Or the ways in which people arbitrarily might connect the sets to suit their own goals or psychological compulsions.
It's a movie that successfully combines the Sci-Fi psychology of Neon Genesis Evangelion with the sort of neo-mythological qualities of Hayao Miyazaki movies. It's about the crisis of individuality being lost in Japan's groupthink oriented society--a theme I'm seeing in increasing prominence in anime.* And Paprika is all this in a package of charming and interesting characters, as well as extraordinary visuals. See this movie.
Oh, and Devin Faraci really is either a dolt, or for some reason he really doesn't want to like anime--the explanations for everything he complained about as being vague or utterly inexplicable are actually extremely obvious.
*There's a plot thread that strongly reminded me of Gendo Ikari's Human Instrumentality Project from Evangelion.
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