Talk:Paranoia Agent/Archive 1

A Broader Question With Regard To "Mōsō Dairinin (Paranoia Agent)" And Proper Naming Convention
I might have missed something, but isn't the name "Lil' Slugger" from just the translated version of "Mōsō Dairinin (Paranoia Agent)"? Why isn't the name "Lil' Slugger" taking a back seat to the actual name of "Shōnen Bat"? They don't even mean the same thing. This is not a matter of otaku elitism, nor is it a matter of extremism. While the page we are reading is in English, "Paranoia Agent" itself is not an English work regardless of the translation and English dubbing.

Did I miss out on something? Aside from the fact that it was released this way as "Lil' Slugger", is it actually endorsed in any other way to justify the change in the primary name as should be properly referenced (i.e. statements made by Kon, the production staff, or any other writers involved in the original production of the series)?--Anonymous Bob 12:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow!
Man! I can't believe how far this page has come since Mitsukai and I first expanded this page from the rather pathetic little blurb it used to be, to this big and well organized monster of a Wiki well befitting of this great series. Great job everyone on really turning this into what I think is one of the best animation Wiki's. This series deserved a good Wiki I thought, and I'm glad to see so many have chosen to really make it as intellectual and pieced apart as the series is.--Kiyosuki 09:43, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Ending
I think the interpretation of the ending posted here is a bit off. It's pretty obvious towards the end that the cycle is going to be repeated with the cat-like cartoon character replacing Maromi and Maniwa taking the old man's place.
 * ^ This is only an interpretation of the ending. There are many ways to interpret the ending, as we said its very ambiguous. I've been getting a lot of comments lately about the circle thing but while this is certainly a possibility (and you can add this if you like, but it is speculative and not the official explanation. There really is none as of now), many miss a very subtle thing about the ending. In the beggining, the people on Cell Phones are talking about avoiding things. They are making excuses and not being truthful. The parallel scene at the end however, although it looks the same, everyone is expressing their feelings and opinions, and some are telling the truth instead of making excuses. Remember what Misae said, that the only real way to face your problems is to actually face them, not run from them as so many in the series do. What "old Maniwa" says in the end is extremely interpretive. He does say that things do tend to go in a circle, but not entirely. Small things change, so its not really a circle more than it is a repeating process. Really, there's so many ways to interpret the ending that there really is no official "one way" it has to go. Its specifically designed that way. We want the ending to remain clear albiet open ended and not have a bias towards any one conclusion. We just presented the hard facts.--Kiyosuki 13:24, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * ^I think all but the most uncontentious of conclusions about the ending (like Tokyo not making any more excuses) should be in the Ending section, which should be more encyclopedic than the Analysis section. I would, in fact, suggest moving the entire final paragraph into the Analysis section since the interpretation presented remains highly speculative (a really good speculation, mind you.  I rather liked it ;) 151.203.157.18 02:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)NewGuy
 * ^I thought the cell-phones indicated that people had learned something at first too, but on the second watching it the conversations didn't sound any better than in the first episode. The only people who seems to have learned anything are the main characters, while everyone else descends back to denying problems with maddening speed. Based on the director's commentary that Lil' Slugger's "good-bye" was more of a "see you later," Maniwa's statement that it was a repeating process, that there is yet another cartoon-character to distract people from problems (perhaps a jab at Hello Kitty?), and that Maniwa's calculation startled him in the exact manner it startled the old man (rather than make him happy that it wasn't going to happen again), it seems that Lil' Slugger will return once again. However, this is only my opinion, and the last time I watched the show was a couple of months ago, yet I remember finding the phone conversations just variations on what they were in the first episode. Why should people have learned a lesson from the events of the show unless they understood what Lil' Slugger was like the main character did? As the blob consumes the city, the people run to find Maromi, a sheild against their problems, blaming the blob's appearance on Maromi's absence (which is partly true, but it was their fault, Maromi only held it back long enough for the problem to grow to gigantic proportions).-- Maghireck 03:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * ^ I agree with this. The phone conversations seem to be only variations of the opening, rather than actual lessons learned. However, the fact that the main characters have learned a great deal and that society in general is a little better off, lead me to believe the "repeating process" is more of a cycle of growth, than circle of destruction destruction. Perhaps Lil' Slugger (whatever it actually is) is a beneficial (but trickstery) entity who shows up whenever things on the whole are headed downhill. From Kon's social commentary and observations in the series, I think it's fairly likely he has a certain distaste for modern and pop culture. What strikes me about the ending (and the entire series) is how uplifting it is. It takes you into the darkness, then shows you how to use light. This post is something I'd like to incorporate into the main entry itself, but haven't thought through enough. Maybe someone else can run with the idea.

Crows
I can't believe I forgot about that! Excellent observation.
 * Crows can't just mean that. They appear near Zebra, Fuyubachi and Kamone. -- A Link to the Past 08:41, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * and they could well mean something else in that instance. Nothing about this show, or even the meanings within, is static; I think it tends to flow and change per ep, primarily in the case of the "unconnected" eps, one of which is the one you referenced--Mitsukai 12:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC).
 * Its like the thing with Snakes. Snakes are seen as a sign of sneakiness and fear, as well as evil in some parts of the world. But in other parts, it also represents respect, and is a holy animal to the Hindu's. So its perfectly justifiable that Crows mean more than one thing.


 * Well, crows are connected to death in western cultures. The Crow article talks about this a little. I see the crows in HFP as surrogates for the Grim Reaper, wanting to take the three lost souls to the afterlife. Jack Cain 06:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Full Story
Tsukiko Sagi is a shy character designer who created the extremely successful Maromi, a cute pink dog with eyes as big as Tsukiko's. However, her company wants another character very soon and Tsukiko is out of ideas. Stressed out from the pressure and the jealousy of her co-workers, Tsukiko becomes depressed and wishes for a miracle. Her wish comes true as she is suddenly attacked with a golden baseball bat! She describes the suspect as a 6th grade boy wearing golden roller blades and a red hat to the detectives, Ikari and Maniwa. However, Ikari doesn't buy Tsukiko's story while Akio Kawazu, a sleazy tabloid reporter, tails Tsukiko. However, Ikari's suspicions are soon disproved as Kawazu is attacked by a boy wearing golden roller blades and a red hat with a golden baseball bat.

For Yuichi "Ichi" Taira, life is good. He's is the most popular kid in his school and excels in academics and sports and plans to run for Student Council President. However, being that he has golden roller blades and wears a red baseball cap, the students think that Yuichi is Lil' Slugger. His life is turned upside down and he becomes paranoid. He immediately suspects his opponent, Shogo "Usshi" Ushiyama, a transfer student from the country, spread those rumors. Yuichi tries to expose Usshi's misdeeds but they end up backfiring and Usshi ends up being attacked by the real Lil' Slugger.

After being attacked by Lil' Slugger, Yuichi's name is cleared and he can finally relax. However, Harumi Chono, Yuichi's tutor and an assistant at a local university, has problems of her own. She has another and hedonistic personality named Maria that spends the night as a prostitute. Whenever Maria takes over, Harumi has no recollection or control of what happened. However, they manage to live as they are until Harumi receives an offer of marriage from her co-worker at the university, Akihiko Ryu. Harumi decides to end her life as Maria but Maria won't take it sitting down. Maria fights back and in her darkest hour is attacked by Lil' Slugger.

After this string of attacks by Lil' Slugger, it turns out that each victim has some sort of relationship with a previous victim. Masami Hirukawa is a police officer in the same district where the Lil' Slugger attacks have been happening. Despite calling himself a family man, he accepts bribes in the form of cash and prostitutes (apparently, Maria was one of his clients) from the local yakuza group. Using the money, he builds a house for his family. However, Masami becomes too greedy and the yakuza sends Makabe to get the money back with interest. Masami ends up stealing money from people but always ends up short of Makabe's demands who just adds more to the list. In a drunken slur, Masami wants this all to end and ends up being clocked by Lil' Slugger and goes down, or so he thinks.

Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Lil' Slugger who turns out to be in the eighth grade. He admits to the attacks. However, he confuses his realities and believes that the world around him is a medieval-style RPG while his journey is to defeat the evil Gouma who posses other people to fight. Ikari and Maniwa follows Lil' Slugger through his "journey" and see that it does coincide with all of the attacks -- all except for Tsukiko Sagi. However, Lil' Slugger points the detectives to where the old lady is who may posses the truth.

Ikari and Maniwa find the old homeless woman while a hurricane is about to make landfall. There they discover something from the old women that that turns the whole case around. Meanwhile, Taeko is reminiscing over her life. We learn that she was poor when growing up and was really attached to her father, Masami Hirukawa (the police officer from A Man's Path). However, not that surprisingly but quite disturbing, Taeko discovers a dirty little secret while leaving her father a present. This explains why she is wandering around the city despite the hurricane warnings. At the police station, Ikari and Maniwa are again questioning Tsukiko and trying to make her tell what really happened that night. As for poor Taeko, she is about to throw herself into a torrent of rushing water when she sees herself in the torrent. She realizes that it was the old lady who gets swept down stream. Taeko collapses and weeps as her father desperately calls her. Suddenly, Lil' Slugger appears and hits Taeko while Tsukiko collapses and falls to the floor.

Ikari and Maniwa receive word of Taeko's attack from the previous episode. Masami is devastated by Taeko's amnesia as Ikari looks from the sideline since it happened in a different district. Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Kozuka again to make him confess that he is merely a copycat. They manage to get out of him that he only attacked Usshi and Hirukawa but Ikari tries to get a full confession. However, Maniwa soon discovers another connection between the victims; they all were under some kind of stress and were relieved after the attack. But, he soon figures out that Taeko was also emotionally stressed and finds out that Taeko was attacked about the same time that Tsukiko fainted, meaning that Lil' Slugger can be nowhere and everywhere. He tells Ikari but gives him an application for leave and tells him to take a break. However, Maniwa still pushes and soon realizes that the next target is Kozuka. Kozuka committed suicide or was murdered and somehow he's capable of replicating himself - capable of appearing before anyone under emotional turmoil with no place to turn.

Fuyubachi (Winter Bee), an old man, Zebra, a heavy-set man, and Kamome (Seagull), a cute little girl, find different ways of commiting suicide. After a big adventure going from Tokyo to the countryside, they encounter Lil' Slugger at a hot spring.

After hearing of the incident in the previous episode, several women share rumors related to Lil' Slugger, most of which are farfetched. However, one of the women is having a hard time understanding the truth behind the rumors and impressing the other women. Returning to her apartment, she discovers that her husband has been attacked by Lil' Slugger. She tries to get the story out of him as he begs her to call an ambulance and slowly dies.

Maromi is getting her very own anime! However, the staff begins to fall behind as the deadline approached as they get rough with Saruta Naoyki, the facilitator. Things get even worse as each member of the staff is unable to work on the anime because they mysteriously end up in the hospital (or the morgue). The staff begins to get knocked out one by one until Saruta is the only one left. But he soon falls victim too.

Misae Ikari returns to her home to find Lil' Slugger waiting. Before she allows him to attack, she talks about the troubles in her life. Apparently, she has a weak body and her doctor bills are getting expensive. Her body is so weak that she couldn't carry a child. Despite that, her husband Keiichi still loves her. Elsewhere, Keiichi is at his new job as a traffic guard at a construction site. He meets an old friend (more like an old perpetrator) and talks a little about his life and his wife. Back at the Ikari residence, Misae seems to fall into despair at the recent events but reveals that she had no intention of giving up. She points out that Lil' Slugger's existence is an illusion and exists to fool people, like Maromi. In rage, Lil' Slugger vanishes. After talking with his friend over dinner about how their old fashioned ways are dead, Keiichi enters a two-dimensional world that looks like days from yesteryear.

After a failed attempt at defeating Lil' Slugger (who changed into an abnormal form), Maniwa turns to the old man for help. He says something about dancing with a rabbit and then dies. Maniwa heads to Misae's house after hearing her on his radio equipment. When he arrives, he discovers that Lil' Slugger and Maromi are the same. While contemplating, he hears a voice calling to him. He discovers a doll in a playboy bunny suit as she asks him to follow her. Maniwa reaches the apartment of an otaku with a big collection of dolls. With their help (their animate to Maniwa and the otaku isn't aware of his presence), he discovers that there was another incident similar to the Lil' Slugger attacks. The incident took place ten years ago and the victim was Tsukiko! Maniwa goes to Tsukiko's father and discovers the truth behind the attack. Back at M&F, Maniwa contacts Tsukiko and tells her that he knows everything. However, Maromi cuts the line as Lil' Slugger suddenly appears. Maniwa appears in time as he fights Lil's Slugger. In the meantime, Maromi leads Tsukiko to Ikari's world. Soon, figures, images, and merchandise of Maromi disappear as some of the victims of Lil' Slugger fall back into their state of paranoia.

A dark formless flow that Maniwa identifies as Lil' Slugger starts to overrun Tokyo as a result of Maromi's disappearance. Meanwhile in Ikari's world, Ikari comfortably hangs about his world with Tsukiko tagging along. With the help of the old man, Misae appears and says goodbye to Keiichi as she fades away. Ikari realizes that the world he is in isn't real and tears it apart as the building blocks of the world turn out to be Maromi dolls. Back in their dilapidated world, Lil' Slugger appears as Maniwa appears with a weapon that can destroy Lil' Slugger... or not.

Short Story
A mysterious boy on rollerblades has been attacking people in Tokyo. Is he a real boy, a lie to cover up people's crimes, or a sinister phantom? Another journey in paronoid delusions and questionable reality courtesy of Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers)!

cool spoiler in Happy Family Planning
In Happy Family Planning the characters are already dead throughout the whole episode, even though they want to die. You never see their shadows from beginning to end and the old man (Fuyubachi) always has one pill left even though he had already taken it the previous day.


 * Not true, you very clearly see their shadows several times in the first part of the episode.

Cell Phones
I'm new to this series, only having seen it on its first run on Cartoon Network. I'm particularly interested in the symbolism of cell phones in the series since they're obviously important, but no discussion of them appears in this article.


 * Cell phones are used very heavily in Japan, where people of many ages and stations own them. Its just a common facet of life that seems to have no special symbolisim. Jack Cain 05:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Copy Edit
I just went through the whole article, took care of all the writing errors I could find, and edited for style.

The subheadings and overall organization could probably still use some tweaking. Also, the Ending subheading is probably a misnomer since it dealt with more information than just what was revealed in the ending. (Aug. 21, 2005)

Merge List of Paranoia Agent Episodes into Paranoia Agent

 * I propose that the episode list be put into the main article, it's only 13 items long. Dread Lord C y b e r S k u l l ✎☠ 23:54, 2005 August 30 (UTC)
 * I second this motion -- Psi edit.

The series episode listing indeed should be migrated to the main article. There are many logical reasons for this; however the two most important are:

1.) Entertainment related Wikipedia materials (descriptive entries and articles) of both Audio and Video types for example, almost always contain an episode, tracklisting or list of works by the creators. 2.) Most (if not all) readers arriving at this Wikipedia article would find the episode listing beneficial in addition to the background on the series.

Removed info
68.113.19.113 added this to the main page.. which I removed. ---The importance of the calculations was binary, if the end result was 0 it would all start over again, with dufferent people, if it was 1 then it would end Ravedave 02:29, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

opening
I think that the opening (to each episode) should be included in the article. I say this because the opening seems to have a good amount of symbolism to it.
 * The openings are all the same. You're probably referring to the parts after the ending sequences.--Kaonashi 05:54, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * No, I agree with the original poster (who I don't think was implying that each episode has a different opening). The opening does have a hefty dose of symbolism chucked into it. What I can think of right now is the way each of the characters is laughing, pretty deliriously, while scenes of destruction and misery occur behind them. Maybe this implies the way each of them is caught up in their own little world, and will embark on a journey out of themselves to face the world around them. The theme of facing reality is probably the strongest in the series, and I see no reason why Kon wouldn't throw it into the intro either. Oh, and the song itself; the way the joyously happy music/vocals contrast the horribly disturbing lyrics also seem to suggest running from reality instead of facing one's problems. I'll try to add more meat to that, to justify posting a seperate section, though I think it could easily just be added as a small paragraph into Analysis. Maybe someone else can think of more to add.

Bat Symbolism
I have watched this series a couple times, and I think I managed to come up with a good addition. I believe that the various baseball bats of the story are symbolic of truth / reality. In the last few episodes, Maniwa finds Tsukiko's father's (very straight) bat, and refers to it as "an acient sword" used by the father to "destroy the lies he sees through". He subsequently uses the bat to battle little slugger. In contrast, Lil' Slugger's bat is specifically described as being bent, it is one of the first descriptions you have of him. His bent bat would symbolize lies, bent truth, and the fantasy he deludes people with. Also significant may be the cartoon in Mellow Maromi, where the Maromi causes the baseball playing child to lose his bat, and tells him to "take a rest". If anyone has any other examples of bats in the series, please post it here. I am planning to add this to the article under symbolism soon.


 * No original research. --Sketchee 08:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)