Flint879

To be honest, I really wanted to like Paranoia Agent. I like the mindf*ck genre a lot and tends to be a favorite of mine. This was recommended by a friend of mine and I tried to watch it 3 separate times and now I finally stuck with it and was surprisingly disappointed in the whole thing.

The story is: Shounen Bat is a kid who wears gold roller blades and a baseball hat. He likes to hit people over the head with a kinked golden baseball bat. The police take on an investigation to try and catch Shounen Bat, but matters prove to go deeper than just a mere kid who hits people with a baseball bat.

Did you ever get so stressed and feel cornered from the weight of everyday life? Paranoia Agent plays on this theme pretty heavily and had tons of potential to fully explore a theme like this, but never quite rounds second base. The story starts out great. Very creepy vibe and makes you wonder what is going on. However, after about episode 5 is where things start to make, practically, no sense. The middle starts with the so-called "filler" episodes that have, honestly, nothing to do with the main story and loses itself until the last couple of episodes. The last episodes feel rushed and full of wasted potential due to the useless filler episodes that plagued the middle of this series. Paranoia Agent took a chance to try out a theme that speaks to all people because we all feel like we are being cornered by life. It didn't fully realize that potential nor did it really stick with that mind frame throughout and resulted in: BEGINNING- Great premise and sense of fear, MIDDLE- Fillers with no connection to the main plot, END- Rushed and feels like corners were cut.

The animation felt very simple. I'm no animation expert, I'm a storyline and character analyst, so animation isn't ncessarily my specialty. I didn't mind it other than I believe it could've been better. You can definitely tell they cut corners towards the end it's almost hilariously sad. It started off great, but throughout the course of the 13 episodes, you can tell it starts to fall apart the further in you get.

The sound was hit or miss for the most part. When it wanted to be creepy, it could be. Only problem is that the further into the series you get, those moments become further and further apart until they don't happen anymore. The opening theme, in my opinion, set the tone for the show because it's kind of mentally insane. The closing theme is more soft and calming. It's nothing special, but it works for this show. The voice overs were fantastic for some of the characters, but otherwise I'd leave it at mediocre.

Characters in Paranoia Agent are, frankly, just not that interesting. The only people that had any kind of growth were Shounen Bat and the Chief's wife. Everyone else was very one-sided, one-dimensional, and never showed any intent to stand out as a character to be remembered. Except for Maromi. How could you forget that creepy/cute pink dog?! I didn't really care for most of the characters because of what I stated earlier, but some of them didn't really play as much of a role as I felt they should've or some of the characters were just unecessarily there with no purpose to the story. I am a strong believer in having characters become the story. You can tell a crap story with strong/memorable chracters, but it doesn't work with a brilliant story with crap characters, then it just feels like a great story was wasted. All-in-all, the characters are mostly un-important and serve no real purpose in bringing Paranoia Agent to it's full potential.

Overall I wouldn't say Paranoia Agent was the most terrible anime ever. It was more disappointing than anything. It had a lot of potential to be something that could've really stood out in the crowd. It took themes that everyone can relate to and tried to make a great story out of it. Instead it failed in realizing where they wanted it to go as a whole which resulted in something that started out truly excellent, then it slipped and fell not realizing it can't get back up, but when it does get back up, it does so too quickly resulting in slipping again. There are a lot of people that like this anime, I thought/hoped to be one of them, but sadly, I can't really join that crowd. Paranoia Agent isn't bad, I wouldn't really recommend it personally. I say at least watch it because a lot of people do like it and see where you stand on this anime.