Art of Paranoia Agent
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Paranoia Agent is a Japanese anime television series created by director Satoshi Kon and produced by Madhouse in 2004. The plot revolves around a social phenomenon in Musashino, Tokyo caused by a juvenile serial assailant named Lil' Slugger (the English equivalent to Shōnen Bat, which translates to "Bat Boy"). A large cast of people affected in some way by the phenomenon (usually Lil' Slugger's victims or the detectives assigned to apprehend him). As each character becomes the focus of the story, details are revealed about their secret lives and the truth about Lil' Slugger.
During the makings of his previous three films (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers), Paranoia Agent creator Satoshi Kon was left with an abundance of unused ideas for stories and arrangements that he felt were good but did not fit into any of his projects. Not wanting to waste the material, he decided to recycle it into a dynamic TV series in which his experimental ideas could be used.
Many of the characters in Paranoia Agent are often referred to with animal names, especially in each "Prophetic Vision" (a segment at the end of each episode that previews the next) and the episode "The Holy Warrior," in which some characters are depicted as animal-like creatures. In many cases, their Japanese names translate directly to the type of animal which they referred to as: "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.
The pictures on this page are a collection of artworks created for this series.
THE STORY
Tsukiko Sagi, a shy character designer who created the immensely popular pink dog Maromi, finds herself under pressure to repeat her success. As she walks home one night, she is attacked by an elementary school boy on inline skates. Two police detectives, Keiichi Ikari and Mitsuhiro Maniwa, are assigned to the case. They suspect that Tsukiko is lying about the attack until they receive word of a second victim.
Soon the attacker, dubbed Lil' Slugger, is blamed for a series of street assaults in Tokyo. None of the victims can recall the boy's face and only three distinct details are left in their memories: golden inline skates, a baseball cap, and the weapon: a bent golden baseball bat. Ikari and Maniwa set out to track down the perpetrator and put an end to his crimes…
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