Lucas Blogs About Paprika

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So, what's this book's deal?

Have you seen the 2006 anime adaptation directed by Satoshi Kon?

Is it possible for me not to have seen a movie you've seen?

Well, doesn't the "Hypothetical Reader" conceit rrequire that you haven't read the books I have?

Let's not examine that too closely. Yes, I've seen Paprika.

Well, the novel isn't all that different. I mean, there are differences, but honestly, if you've seen the movie, I wouldn't say that reading the source material adds that much to the experience.

Yeah, about the novel, this is theoretically a review of that and not an Oddaptations, right?

Oh, right. So Yasutaka Tsutsui's Paprika is a Philip K. Dickian sci-fi psychological thriller about a psychotherapist who is able to enter her patients' dreams. The therapist in question is Dr. Atsuko Chiba who's been using PT (psychotherapy) devices to treat patients since before the devices were legal. Back then she conducted her work as Paprika, the dream detective, but now the use of the machines is so widely accepted that both Chiba and her colleague Dr. Kosaku Tokita are up for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (for developing the technology). They're also in love (but for most of the novel that love dare not speak its name because she's hot and he's fat, something that everyone in the novel seems to have any opinion about). But look out! The vice president of the Institute for Psychiatric Research, Seijiro Inui, and his sidekick/lover, Dr. Morio Osanai, are plotting against them. They've already stolen Tokita's latest PT device prototype the DC Mini (DC stands for Daedalus and Controller, two other PT devices which the DC mini combines and miniaturizes), which is wireless and can be used to access other PT devices remotely. This causes complications when imagery from Inui and Osanai's dreams interferes with Paprika's attempts to discreetly treat the neuroses of a business man and the Superintendent of Police. And just like in a PKD novel, everything starts going completely nutso when overuse of the DC minis causes dreams to start materializing in reality, and Chiba, Tokita, and a few others have to face off with Inui and Osanai both in reality and in dreams, which melt into reality. So basically in reality.

So it's kind of like The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch in that regard? The whole hallucination invading reality thing.

Yeah, that's an apt comparison.

So, it's not good because it's derivative?

No, the biggest problem with Paprika is the pacing. Too much of the book is devoted to Inui's maneuverings to have Chiba and Tokita removed from the board of the Institute, press conferences about the likelihood of Chiba and Tokita winning the Nobel, and redundant dream showdowns.

How redundant are we talking?

Roughly the last third of the book is dedicated to people (who I will remind you mostly work and live in the same two buildings) confronting each other in their dreams rather than in reality with no real change of status quo.

That does sound a bit too redundant.

There are also parts of the novel that are badly dated. For example, it's revealed that the reason Inui is so strongly opposed to the new technology being developed by Chiba and Tokita isn't the possibility for abuse (he's more than happy to abuse it himself), it all goes back to the fact that he's a member of a secret gay sex cult, into which he's also inducting Osanai.

Wait, the antagonists are part of a secret gay sex cult? For realsies?

Yeah, I wouldn't say that the novel is any more or less homophobic than a lot of pop culture was in the 90s, but it is kind of jarring. Particularly because Paprika tells one of her patients that something in his dream probably has to due with his own attraction to another man, and neither of them treats it as a big deal. It just seems weird that later in that same novel everyone would be repulsed to find out that two men are sleeping together.

So, what would you say are the book's strengths?

One of things that Tsutsui captures quite well is the illogic of dreams (which Paprika calls "dream reason" or "dreason"). When Paprika is analyzing her patients dreams or when the dreams start invading reality, they often work the way real dreams work: sudden changes of location, the realization that the person you're talking to is a different person than you thought, etc. This also comes in handy when people figure out how to deal with their dreams manifesting in reality. The novel also does a better job of building the relationship between Chiba and Tokita than Kon's film does, but that is setting the bar a bit low.

It is.


Right? In the movie it just kind of comes out of nowhere. In book their mutual attraction is established early on, even if they do share a weird hangup about it (hey, that's another thing they have in common). Anyway, just watch the movie. It's visually inventive and beautifully animated. Plus it's like a good version of Inception.

Hold up! You don't like Inception?

Oops, review's over.

Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui (trans. Andrew Driver), Vintage Contemporaries Trade Paperback edition, February 2013 (originally published in Japan as パプリカ (Papurika) in 1993), 342 pages, pairs well with chicken paprikash, deciding to just watch the movie instead

Links:

Huh, Yasutaka Tsutsui's website has (some) English language content. If you're into that kinda thing.

Speaking of the movie, YouTuber Every Frame a Painting, has a video breaking down Satoshi Kon's excellent use of the unique qualities of animation in his editing.

One of Tsutsui's other novels, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, has also been adapted as an anime (also in 2006). I have not read the novel, butI do recommend the movie.