Why I Love This Scene From Paranoia Agent So Much | A Short Video Essay

A short essay about one of my favorite moments from Paranoia Agent by Satoshi Kon. Eventually I'd like to do a full video about this show but here's something fun for now.
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Extra Footage:
• Video
• Satoshi Kon Interview ...
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[@santiagowho]

Even if deserved, the empty birthday table really really leaves you with a sense of impact with the decadent gorgeous food that is about to be wasted emphasizing how much shit has hit the fan.

[@friendlycatwife]

I was going to talk about that moment, cause it’s really a continuation of all the techniques used in this scene, but I wanted to keep this video short. Realistically I could talk about this show for hours and probably will in a future video ❤️

[@maria_wd9292]

@@friendlycatwife please make a longer video! I actually got disappointed that the video ended it was great!

[@friendlycatwife]

@@maria_wd9292 it’s on the docket! I got a couple more videos to make first. In the meantime please check out my other stuff if you haven’t already 😃

[@janaekelis]

im happy i came across this video, i never completed paranoia agent when it was out bc i was too young to understand it. but ive revisited all those psychological classics like NGE and Lain at this age and i get it now

[@harmonioussteak]

same here exactly!

[@axellycan5070]

Truly is the Best Anime Ever. Truly.

[@queendsheena1]

I need to see Paranoia Agent.

[@darylspeaks6431]

I miss paranoia agent

[@tophtopherson8920]

holy crap!! so good

[@phangkuanhoong7967]

this is one of my top 3 anime.

[@trevormcmahan4415]

This rules!!!

[@friendlycatwife]

AAAAAAAA THANK YOU!!!!

[@nerfornothing2589]

Hey great video! Please keep it up 👍

[@incoglido]

Its a good scene, and i'm sure its a good show (on my list), but best anime sequence in history??

[@friendlycatwife]

Haha it’s stuck with me ever since I saw it as a kid so I guess that means something? 😅 This whole episode is my favorite thing in anime though. For me the only stuff that comes close is the storyboard sequences in Evangelion

[@redman1349]

cool vid! honestly, idk, i do kinda tend to be biased against watching stuff with the primary theme of personal responsibility just because i think it can foster a kinda judgemental mindset. but i do very much love buffalo 66 because while the arc of it is about Billy coming to terms with the effects of his poor decisions, it's not particularly punitive in how it deals with this. i do tend to like misanthropic narratives like Gantz but idk, i generally tend to think that we ought to be kinda forgiving about ppl's tendency to mess up or delude ourselves slightly. i don't like bojack horseman that much because of how moralistic it is. like, conservatives make the argument about "can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em" but at the end of the day, people do make that mistake and assigning blame doesn't really help anybody (especially when u make it more difficult for families). but ig also, it is kind of a me thing because i have screwed up a fair amount morally in the past. i may beat myself up about it but i probably do have some degree of self-serving memory. when i write stuff, it does tend to be fairly cynical about humanity but idk, the series by premise alone did kinda come across as like, oh these ppl don't hate themselves enough for the mistakes they made. but i probably should actually watch the series. this is super ironic considering how buffalo 66 was made by a hardcore conservative and paranoia agent was made by a guy just criticising the worst impulses of humanity. and ig that does reflect itself in the scope of each work (individual v societal - although, great pains are gone through to show how Billy got to how he was). Honestly, as bad as it sounds, I understand at least the Ichii character looking down on the rest of the class. He is cultivating a shallow set of relationships in service of status and then, everyone instantly turns on him. I'd probably be frustrated too. It probably speaks to a kind of separation from the world. i am likely wrong. another thing about "responsibility", in the margaritaville episode of south park, stan takes on all the debt, right? and when i watched a wisecrack episode about it when i was a teen (i despise wisecrack and its brand of cheap existentialism now along with its content farm structure - it's cheap vapid pop culture content without being tied together by a unique authorial voice), it said this was a metaphor for personal responsibility but since ppl are so fallible, why would we stake a system's continued existence on personal responsibility? one cannot personal responsibility your way out of an economic crisis, otherwise it wouldn't be a crisis! but yeah, considering the widespread critical acclaim of paranoia agent, it probably does handle the topic of personal responsibility in a complex and cool way. i mean, generally, works that are labelled misanthropic are generally to me just tragedies. a truly misanthropic work would just have me shaking my fist going grrr i hate humanity, not in despair. but then, that may be anthropocentric bias. i am definitely a philosophical pessimist (inb4 redditor joke) of some degree. works relating to personal responsibility are always going to be confrontational to some extent because they will cause the viewer to think about the time they screwed their lives over and deserved what they got. idk, what do people deserve? who knows!! i don't like EEAO because i think it does a disservice to philosophical nihilism and stacks the deck in its favour, making the whole film shallow and not as philosophically profound as it seems to be aiming for - a movie about defeating nihilism becomes about defeating the impetuousness of youth and the film never quite defines its terms when it refers to the absence of meaning. and when living in the shadow of a lack of meaning, well, what does "be kind" even mean? it comes across to me as a film profoundly disinterested in answering its own questions, instead just showing a bunch of flashy stuff at the screen. kon seems cool!

[@tomstraub1148]

I started watching the anime, but DAMN, what an annoying start with the opening music and everybody standing there laughing. I'll be jumping past that beginning for each episode for now on.🤨

[@friendlycatwife]

Each their own but imo that’s one of the best openings of all time 😅