Rhetorical Analysis on the Anime Paranoia Agent 

Victor Hernandez

Paranoia Agent is a anime series written by Satoshi Kon, who was a Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter and manga artist from Sapporo, Hokkaidō. When Kon was in High School, he wanted to be an animator. He entered a Graphic Design course at Musashino Art University, and made his debut as a manga artist after. Paranoia Agent is about a social phenomenon in Musashino, Tokyo, where people are beginning to get attacked by a juvenile serial assailant named Lil’ Slugger, who wears a red cap, golden roller skates, and has a crooked yellow bat. As Lil’ Slugger grows as a problem, a fictional pink dog called Maromi, which is a plushy created by one of the victims of Lil’ Slugger, Tsukiko, grows frighteningly fast in popularity as well. Long story short, the anime explores the lives of people who are affected by Lil’ Slugger, who is not stated as real or a figment of imagination, and as the series goes on, the watcher learns the secrets behind the lives of the people, and the secrets behind Maromi and Lil’ Slugger. 

The theme of Paranoia Agent is the consequences of repression. Tsukiko, after creating Maromi, was under a lot of pressure to create another mascot that could be another big hit by her job. She gets attacked by Lil Slugger with a crooked yellow bat, and receives some hate mail. Maromi symbolizes the distraction from reality Tsukiko creates as she deals with the stress, which is shown when Maromi starts moving and talking to Tsukiko, and tells her to ignore the hate and stress in her life caused by her job, instead of facing the problems. The escapism portrayed through Maromi spreads as she becomes more popular in Musashino, and more merchandise is created of her, like shirts and hats, and more people use Maromi as a distraction from their problems. Lil’ Slugger grows in popularity as well, and people start realizing that people who got attacked by him don’t have problems anymore that they used to have. Lil Slugger becomes a distraction for the people as well, since apparently their problems are gone if they get hit by Lil’ Slugger. From a corrupt officer who is indebted to the Yakuza (gangsters in Japan) and is forced to commit crimes to pay off his debt and protect the home his family lives in, which he justifies by thinking he is a hero that is just doing what is good for his family, even though his indulgence in girls and alcohol is what made him indebted to the Yakuza in the first place, to a detective that can not pay for a life saving treatment for his dying wife, and ends up in reality created by Maromi in which the problems he has never existed, and they are gone from his memory, such as him not being able to have a child since his wife’s body could not handle it. Whether it’s Maromi, Lil’ Slugger, or delusions people created in their own minds, they found a way to distract themselves from their problems. 

Short Reflective Paragraph : I can connect to the source because I distracted myself from my problems, and I didn’t realize it for a long time. Whether it’s games for 8 hours straight, or scrolling through social media, or watching shows/movies, I found things that made me temporarily forget about whatever was on my mind. I watched Paranoia Agent, and since it was a very confusing anime, I went looking for answers. I saw a video explaining what happened, and I started realizing that all the bad things that happened in the anime was a result of people running away from the problems they had. I realized that even though the anime aired in 2004, the lessons it portrayed were more than prevalent today. In today’s society, people use the technology they have to distract themselves from their problems. With the click of a finger, people can indulge in other people’s lives, which can temporarily make them forget about their own. This can be frighteningly addicting, and people start digging themselves into bigger holes and bigger problems by, instead of facing their problems, distract themselves from them. Paranoia Agent helped me realize that I was subconsciously distracting myself from my problems, and a lot of people do, whether they know it or not.