Anime Recommendation: Paranoia Agent

Anyone who has seen his debut film Perfect Blue will agree that Satoshi Kon is one of the undisputed masters of suspense, blending psychological and paranormal elements into his almost-mundane worlds. His characters possess flawed, even despicable personalities and their designs are realistic, much like those of Naoki Urasawa, making it much easier for the viewer to become lost in the story. He has three other movies under his belt and is reportedly working on a fifth. To date he has only done one television anime – Paranoia Agent (妄想代理人).

The plot seems straightfoward; people in Tokyo are being assaulted by a preteen boy carrying a bent, golden baseball bat and wearing matching rollerblades that the media has dubbed “Shōnen Bat.” Two detectives, Ikari and Maniwa, are assigned to find and arrest him, but the more victims pile up the less the case begins to make sense. And when they finally do make an arrest, that’s when things get really bizarre.

Anime Recommendation: Blood+

I don’t watch anime. It’s a strange thing to be coming from someone whose manga library becomes more and more unwieldy with each passing day, but I really don’t watch much anime. I did when I was younger, quite a bit actually. But as I got older, I began to notice that a lot of the stuff being produced was not that great.