C&C - Paranoia Agent on Toonami [2020]

[animePWNS]

Daddy's little girl.

So she went from cats to dogs.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

Yeah, jostle the old lady who probably doesn't see a doctor.

I bet the heads tear right off the bodies.

And then the rains came...

So much for the old woman from scene 24.

 

[animePWNS]

The old lady's testimony brought down the house!

Callback to the bet from the first episode.

"A shadow of a shadow." A stand alone complex?!

Starting over...

Sounds like Tsukiko's facing her own storm.

Ka-ra-o-ke. To think we've been pronouncing it wrong all these years.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

Such a photogenic little girl.

And THAT is how you pronounce "karaoke." Don't know where we got "karry-okey."

"I wonder if he'll be surprised."
No...but you will.

 

[animePWNS]

And this is where it gets really wrong.

Sorry, Dave...

Two ships passing in the night.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

I don't think I want to see his family photo albums.

"How nice it would be if someone could come along and solve all your problems."
What are you, a Disney princess?

The telltale pipe.

 

[Space Cadet]

You shouldn't have put that camera in there, now's she's going to destroy everything you love.

 

[animePWNS]

He's still out there!

And he's the father. BIG surprise.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

Telling your mom would be a start.

Game called on account of rain? I don't think so.

What kind of sicko would snap candid shots of his own daughter?
...just call him Daddy.

 

[animePWNS]

This is the house that Hirukawa built. Make that was the house.

So Taeko's not her granddaughter.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" Well isn't that "perfect".

 

[Kitschensyngk]

And the rain washes everything away.

Oh, she wasn't Taeko's grandma.

Yeah, I'd want to forget that jerk too.

And there's the crooked cop's comeuppance. Took a couple of weeks, but he still deserved it.

 

[animePWNS]

Recurring sound: the storm (wind and rain)

Li'l Slugger Victim Update:
1. Tsukiko Sagi
2. Akio Kawazu
3. Shogo Ushiyama
4. Yuichi Taira
5. Harumi Chono
6. Maria
7. Masami Hirukawa
8. Taeko Hirukawa

That's right, those people appeared in that order in the OP.

Next week:

Spoiler

Can't find the right frequency

 

[Kitschensyngk]

They asked Tsukiko to create a new character that everyone would be talking about.

And she did.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

I found this one hard to follow. Can someone explain what happened this week?

 

[TnAdct1]

I found this one hard to follow. Can someone explain what happened this week?

The two main things that come out of this episode:

1. The cops learn the truth about how the original "Lil' Slugger attack" was really Tsukiko hitting herself with a pipe when the pressure of creating another character like Maromi became too much for her.

2. The latest Lil' Slugger victim is the corrupt cop's daughter, who had discovered how he secretly took pictures of her undressing and is disgusted by those actions to the point of running away from home during a typhoon.

 

[SpaceCowboy]

(snip)
And THAT is how you pronounce "karaoke." Don't know where we got "karry-okey."
(snip)

While technically correct, if you went around pronouncing it the Japanese way to the average American they wouldn't know what you were talking about.

 

[Light Lucario]

I thought that this episode was pretty good. I wasn't sure what to expect with the detectives talking to that old woman. Ikari in particular was pretty harsh towards her. He was frustrated over the case, but shaking an old woman who was living in a make shift tent wasn't okay.

Taeko obviously loved her father, but I felt so uncomfortable during the flashback where she said that she wanted to marry him. I'm sure it was supposed to show her innocent, as well as being some dark ironic foreshadowing for later, but it was so unsettling to me because of how I know incest is practically like a fetish. Not to mention those kind of moments always feel so unrealistic to me. There was obviously some falling out in the present given she was out in a huge storm, but I don't think I expected it to be that gross. Setting up a camera in your own daughter's room just to take pictures of her undressing is a really new kind of low, even for this crooked cop. I wasn't expecting him to be a pedophile on top of being into incest. That's beyond creepy. This also unfortunately explains his fetish on being called Daddy.

I wasn't surprised that Lil' Slugger was still out there. Makoto always felt like a fake to me. He was way more vocal and dramatic than I would have expected from Lil' Slugger. Plus, he has braces and I don't think Lil' Slugger does. I was surprised that Taeko wasn't the granddaughter that the old woman had talked about. I wonder if her family will become more important later. The detectives, or at least Ikari, firmly believe that Tsukiko faked the attack to extend her deadline. That is still possible, but I'm not quite sure. I think both Tsukiko and the old woman could be unreliable narrators here. We've already seen Tsukiko's doll talk to her, so that does make the audience question what is and isn't real from her perspective. The old woman said that she doesn't have a home to go back to, but her granddaughter was able to see her at the hospital, so I assume that they aren't having as much of a hard time financially. That might be too much of an assumption, but it does make me question if either one of them really saw what they think that they saw. Plus, even if Tsukiko did injury herself, it doesn't explain the multiple other attacks.

I have strong mixed feelings over the ending. I figured that Taeko would lose her memories. She wanted to forget and become nothing, so gaining amnesia from Lil' Slugger's attack was the obvious outcome. It does prevent her from feeling the pain of knowing what her father did to her. He was always a major creep, but she did adore him and learning how he violated her privacy in such a disturbing way would hit really hard. Hirukawa also got some major payback for being a terrible person. The dream house that he wanted so desperately that he stole so much money from other people and used gang money to complete was destroyed during the storm. He also effectively lost his daughter, assuming that she isn't going to regain her memories at some point later in the series.

However, I think that they went too far into making Hirukawa irredeemable here. He was already a crooked cop who cheated on his wife countless times and stole money for a gang in order to pay for his dream house. That was already enough to where the audience wanted to see him thrown in jail and for his wife to kick him out of his precious dream house. On top of all of that, he's a pedophile who is into incest with his own daughter. He fortunately didn't try to have sex with her, but planting a hidden camera in her room just to take pictures of her unknowingly as she undresses is still such a massive violation on multiple levels. I assume that Taeko was the only one who knew what he was doing, especially now that their house is ruined, so by having her forget everything, there isn't any chance of Hirukawa facing any legal consequences for what he did. They might not have gone in that direction anyway, but now I'm worried that he'll just mold his daughter into whatever he wants, which is already a disturbing thought. At the very least, it makes it too likely that he'll eventually plant another camera in her room now that seemingly the only person who knew about it has amnesia.

While I wanted him to be arrested before when he was robbing innocent people anyway, now it seems like it would be the only satisfying conclusion for this story. Leaving him with his family, especially with his daughter, after everything he's done would just be so upsetting and unsettling. I'm not sure if they'll go in that direction, especially when most of the characters so far don't really appear that much beyond their focused episode, but he should not be living happily with his family or have this case of amnesia be treated as a second chance for him to make up with his daughter. He already crossed the line, but taking pictures of his own underage daughter is truly unforgivable. The notion that he could still be with her, despite how she doesn't remember him, makes the ending much more unsatisfying to me. Overall, it was a pretty good episode.

 

[Yojimbo]

I wasn't surprised that Lil' Slugger was still out there. Makoto always felt like a fake to me. He was way more vocal and dramatic than I would have expected from Lil' Slugger. Plus, he has braces and I don't think Lil' Slugger does. I was surprised that Taeko wasn't the granddaughter that the old woman had talked about. I wonder if her family will become more important later. The detectives, or at least Ikari, firmly believe that Tsukiko faked the attack to extend her deadline. That is still possible, but I'm not quite sure. I think both Tsukiko and the old woman could be unreliable narrators here. We've already seen Tsukiko's doll talk to her, so that does make the audience question what is and isn't real from her perspective. The old woman said that she doesn't have a home to go back to, but her granddaughter was able to see her at the hospital, so I assume that they aren't having as much of a hard time financially. That might be too much of an assumption, but it does make me question if either one of them really saw what they think that they saw. Plus, even if Tsukiko did injury herself, it doesn't explain the multiple other attacks.

I recall when I originally saw Paranoia Agent, my theory was Lil' Slugger was the collective unconscious made manifest - everyone's fears, insecurities, sins, hatred; everything negative - took the form of a supernatural being with the power to relieve them of their problems should they truthfully wish it. Sort of like what I thought Pennywise in It was, but he was more like everyone's racism, lust, hatred, cruelty, jealously, etc. - in that town (well, until I read about King's macro canon thing that explains what Pennywise really was). And I don't think Tsukiko was Slugger's creator either, he was always around just without form but growing, then she could have been the final trigger that allowed him to manifest because her high level of creativity made her like a lightning rod to Slugger almost. Huh, tbh, I don't remember if I ever watched Paranoia Agent all the way through.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

PROPHETIC VISION

Spoiler

To begin…

If you strain both of your ears, the words of the sage will reach you somewhere between intuition and science.

If you look around, tracing the fox's path back and forth, it's an ocean of cluster-amaryllises.

Welcome, master detective.

Here's warm hospitality.

And then…

 

[Kitschensyngk]

Seventh-inning stretch.

Episode 7
“MHz”

Lil’ Slugger has struck again, giving Kozuka an alibi and sending the investigation back to square one. A frustrated Ikari continues to grill Kozuka, while Maniwa finds a common thread between each of Lil’ Slugger’s victims.
​

They all posted spoilers?