Blunt-force trauma

It’s a beautiful morning in the 21st century and the trains and streets are packed in Tokyo, but no one is talking to or even looking at one another — nearly everyone has earbuds in, or their eyes are cast down at small flip-phone screens.

So begins Paranoia Agent, which finished its 13-episode run in the West in 2005 — one year before the first version of Twitter went live — and has proven oddly prescient, 20 years later, about the atomized, digitized lives we’re now living.

Paranoia Agent was the lone full-run anime series helmed by the late Satoshi Kon, a visionary writer, director and animator who tragically died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at just 46 years old. While his body of work was limited, most of it stands out in a crowded field, particularly his features Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003) and Paprika (2006).

Kon’s work reveals an interest in looking at where the technology of the hyper-connected internet age might take us — and what it might do to us. Paranoia Agent makes for a great sampler of his observations, about not just growing social anxiety, but the specific ways in which the internet era has put us in a panopticon.

Looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, it’s surprising how well Kon foresaw the conflict and unease to come in the then-nascent social media era.

It all begins when Tsukiko Sagi, a character designer whose previous puppy-dog creation is an enduring mixed-media hit, faces pressure at work to create another star. Walking home at night — and dreading an important presentation for which she’s wholly unprepared — she is assaulted by what she describes as a young boy wearing golden inline skates and wielding a bent golden baseball bat.

When news of the attack breaks, it doesn’t take long for the rumour mill to spring to action: speculation, finger-pointing and dehumanization are the name of the game. Gossipers start adding their own details to descriptions of “Shonen Bat” (Bat Boy), subtly transforming the public’s conception of him.

Many are quick to blame an aimless young generation for the attack. The show makes a point of showing Tsukiko perusing a web forum dedicated to her character, only to find some users accusing her of fabricating the attack for attention.

As police investigate, victims pile up, many of whom are fearful of some personal weakness being exposed. A popular schoolboy is ostracized after classmates note his resemblance to Shonen Bat, triggering paranoid anger which leads him to target what he sees as a jealous rival; a young woman’s plans to marry are compromised by the alter ego of her split personality, who takes over at night to do escort work; a crooked cop gets in debt to gangsters to build a house for his family and is pressed into committing robberies to cover that debt.

All of them end up getting the business end of the golden bat when at their lowest.

That each of these victims is the centre of an episode is prescient in itself: in 2025, it’s normal to call a newly minted online punching bag the “main character” of a given social media platform. Get caught doing something embarrassing? Take a nasty dig at someone for no reason?

Thwack.

Police eventually arrest a suspect, but he’s a copycat — a child under the delusion he is living inside a fantasy role-playing game. Everywhere, alternate worlds are eroding real-world connections and some people are more than ready to see strangers as monsters worth slaying.

Citizens discussing the case offer conflicting views of Shonen Bat’s nature: most say he goes after people who feel “cornered,” while others suggest his victims call to him, demanding punishment.

Eventually, a maddened detective realizes Shonen Bat is not a person but a social contagion, a bogeyman made flesh — the ultimate Other and scapegoat, skating at high speed to dish out cruelty to anyone who might feel vulnerable, for any reason. As tales of his menace spread, he grows larger and more demonic, enveloping the country.

Paranoia Agent isn’t without its faults. It can become too abstract for its own good, and its resolution is a little bit pat. But the series’ strengths more than make up for its low points.

When a creator dies at a young age, it’s easy to wonder what they might have thought of the current day. Paranoia Agent, 20 years later, shows us clearly what Kon saw in the future we now inhabit: a world of people who fear they’re being watched and who defensively clutch their bats, even as they look over their shoulders and listen for the sound of skates.

Paranoia Agent can be viewed on anime streaming service Crunchyroll.

Darren Ridgley is a copy editor for the Free Press.