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←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Episode 11 -- No Entry Or: Oh, You Thought This Wasn’t About Capitalism Being Bad? Content Warning: Misae Ikari refers to herself using ableist language, and not as a form of reclamation but as though she has internalized society’s view of her. Okay, okay, outside of the previous episode touching on unhealthy work culture, there isn’t anything specific pointing to Capitalism as the cause of Paranoia Agent’s ills like there is with, say Planetes, so it’s perhaps a bit misleading to say specifically, “Paranoia Agent is anti-capitalist.” But, at the same time, the show is a thematic deconstruction of the systems within which it was created, and it’s not like the system just started being exploitative towards its labor force after the show aired in 2004. The reason I bring the topic up now is that this is the episode where all the subtext finally becomes plain text. Misae Ikari spends half the episode explaining exactly why Shonen Bat, by all rights, should strike her down, from her poor health giving her a low life expectancy and rendering her effectively infertile, to her husband’s constant absence (not to mention his own troubles as a detective), to the new financial troubles placed on both of them. And yet, Misae escapes with only a cut on her face by laughing at the easy out presented by Shonen Bat, reaffirming her right to life. In fact, the solution is eerily similar to something out of Planetes. Life is hard, but we must keep on living, holding onto the connections we have with each other at all costs, because isolation is how resignation sets in. All this could be an episode in itself. If it were, I probably would have spent my time breaking down Misae’s monolog in finer detail rather than just waving at another anime I’ve blogged about and saying, “You watched that one too, right?” But there’s an alternate throughline at play here. I said Misae spends half the episode talking to Shonen Bat -- what, then, is the other half about? Well, it’s about the other Ikari, obviously, the one formerly known as “Detective Ikari,” now stripped of that title and left with “Security Guard B.” Now, if the episode was simply a parallel, of Ikari learning to accept his new position, this half wouldn’t be that interesting, so it’s not. In some ways, Ikari has already accepted his new position, and rather well. Some might say too well, even. A phrase echoes throughout this episode from the last time we saw him: “This world has no place for a person like me.” It’s not just him saying it either. Ikari has a chance encounter with a former arrest of his, an old-fashioned burglar who has also turned to construction security as a way to make an honest living, and he says it too. The world is hard, and they’d both rather wax nostalgic about the good old days. This is also where the Rising Sun matches come back into play, as a significant portion of their discussion comes while eating at the bar that provides them. We’ve tried to slowly unpack their meaning before on this blog, but it’s here that their meaning finally becomes clear. After accepting the box of matches, Ikari leaves the bar to find a much simpler world than the one he left behind. This is implied to be Maromi’s doing -- Misae even draws that connection in her own speech, calling Shonen Bat “exactly like that dog.” -- which furthers the description I gave of that particular metaphor last week. “You’re tired, take a break,” the burglar says too, just before this two-dimensional world is introduced, as if it couldn’t get any more clear. This portion of the show’s symbolic messaging is both something that I find obvious and something that I know is going to be examined more later, so I won’t dwell too much on it now, but I will make mention of the fact that even in this world, Ikari was still unable to catch his “classic burglar with a burlap sack” that he so often dreamed about. We also need to talk about what Maniwa is doing about all this, as he’s coming back into focus as well, just not quite in the way we left him. -r Next time: We’ve gone from detective drama to isekai to anthologies within anthologies, it’s time to see Paranoia Agent’s final form: a superhero story. ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→