For those unfamiliar with Kon, he was the guy behind a few really good anime movies. Perfect Blue is a modern day Hitchcockian murder-mystery-psychological-thriller which definitely has a place in my top 10 animated films of all time. Tokyo Godfathers is about 3 dysfunctional homeless people suddenly finding a baby in the garbage. Really good too. I admit, I was indeed a little disappointed with his only other full length movie, Millenium Actress. Though a pretty solid movie on its own, it can't stand anywhere near the quality of the other two movies, or even his segment in the fantastic movie, Memories. 

Satoshi Kon realized he had a lot of left over ideas with a lot of moods and qualities surrounding a central idea of social paranoia. He thought a TV series on this would be a better idea than making a movie out of it. God, he was so fucking right.

I've now seen the first three episodes which follows different people from different walks of life getting serial-hit by this mysterious little guy with a crooked metal baseball bat, skating on a golden Rollerblade and causing major paranoia. With absolutely top-notch drawing and animation, this is funny, extremely thrilling and dark among many other things. Every episode has got a great story and they all appear to be connected to this mysterious bat boy. I'm really eager to see through this just because I am pretty sure the ending is going to be something really special. Highly recommended obviously.

Before I forget, many thanks to the fansubs, they explain everything shown on the screen and they don't miss any of the Japanese phrases either. Brilliant and detailed work guys. 

I'll get back to this post once I finish watching all the episodes.

11th June 2007 

I finished this last month, sorry about the delay in updates. I still took way too much time finishing this mainly because of

1. I got into a western movie trip after Once Upon A Time In The West and ended up watching over 40 movies during this time. Of course, I mixed it up with other movies as well to give myself some variety, but the purpose was to mainly watch and re-watch westerns.

    

2. I also caught Satoshi Kon's latest film Paprika. Highly recommended!

3. After the first 4 episodes there was a drop in the quality of stories and the characters themselves. It wasn't as phenomenal anymore.

About that above point, seriously, some of the mid-episodes are a bit of a drag. That, considering it is just a 13-episode series, was disappointing.  

It is later revealed that the Shounen Bat attacks characters in complete distress and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. With a series of characters getting hit by him, some amazing and some fillers, this was a great watch overall. Things pick up back to form after the 10th episode or so and especially with an ending as special as this, I was relieved that I didn't really come across a clunker that just started off well (Read: Futakoi Alternative).

Also when I say drop in quality, we're talking Satoshi Kon's standards - it's quite fucking high.