1: Let's kick off 2013 with evil Jewish anti-heterosexual anti-Catholic Illuminati death cults.
Consider this scenario: In the future, psychologists have invented a VR device that allows a doctor to enter her patient's subconscious and directly witness his dreams. The physician is not limited to a passive role there; to heal their patients, psychologists can either remold elements of the subconscious at will or simply copy their own psyches onto those of their patients, like Agent Smith duplicating himself in the Matrix sequels. What's more, scientists have recently developed a miniature version of the device small enough to fit in someone's pocket or be planted without detection - and which can be activated anywhere, without permission.
This invention holds the potential for profound abuse, don't you agree? And yet Paprika the novel runs away from nearly every opportunity to explore the ramifications of the future it proposes, wasting a promising sci-fi premise. But it's not the brightly anarchic celebration of the dreamscape I understand the movie to be, either; it's just incoherent, inexplicable in its priorities, and a big disappointment.
A big problem is the worshipful attitude towards its heroine, psychologist Atsuko Chiba: foremost proponent of the dream device, forerunner for a Nobel Prize, and dream-girl love interest for literally every male character in the book save the gay main villain. We are reminded every other page of her ravishing, otherworldly beauty (her very name, in one reading, means "hot chick"), as if our sympathy with the heroine rested solely on our appreciation for her looks and needed constant refreshing. Tsutsui is so in love with his heroine that he can't be critical of her actions or the technology she blindly champions. This leads to Jack Bauer Syndrome when the possible abuse of the devices is discussed; the morality of an action rests with the person performing it, not the action itself, and so it's OK for Atsuko and her allies to invade people's thoughts unwillingly, reshape their minds at will, etc. because they're Our Heroes. The only characters who question the wisdom of the devices are idiotic reporters and the bad guys, so we're meant to dismiss any concerns - even when 3/4 of the novel is devoted to the horrible consequences (including mental torture, scores of deaths, and Gojira-scale property damage) of their improper use. (We're instead supposed to be more concerned whether or not Atsuko will get her Nobel Prize.)
Oh, yeah: there are bad guys in this story. They are members of (excuse me while I get my list) a secret anti-Catholic gay Jewish cabal dedicated to ridding the world of women and heterosexuality. The head baddie is an evil board member at Atsuko's institute conducting an affair with one of her ambitious coworkers, whom he finds evidence that the Greek ephebe ideal has worked its way into the Japanese gene pool or something. Tsutsui devotes an odd amount of page space to their use of the dream devices in sexual games, which I think is supposed to prompt some sort of "ew, gay" disgust. When Atsuko gets too nosy, Cabal Leader orders Young Turk to rape her (as that's how the cabal believes you get women under your thumb, you see), which Young Turk, in love with Atsuko as well as his mentor, gladly goes to do - an endeavor in which he's ultimately helped by Atsuko herself, who believes that it's not the place of women to resist rape, as doing so only validates the worst habits of men or something. No matter, as Young Turk is so intimidated by Atsuko's blinding, ravishing, etc. beauty that he can't get it up. I'd be offended if the book's thought processes reached any level of coherency.
Meanwhile, the book's actual exploration of the dream devices' use is a crushing letdown. The case that takes up the book's first third concerns corporate maneuvering at an auto firm, which is as deadening as it sounds. The book's misplaced preoccupation with drearily mundane workplace drama endures even when Tsutsui throws all rules for the devices out the window in the second half, treating them first like they're some sort of advanced VR where objects in the dreamworld can be brought back to the real world, and then like they're outright magic wands that turn their hosts into rampaging Tetsuo-from-"Akira" psychic wizards. Ergo, while urban Japan is being terrorized by 100-foot dolls and malevolent Bamiyan Buddhas, our top priority is meant to be whether or not an executive coup at the Institute will earn Atsuko a demotion. Excuse me, but there are madmen ripping apart people's souls. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT BOARD MEETINGS?!?!?
The book has other irritating habits, like its infantile view of mental illness: its idea that if you were exposed to the psyche of a schizophrenic, you'd in short order be reduced to a blubbering husk, or that depression is a moral deficiency, usually "caused by nothing," and treatable exclusively through drugs. Or its endless excoriation of the gentle inventor of the dream device for his weight - rendering him blubbering and dumb, trying its hardest to revulse the reader with his physical descriptions every time he's on page, having every character mentally denounce him for being overweight. (When Atsuko enters his subconscious, of COURSE he's dreaming about chocolate and candy, 'cuz all fat people think about is food, right?) Or how we eventually learn that Atsuko cures most of her clients by sleeping with them, which a) er, improper patient-client fraternization, b) then why does she need the DC minis anyway!? and c) if this deserves a Nobel Prize, then where's Wilt Chamberlain's award? But anyway.
None of this reflects on the well-regarded film based on Tsutsui's work; sometimes other artists can salvage the good ideas at the heart of a bad book to make a good movie. (Forrest Gump the book, for example, is nearly unreadable.) But Paprika the novel isn't crazy in a way that's fun or imaginative. It's just a disjointed journey into the author's extremely bizarre personal prejudices and a frustrating waste of ideas.