10 years & Paranoia Agent, RIP

[Nicholas D. Wolfwood]

Today we pay respects to director, animator, and screenwriter Satoshi Kon, who passed away from pancreatic cancer on this day 10 years ago. Paranoia Agent, which recently aired on Toonami, was the only TV series he directed before he passed.

[RuthisianCodex]

Paranoia Agent was & is a true masterpiece of a show in my opinion. 

[Nicholas D. Wolfwood]

yes it was but  the draw back with anime Master pieces  Like cowboy bebop, or trigun or gun grave & Paranoia Agent

there are often are too short

[Ohayotaku]

A definite recommend for anyone looking for something more cerebral than your typical anime series.

[efaardvark]

2 hours ago, Nicholas D. Wolfwood said:

yes it was but  the draw back with anime Master pieces  Like cowboy bebop, or trigun or gun grave & Paranoia Agent

there are often are too short

Is there even such a thing as a long masterpiece though?  I don't think so.  I mean, it probably isn't impossible, and sure there's a lot of popular stuff out there that's long, and almost by definition the long ones are successful at least in money terms.  But "masterpieces"?  What if, for example, Cowboy Bebop had been extended for another couple seasons, or even just one?  There was actually significant resistance to the ending of Cowboy Bebop internal to the studio because of that ending not leaving much of an option for a sequel.  But would it have been considered as great as it is if it hadn't been for that ending?  On the other hand there's quite a number of animes whose first season was great, but which were then were resurrected for another season or two (or even more) and subsequently lost it.

Personally I think for a "masterpiece" you need to get to an end so you can sit back, consider the whole thing, and think, "wow, that was great!"  In theory it can take however long it takes to tell the story but in practice it is very hard to keep on producing masterpiece-level content season after season after season.  I find that the longer an anime gets the more likely it is to go off the rails.  It starts collecting too much filler material, unfilled plot holes, "direction" from the studio execs (usually on behalf of advertisers or other such), or other crap that pulls it down.  (In the worst case if there's too much of that nonsense then I just lose interest and leave.  Maybe I gave up too early and missed out on a couple masterpieces.  I'll never know for sure but I kind of doubt it.)

This isn't just an anime thing.  Hollyweird does this all the time as well.  The game industry too.  Something that is good enough to get a following gets resurrected after the fact with some bizarre plot-twist and/or re, re, re-booted until even the die-hard fans are so sick of it they stop paying attention and it stops making money for the owners.  Then it gets dropped and the only thing that the anime/movie/game/book gets remembered for is the last few sucky seasons or releases so it never even gets considered for "masterpiece" status.  I'm not going to name names but I'm sure people can come up with their own examples.