50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

Continuing the obsession with dreams and reality that director Satoshi Kon first put to screen in 1997’s Perfect Blue, Paprika offers us ambitious concepts and the visuals to match, as an anime feature that outstrips its stablemates (Ghibli, eat your heart out) on the sheer scope and scale of its plot and animation.

After a prototype device intended to aid psychiatric treatment, which allows the user to view, share, and influence others’ dreams, is stolen, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, a scientist who moonlights as a dream detective under the codename Paprika, is thrown into a nightmarish world. Tracking a dream terrorist across the landscape of the city’s dreams, Paprika must stop a manic parade of dream objects before it breaks through into reality and shatters the delicate balance between the two states.

Kon’s film is no doubt inspired by The Matrix, but goes far beyond the rules and boundaries the Wachowskis' film world necessitates. This is the benefit of working in dreams: anything goes. And when it comes to anime, a style that is already comfortable with the surreal and absurd, this gives license to make something as mesmerising and uncanny as Paprika - hands down one of the best animated science fiction features of all time.