The world of Paranoia Agent can seem overwhelming and monstrous. But it looked very familiar to me.
Andrea Hickey / BuzzFeed
Depression is large. I don't mean this in the sense that depression as a mental health disorder is widespread (though, of course, it is). I mean that an individual's depression is greater than the confines of his or her mind. Depression spans past the cliched image of a man with head in hands and infects not only the wrinkles of personal experience, but the larger world beyond. It can make life seem bleak, and the settings and systems surrounding that life equally dark.
If this sounds scary, it's because it is. For most of my childhood, I stumbled upon depressed characters with whom I had very little in common — Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield and The Bell Jar's Ester Greenwood or even primetime television's Dr. Gregory House. They possessed an almost implosive form of sadness and fear; their depression seemed self-contained and anxious, as though fueled from some tightly drawn ball of melancholy stuck in the chest. While this may perfectly reflect someone else's sadness, it did not and does not mirror mine, and it only left me feeling more isolated.
Then I found anime.
I started watching anime when I was about 14 years old. It first interested me because of the bombastic soundtracks and realistic depictions of violence and sadness, but they kept drawing me back because they scared me in a way I'd never been scared before, not just of the actions on the screen but also of my own reactions to them. Certain images and characters and sounds made me feel as sad as I'd ever felt, and hungry for something I couldn't quite identify. I know now that my reactions were provoked from how anime portrays mental illness, and how depression and psychological trauma are often treated as dramatic focal points in anime. I've found this in the popular series Neon Genesis Evangelion, Welcome to the N.H.K., but, eventually, and most significantly, in Paranoia Agent.
Andrea Hickey / BuzzFeed
