Little did I know, even watching it in order is about as haphazard and difficult to grasp as watching bits and pieces of it out of order.
This is one of those anime that takes adjectives like "surreal", "enigmatic", "cryptic" and so on and pushes them to their limits as it stretches on. It doesn't "unravel" or "unfurl" much at all, and when it does, it folds itself back up again afterwards -- it just "stretches" until it's over.
Now, usually I am a huge fan of anything that could be described as "surreal". I enjoy animated works of any type that reach into fantasy and the strange workings of the human mind and concentrates them; however, in Paranoia Agent it never feels quite whimsical in the way I enjoy most, rather sticking to the darker and/or just plain incomprehensible sides of the word "surreal". You truly must be in a certain kind of mood if you truly wish to enjoy this anime to the fullest -- you must want a mystery, but not one that you should expect to actually solve, lest you become like the crazed old man featured in the anime itself, obsessively scrawling indecipherable equations and "keys to the truth" on a sidewalk.
The anime actually begins simply enough, and seems to have a flavor as if it's going to be fairly straightforward but with the paranormal and such thrown in here and there. Then, however, you're suddenly watching something that feels more like an anthology of stories that pertain to the central concept of the search for Lil' Slugger/Shonen Bat and his motives as his victim list grows -- connected only by that thread until you watch later episodes and realize things that bring them together a bit more completely. But then -- and not very far at all into the series -- the unthinkable happens, all is revealed, and -- wait, really? That happens too! And then... and then...!
It's exciting and interesting at times like that, but then becomes even more confusing and difficult to digest. There are suddenly episodes (including my personal favorite, 'Happy Family Planning') in the middle of the series that feel even more like pieces of an anthology than earlier on, and are even less related to the overarching story, feeling more like a collection of tales centering around what may, at the end of the day, just be an urban legend blown far out of proportion. You suddenly realize that for every episode that's mysterious and intriguing in the way you assumed the whole series would be at first, there is another that's humorous in the blackest possible way, another that's just silly and fun, and another that's a straight dive into the psyche of the deeply disturbed.
It never quite goes "how you wanted it to". No matter what you like about the show -- no matter which episode gets you revved up to enjoy it, seeing that "finally, it's gone in a direction I truly enjoy!" -- the next episode will be a complete tangent in a whole different direction, and the next one again will branch off the road it had just paved. There are central themes and "lessons" that apparently are to be "learned" as one watches, things to think about and things to mull over, but in the end it leaves one a bit disappointed, I feel. It's an interesting experience, to say the least, but no matter how badly I wanted more episodes like my favorites, in the end they're very self-contained and for everything I liked about the anime there were several things I just was not as big a fan of. And perhaps the more egregious error to me -- I was introduced to so many characters that I became so interested in, whether they were innocent victims of mental anguish or terrible scumbags with little excuse to do what they do, and wanted to know more about them so badly, to know more of their story beyond the brief time I got to spend with them... yet, it just never came, at least not in a satisfactory way or in a way that I appreciated.
I suppose that's the point, though. Paranoia Agent is never what you expect, what you 'want', or what you may 'appreciate' at all. It seems to do this on purpose and, no matter who you are or what you enjoy or how you wanted to be entertained, it's not going to come just the way you want in this anime, and instead you're going to have to try and think a bit, even about things you don't want to think about, even about problems that you know you're not going to figure out -- in the end, even if you don't want to become like that old man, forever stuck in a loop of trying to figure out the impossible, this anime tries its best to make sure you do just that, at least a little bit. It doesn't care about your enjoyment, it doesn't care about you putting it on a pedestal of being your favorite anime, it only cares about grinning at you darkly like the bat-wielding antagonist within itself and making you uncomfortable, but perhaps striking a mental chord that resonates more than you would have guessed at first glance.
And for that reason, I can't dislike it, even if at times I wanted to. It's far from one of my favorite anime, but it is of a high quality and is something that all fans of intriguing animation should allow themselves to watch at some point, regardless of taste.
