Satoshi Kon Retrospective

I first heard of Satoshi Kon from Saalon, who urged me to see an anime film called Perfect Blue.

[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Satoshi_Kon_2_4138-201x300.jpg|201x300px|Satoshi Kon]I knew two things about this movie:


 * 1) It was a weird, psychological head trip.
 * 2) I'd stumbled on a few of its production cels online, and they included naked female breasts. So, I thought the film may have been quasi-porn.

It wasn't porn, of course. It was a brilliant, complex film about identity and obsession. Its confused pop-idol-turned-actress protagonist descends into a maddening world of crazed fans and multi-layered reality in a film that's both subtle and shocking.

I learned later that Kon worked his way up through the industry's ranks, as animator on Roujin Z and writer on Mamoru Oshii's Memories, before making Perfect Blue (which was also his own story) in 1998.

His next film, Millennium Actress (2001), was significantly more accessible. It focused on an aging actress and her interviewers, who find themselves reliving her roles and personal life as she recounts them. It's more sweet than bittersweet, tinged with the increasing realization that she missed a lot of opportunities. The movie is a fractal, exploring history and entertainment and real life as they reflect and influence each other.

He then made, of all things, a Christmas story. Tokyo Godfathers is even sweeter than Millennium Actress, as it follows three homeless friends who find an abandoned baby over Christmas. It's about family and the choices we make. For a film with none of the fantastic, reality-bending imagery of Kon's other works, Tokyo Godfathers feels like a full-scale live-action movie that just happened to be animated.

Then came Paranoia Agent, a 13-episode TV series from 2004 that contained all the ideas Kon couldn't fit into his films. Here, Kon weaves something akin to an anthology series, as most episodes focus on an individual character's reaction to a common social event. How well, we wondered, would a film director translate his ideas to an episodic TV series? Perfectly well, we discovered.

And four years ago, in 2006, we got Paprika, a film adaptation of a novel that I've heard inspired Kon throughout his career. I think Paprika is his least-accessible film, as it follows a woman who can walk through dreams. The plot is  convoluted and the imagery, while breathtaking, often serves to further confuse the viewer. Still, it's an ingenious, thought-provoking work of art.

Satoshi Kon died this week, at the age of 46. He was working on a children's film, The Dream Machine. The head of Madhouse, which is producing it, stated that the studio will do "whatever it takes" to finish and release the film.

We've lost a man who made the most interesting, mature films in animation. His movies were as complicated as Oshii's, as beautiful as Ghibli's, and as entertaining as Spielberg's.

May we remember his legacy forever, and may others pick up his torch.