Remembering A Genius: Kon Satoshi, Who Left Us Ten Years Ago.

Magnetic Rose (Memories) (1995)

In 1995, the science-fiction anime anthology Memories was released. Its first segment Magnetic Rose was directed by Morimoto Kōji, and was written by Kon Satoshi (based on a short story by Ōtomo Katsuhiro). Kon also provided background art and layouts.

The story concerns a salvage vessel in space, which receives a distress call from a huge spaceship. When the astronauts arrive to help, they discover the dead ship is run by a lonely demented Artificial Intelligence which tries to trap them for company. It is by far the most creepy of the three segments, and many of Kon Satoshi's recurring themes of questionable identities, dreams, altered realities and works of art can be found here already.

Perfect Blue (1997)

After having produced and directed an episode of the nineties' anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Kon directed his first feature film, and created an instant classic of animation: the giallo-inspired psychological thriller Perfect Blue. It tells the story of Mimi, a young singer who leaves her pop-music band to become a soap actress. This causes a change in her public good-girl image which is hard to swallow for her fanbase, especially when her newest acting roles require some controversial nudity. Almost cracking with stress and doubt, Mimi starts to suffer from blackouts. And things get really scary when people who helped with her career-change get murdered one-by-one.

Perfect Blue was a daring debut, which provided Hitchcockian thrills and exploitational sex and violence. But at the same time it was an intelligent drama about backbreaking stress, perception of reality, and even cyber-stalking (still quite prophetical in 1997). Also noticeable was Kon's art style, which ditched the caricatures and funny tropes regular in anime, and replaced them with far more realistic-looking animation. It was a style he would stick with throughout his career.

And it became a critical success: not only did Perfect Blue win awards, it gave Kon Satoshi a few famous fans as well. Director Darren Aranofsky admits his Oscar-winning drama Black Swan bears a strong resemblance to Perfect Blue story-wise (though he denies it's meant as a remake of sorts). And a scene from his earlier film Requiem for a Dream, in which a character yells in helpless rage while submerged in a bathtub, was lifted shot-by-shot from Kon's debut, and credited as such.

Kon Satoshi also received criticism, with many people wondering why this was an anime while it could have been done as a live-action film. However, Kon's toying with reality here should not be underestimated, and many of the story's conceits would probably not have worked so well when tried in live action.

Millennium Actress (2001)

Kon's next film explored less extreme grounds than Perfect Blue had done. Basically one big love letter to Japanese cinema history, Millennium Actress tells the story of two journalists who get a rare chance to interview a reclusive elderly movie actress, an icon of decades past. As the interview commences, so do the journalists get drawn into a whirlpool of memories, in which past, present and movie scenes melt into one reality.

Again Kon uses animation for the purpose of changing reality on the fly where necessary, and he uses it masterfully here, while at the same time being able to give hat-tips to many of his favorite movies. Millennium Actress also marks the point where he started to collaborate with composer Hirasawa Susumu, and the two artists formed a winning combo.

Millennium Actress was received even better than his previous film, and introduced many people to what Japanese animation could actually be capable of. As our Managing Editor Peter Martin fondly recalls:

"Flinging words around like daggers in a metal shed, my friend Shawn excitedly tried to tell me about a movie he'd just seen, Perfect Blue, a Japanese cartoon -- I stopped him right there. I had no experience with, nor interest in learning about 'Japanese cartoons'; far too many films awaited my discovery in the early years of the 21st century. Some time later, however, I found myself volunteering at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, where, in November 2002, I saw a 'Japanese cartoon' called Millennium Actress on a big screen … and it was fabulous, and not at all what I expected. After the packed screening, director Satoshi Kon stayed to talk about his movie and to sign anything anyone offered. Foolishly, I rushed out. Later, friends showed me what he had signed: not only his name, but also a bit of his own hand-drawn animation, freshly created and different for each one. Happily, I began watching and marveling at his films and television shows, which were always fabulous, thought-provoking, and totally unexpected."

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

Just before Christmas, a band of homeless people find an abandoned baby in the trash, and try to return the child to its family. Their task turns into a wild search through an ice cold Tokyo, in which they encounter not just their regular problems, but also yakuza, nightclub-performers and even assassins. Worse, at several key moments they need to face their own shortcomings and mistakes. Will this end well for anyone?

With Tokyo Godfathers, Kon Satoshi created a madcap comedy with Christmas sentimentality, but at the same time he packed it with taboos. Homeless people are not often talked about as a subject, and with every "model" family the vagrants encounter there is something seriously wrong. Domestic abuse, gambling, exaggerated family pride, alcohol... nobody gets spared here. Despite being very sweet, the film puts big question marks at concepts like family and friendships, and that contrasts nicely with the saccharine main quest of the "heroes".