Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2010

Photo by Jason Gray

At the time of writing, we’re still reeling from the news that anime director Satoshi Kon has passed away at the age of 46, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. One of the most respected figures in the industry, Kon had his first manga published in Weekly Young Magazine in 1984 while still studying at Musashino Art University, and went on to work with influential artist and animator Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira). His debut feature film, Perfect Blue (1997), introduced some of the themes that would come to characterize his work, including complex narratives and a blurring of fantasy and reality. Kon would pursue these further with Millennium Actress (2001) and the 2004 TV series Paranoia Agent, while demonstrating a knack for crowd-pleasing with 2003’s Tokyo Godfathers. However, he may be best remembered for his 2006 adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Paprika, a visually dazzling tale of dream-world explorers that was echoed (some might say aped) by recent Hollywood blockbuster Inception. He was working on a fifth film, Yume Miru Kikai (“The Dream Machine”), at the time of his death.

Satoshi Kon, Oct 12, 1963-Aug 24, 2010