Fantasy, Reality, and Interpretation: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Satoshi Kon

NOTE: Two of the films mentioned in this article are showing at limited, indoor capacity screenings at the Student Life Cinema on March 12th and March 13th. To register to attend with a valid FSU email, check out our EventBrite links for Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue.

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"Movies that you can watch once and understand entirely — that is the type of movie that I don't really like. However, if you are able to understand 70 to 80 percent of what's being relayed, and there's still some percentage left that would allow for your own interpretation . . . that's the type of movie that I do like. There might be a certain part that you don't quite understand, but there is a portion that rests in your heart." - Satoshi Kon

The Life

Born on October 12, 1963, Satoshi Kon spent his youth in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Ever since middle school, Kon dreamed of being an animator. Growing up, he was largely inspired by Space Battleship Yamato, Heidi, Girl of the Alps, Future Boy Conan, and Mobile Suit Gundam, all anime that his friends enjoyed and shared with him. He attended Musashino Art University, specializing in graphic design. While in college, he started working as a manga artist, creating a short manga called Toriko. After winning second place in a manga contest in Young Magazine, Kon was able to find work with Katushiro Otomo, known for Domu: A Child’s Dream and Akira, the latter of which Kon had a hand in. Under Otomo’s guidance, Kon wrote manga, movie scripts, and storyboards, in which one important recurring theme began to take shape: the blending of fantasy and reality. This is evident in his screenwriting debut, Magnetic Rose, one of the three parts of Otomo’s 1995 science fiction anthology film, Memories.

Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon’s directorial debut was in 1997 with Perfect Blue, a film based on a Japanese novel of the same title. With permission, Kon re-worked the screenplay that the novel’s author had already written. He took three important elements from the original story: its pop idol protagonist, use of a stalker, and horror atmosphere. What Kon creates is a delightful thriller where the lines of fantasy and reality begin to blur. Who is Mima? What is Mima’s reality and what is a part of Mima’s delusion? This confusion is exactly what Kon intended to convey as the film explores duality, the entertainment industry, performance, delusion, and mental illness.

Millennium Actress

After his newfound success from Perfect Blue, Kon was pressured to repeat it. The design for his second film first came from the idea of a retired, old actress telling her story but getting her former roles mixed up in the history of her past, becoming one with her biography. Similar to Kon’s previous film, Millennium Actress blurs fantasy and reality; however, Kon builds upon Perfect Blue’s ideas of obsession and admiration. Unlike his first film, Kon wanted to explore the positive connotations of these themes: the chase of one’s love and desires as well as respect for the forgotten. With the audience being unable to separate real events from the titular character’s movie roles, Millennium Actress truly shines in its metastory: its symbolism, themes, and motifs.

Tokyo Godfathers

After Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon knew he needed to shy away from confusing fantasy and reality in his third film in order not to appear redundant. A series of coincidences inspired Kon’s next film, including an idea of his for a war film about the Japanese occupation of Indonesia having the exact same plot as an existing film, accidentally encountering a book about Japanese homeless people’s way of life, and Post-It notes accidentally aligning a certain way to read “three godfathers and a baby.” It was through these coincidences (and many more) that Tokyo Godfathers was born. The film itself wholly draws on this idea of “meaningful coincidence” to create a beautiful story about miracles, fate, shame, and those that have been “discarded” from society.

Paprika

Kon’s last film to be made and released was Paprika in 2006. Out of all of his films, Paprika is the most disorienting when it comes to blending fantasy and reality, or in this case, dream and reality. In fact, viewers often come away from the movie not fully understanding what happened or what it means. This is largely due to the fact that dreams are an important facet of the movie; Paprika draws on dream logic as it slowly begins to affect the film’s “reality,” with cartoon-ish, dream-like characters appearing in a large, suffocating parade. Despite its confusing nature, Paprika has flavors of comedy, drama, mystery, thriller, and horror and continues to engage with audiences in a fascinating way, asking them what they truly think the film is about.

The Legacy

Satoshi Kon was unfortunately diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away on August 24, 2010. His death was shocking as Kon did not make his diagnosis public. He was mourned by all of Japan, as well as artists and directors across the world. Darren Aronofsky, an American director, originally paid homage to Kon in Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, using the bathtub scene from Perfect Blue. Aronofsky even wrote a eulogy for him in a Japanese retrospective book on Kon’s career as an animator. As with Aronofsky’s work, Kon’s films have clearly inspired other popular American films. One example of this can be seen in the parallels between Paprika and Christopher Nolan’s Inception. 

Kon broke the rules of Japanese animation when it came to portraying fantasy and reality as much more fluid while still maintaining a realistic animation style. With Tokyo Godfathers alone, he gave a voice to the homeless, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants to Japan. Kon’s legacy lives on in animation. On January 25, 2020, Kon posthumously received the Winsor McKay Award, “one of the highest honors given to an individual in the animation industry in recognition for career contributions to the art of animation,” joining the likes of Osamu Tezuka, Walt Disney, and Mamoru Oshii.

“With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. Well, I’ll be leaving now.” - Satoshi Kon

Written by: Jordan Rundle

Art by: Kim Phan | Instagram