I must admit I didn’t hear about Perfect Blue until around 2004, when the only anime I’d watched were Miyazaki’s Laputa, Anno’s Evangelion and Tsurumaki’s FLCL. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, but that day was a pretty significant turning-point in making me the fan I am today.
I’m sure the obituaries and tributes to Satoshi Kon from his family and friends will be formed as I type and my sincere condolences go out to them. I’m afraid I know nothing about who he was as a man: I sadly never had the opportunity to meet him. His work however is something I’ve become very familiar with over the years, and it’s my love of this that I want to express, as my way of acknowledging what he achieved.
What grabbed me straight away about Perfect Blue was the assured storytelling and startling realism. Because my anime experience at that time was limited to Gainax SF, family-friendly Ghibli and the usual newcomer’s “anime=cartoons” prejudice, it was a revelation to see an animated film so sophisticated, so complex and so…grown-up. It’s a notorious yet rewatchable film that I still recommend to this day as one of the greats. Hard to believe it’s a directorial debut.
Next up for me was the Magnetic Rose short, part of Otomo’s Memories anthology. Again, the realism was striking – especially when it’s set in outer space in the future – but its aesthetics and blurring of reality and illusion can largely be attributed to Kon. Then I saw Millennium Actress at a convention, expecting another Perfect Blue, but it’s nothing of the sort. It uses that classic Kon-ism of seamlessly connecting what’s real and what’s imagined to tell a biopic-style tale of one woman’s life that’s very different in tone and content, if not techniques.
The sumptuous visuals of Millennium Actress and the tenderness of its story made it another one of my favourites, in no small part because the romantic element was handled with such subtlety, and because it felt like a filmmaker’s love letter to the medium of cinema as a whole. His ability to draw the viewer in, allowing me to enjoy it as a movie rather than mere animation, was uncanny and a rare gift.
Tokyo Godfathers was different again, taking on the uncool and somewhat taboo subject of homelessness and weaving it into a somewhat fantastical and heartwarming story. For all my talk of how Kon’s direction and writing is imaginative and mature, this title highlights another important element. Again, I can’t comment on how fun he was to be around in real life, but this and all his work exhibits a wonderfully dry and sharp sense of humour. Often it’s very dark and pokes fun at society and human frailties, yet there’s a firm grasp of hope and a celebration of humanity in there.
Paranoia Agent is the black sheep of the bunch, being as it is a TV show. Regretfully, my final three discs of this went missing shortly after I watched it so my memories of it are hazy. I recall a lot of social commentary tied in with the mystery thriller aspects though, showing Kon’s sharp satirical eye on the world around him as well as his keen sense of what makes for an immersive fantasy world.
Which brings me to Paprika, his most recent and therefore probably most well-known film. I can’t stress this enough: Paprika is pretty much the only occasion when I didn’t find myself thinking “the book was better…” of ANY screen adaptation. Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel is a fascinating SF effort that delves into what happens when dreams pop into the real world but I can’t imagine a better candidate for directing a movie of this than Kon.
If this film is indeed his last (there’s another that’s unreleased, but I don’t know how close it is to completion) it’s a fitting way to remember him. It’s thought-provoking, imaginative, well-paced and artistically spectacular animation for adults; just watch it if you haven’t already. Really.
I honestly don’t know what else to say. We often hear that there aren’t enough good directors around, and the likes of Miyazaki and Takahata are old themselves. Forty-seven is really too young for anyone to go but in that time Kon has made a big impression on a lot of people, and I can say with absolute sincerity that every title he’s directed is downright excellent.
I hope this conveys how important Kon’s work is to me, but more importantly I hope it encourages those of you reading this who haven’t seen any of them to look them up. It’s a shocking tragedy that he’s gone so suddenly but everything he did from Perfect Blue to Paprika is still brilliant. So go watch ‘em.
