Satoshi Kon

Biography 

     From early in his life Satoshi Kon aspired to be an animator, eventually graduating from Musashino Art University with a degree in Graphic Design. While still in college he assisted in the creation of several manga, and worked with Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of Akira. After college he worked in various roles with several short films and anime, until 1997 when he was given directorialship of an adaption of the novel Perfect Blue. Following the success of Perfect Blue he directed the animated films Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika, as well as the 13 episode animated television series Paranoia Agent. However while working on his last film, The Dream Machine, Kon was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and he chose to retire to his home until he died on August 24, 2010.

Perfect Blue

     Perfect Blue follows the transition of Mima Kirigoe from pop singer to actress. She immeadiately lands a role in a series of direct to video movies, with her character quickly expanding from a minor part to a recurring major one. However her change of career is a source of tremendous stress on Mima since as a Pop Idol she had to maintain an entirely chaste image, but as an actress she defies that image with scandalous advertising and taking part in a graphic rape sceen for the movies. Furthermore Mima is plagued with a stalker, a website which reveals increasing personal details of her life and someone murdering those who are causing Mima to lose her purity. Examples of this are a photographer who took nude photos of her and the writer for the movies Mima acts in. These factors combined eventually cause her to hallucinate, seeing herself dressed in her old Idol costume. Mima's own loss of sanity is paralleled by that of her character in the movies, so the two storylines are interlaced throughout the film to show Mima's breakdown.

     Eventually the murderer decides that Mima is destroying her own pure image, and decides she must die so that her image will remain perfect forever. This leads to an extreemly disturing chase where the murderer dressed in Mima's idol costume chases Mima throughout the streets of Tokyo, until the murderer accidentally falls through a plate glass window and is subdued. What intensifies this is that Kon shows the chase though Mima's eyes, who sees a perfect image of herself in her idol costume chasing her, practically floating and unemcombered by any obstacles Mima manages to get between them.

     The film is so effective in its depiction of the loss of sanity and bluring the lines of reality and perception that Darren Aronofsky liscened the film so he could recreate a scene in Requiem for a Dream.

Millennium Actress

     Millennium Actress tells the life story of Chiyoko Fujiwara, a popular but elderly and long retired actress. To show this Genya Tachibana, a director of documentaries, tracks her down to interview her. Early on we actually she her life where she was essentially randomly chosen off the street to act in a film. However it isn't until she meets and falls in love with a painter who is a rebel against the Japanese government at the time of the Manchurian war who subsequentally disapeers that she decides to become an actress so she could possibly track him down. From here we occasionally see bits of her life, but her wide range of films are all allegories for her life so we instead see flashbacks from these rather than exactly what happened. Further blurring lines of reality is that Genya assumes the roles of any male protector of her seen in these movies. 

Tokyo Godfathers

Tokyo Godfathers depicts three homeless people who find an abondoned baby on Christmas Eve. They then set out to find the baby's parents so they can get an explanation of why the baby was abandoned. Along their journey details of their previous lifes eventually come to light, Gin is an alcoholic who gambled away his money, Hana is a homosexual former drag queen and Miyuki is a teenage runaway who stabbed her father. However their journey also allows them to reconnect with those they abandoned themselves, for Gin he finds his daughter who he abandoned, Hana reconnects with his adoptive step-mother and Miyuki discovers her parents forgave her and want her to return.

Paranoia Agent

Paranoia Agent begins as the story of a elementary schooler who commits a series of assults in Tokyo. He is dubbed Lil Slugger and the only details people know about him are that he uses a golden bat and golden roller skates. The story is told via two cops, Keiichi Ikari who is a middle aged detective who is very set in his ways and Mitsuhiro Maniwa who is much younger and more adaptive to new ideas. In addition each episode follows those who will become a victim of Lil Slugger and it is revealed that all of them are under some sort of tremendous stress, such as Tsukiko Sagi who created the popular dog Maromi but is being pressured to create a new best seller, or Taira Yuuichi who is under suspision of being Lil Slugger. And in further episodes it is revealed that being attacked by Lil Slugger solved their immeadiate problems. Further evidence that all is not as it seems is that a doll of Maromi Sagi owns has come to life and attempts to assist her with her life.

Eventually a Copy Cat of Lil Slugger is caught by Ikari and Maniwa, but after Lil Slugger kills him in his jail cell the two are forced to retire. At this point the main story is pushed to the side and three incredibly dark side stories are shown which depict the growing level of stress throughout Japan and 

peoples increasing reliance on both Lil Slugger or Maromi to relieve said stress. In the time that has passed for the main storyline during these events Ikari has become a security guard and Maniwa has begun to fight Lil Slugger by using various pieces of garbage as weapons. After a conversation with a traditional cat burgler that Ikari caught in the past, he retreated into a fake 2 Dimensional world where he is a loved police officer. However this contrasts his old personality as he had previously stayed with his wife despite her dying of cancer and her feeling that she could not live up to the standard of being his wife. Because of Ikari's devotion to her, when Lil Slugger appeared before her he was unable to touch her as she refused to feel sorry for herself and take any false relief for her disease.

Eventually Lil Slugger attemps to attack Sagi, but she manages to escape into Ikari's world with maromi. There she assumes the role of Ikari's daughter, but because she took maromi with her into that world all incarnations of maromi disapeered from the real world. The lack of maromi caused people to place all of their hopes on Lil Slugger so he grew tremendously in power and began to consume all of Tokyo. However Ikari's wife lapsed to her disease and as she was dying she was pulled into her husbands world, where she made him realize the world wasn't going to provide anything real and he had to face his problems rather than seek false relief. This realization caused him to literally smash down the fake world, so he and Sagi could face Lil Slugger. At this point it is revealed that Maromi was based on a dog Sagi had as a child, but she wasn't paying attention so he ran into traffic and died. Since Sagi felt she would get into trouble she said a child with a golden bat and golden roller skates killed maromi. Once Sagi accepted responsibility for what she did it caused Lil Slugger, her other creation to loose his power.

Paprika

     Paprika follows Dr. Atsuko Chiba, a researcher working a device called the DC Mini which allows people to enter other's dreams. The device is used to psychiatriactally treat patiants, and since it has not been approved by the government Chiba is using the device off the books to treat others with her dream-persona Paprika. However several of these devices are stolen by one of Chiba's fellow researchers and he uses the device to cause others to go insane by infecting them with a dream of a parade of inamiamate objects. Eventually Chiba and the chief of her department realise that the Chairman of their company is behind everything, but his influence has gotten so great that when they confront him it turns out that they are within his dream. An assistant of the chairman manages to capture Paprika, but a detective who Chiba has been treating manages to invade the dream and rescue Paprika and kill the assistant. However the parade dream has spread so far at this point that it and a nightmare of the chairman spread to the real world and start to overtake people throughout it. And it isn't until Chiba admits that she has been hiding her own love for a fellow researcher who was swept into the parade dream early on that she and Paprika manage to become one person to defeat the chairman.

Themes

Adapted work from novels rather than manga

• Both Perfect Blue and Paprika were originally Novels, Kon did not adapt a single manga into film. 

Explores nature of reality

• Except for Tokyo Godfathers, all of his work includes a merging of reality and some other world. In Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress films within those movies universes were interlaced with the actual film. In Paranoia Agent Keiichi Ikari retreated into his fake world to deal with the stress of the world, and Paprika dealt with the interactions of dreams and reality.

Tells a narrative by showing plays within a play

• Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress both featured films from within their own universes to depict allegorically what was occurring during the movies

Characters are outsiders

• Mima Kirigoe from Perfect Blue was a Pop Idol with not group to belong to in Perfect Blue and in Tokyo Godfathers the three protagonists were all homeless

Very strong female characters

• The primary protagonists from Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika were all very strong independent women

See also: Anime