Beloved Anime Director Satoshi Kon Dies

By toksala | August 25, 2010

The world learned that Satoshi Kon, director of the award winning anime films Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, Paprika and Tokyo Godfathers, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer yesterday. He was nearly 47.

Kon started his career as a manga artist before becoming an animator and finally an acclaimed and controversial director. His wildly imaginative and sometimes surreal and disturbing movies won a worldwide base of fans for the way they challenged the conventions of anime. There are many who say that his 2006 film Paprika was the inspiration for Inception, a live action film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Before his illness, the 46 year old director was at work on a film called Yume-Miru Kikai or The Dreaming Machine, which is slated to be released posthumously next year. He said in interviews that it was to be a film that both children and adults could enjoy. Intriguingly, he also said there would be no human characters, only robots.

An image from Satoshi Kon's unreleased final work The Dream Machine Photo: yume-robo.com

Twitter hosted an outpouring of feeling from fans in several languages. Many of them repeated the closing lines from Kon’s last message, which was posted on his website, translated as: “With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. Well, I’ll be leaving now.” His fans are also chatting it up on Tumblr.

In a celebration of his life here are a few memorable clips and trailers from his films:

Paprika: