Satoshi Kon

“I don't like movies that you see once and understand completely. There may be a part that you don't fully understand, but there's a portion that rests in your heart.” Satoshi Kon was a renowned Japanese film director, animator, and screenwriter, who managed to become one of the most important anime artists due to the complexity of his works. He studied Graphic Design at Musashino Art University in 1982 and in those years he made his first manga, the short work Toriko. He worked as an assistant to renowned cartoonists and animators such as Katsuhiro Ōtomo (Akira, Steamboy) and Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the shell, Patlabor 2) who undoubtedly influenced his later career. Satoshi made his directorial debut in an episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, where he also wrote the script and storyboard. Years later, he ended his career as a manga artist and devoted himself to making anime. He directed the Madhouse studio, where he carried out his projects as a director. His works are loaded with psychological complexity and large dreamlike scenarios. In his first films Perfect Blue (1997) and Millennium Actress (2001) he explored the limits between the real and the fantastic, but with Tokyo Godfathers (2003) he took a distance from his previous works. He took a break from cinema to make Paranoia Agent (2004), a TV series about problems in Japanese society. In 2006, he returned to cinema to make his masterpiece: Paprika. Although his career was brief, due to his death at the age of 46, he is remembered as one of the most visionary directors of Japanese animated films.