Satoshi Kon. The Place of Animation in the Film Landscape

Sara Mai Ortiz de Manuel (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Anime, or Japanese animation, has become one of the biggest audiovisual products of the last thirty years. With a distinctive animation style and a range of different thematic patterns, anime has become a key cultural vehicle for understanding the thinking and imagery of the present media industry.

One of its greatest representatives is Satoshi Kon. Active in the world of creation since 1991, he was an animator, screenwriter, and director of various works throughout his life, leaving an undeniable mark on the world of cinema, not only in animation but also in live-action films. Kon’s films have a distinctive style that blends a colorful and psychedelic animated world with themes that can often be related to his thoughts on the film industry and the role of animation within it.

This video essay analyzes three of the director’s four titles in an effort to examine his reflections through his work on the industry in which he worked and the state in which it found itself. The films chosen make explicit reference to cinema, and for the most part, their narratives take place within the industry itself, or have intertextual scenes that invoke images familiar to an audience familiar with current cinema to explore the themes of their story.

First, an analysis is made of Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) and the treatment of artists and actors. It examines how people are presented on screen as less than objects of consumption, dehumanized on the one hand by an audience that believes it has a right to every aspect of the private lives of its favorite artists, and on the other by a production team that strips actors of their humanity through the camera as a voyeuristic object, a phenomenon that cannot be reproduced in animation due to the particularities of the medium.

Secondly, it presents a review of Millennium Actress (Kon, 2001), in which Kon reviews some of his favorite live-action films and uses them to create a narrative about the history of his country of origin and the relationship that cinema and its history have had over the years, while also defending the place of animation in a new era experienced by Japan.

Finally, the presence in Paprika (Kon, 2006) of explicit references to films and the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa as metatextual objects that serve to push the film’s message about the fine line between reality and fiction, as well as to vindicate the role that stories play in a new, increasingly technological world, is explored.

The aim of this video essay is to highlight the importance of Satoshi Kon in contemporary cinema, both in terms of his image and in everyday conversations about the medium, and the relevance of his work for an increasingly animated future.

References:

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Clements, J. (2020, Dec 28,). Millennium Actress & Japanese Film – All the Anime. https://blog.alltheanime.com/millennium-actress-japanese-film/

Hubley, J., & Schwartz, Z. (1946). Animation learns a new language. Hollywood Quarterly, 1(4), 360-363.

Moreno, L. (2006, October 25). Entrevista con Satoshi Kon (1963-2010) con Laura Moreno Plata. Anatomía de la imagen. https://anatomiadelaimagen.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/entrevista-con-satoshi-kon-1963-2010-por-laura-montero-plata/

Kon, S. (2010b, August 26,). Satoshi Kon’s last words | Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat. https://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

Kon, Satoshi (2017). Paprika: Storyboard Book. FUKKAN Lamarre, T. (2020). Anime Compositing and switching: An intermedial history of Japanese Anime. In A. Phillips, & H. Fujiki (Eds.), The Japanese Cinema Book (pp. 310-325). Bloomsbury Press.

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Peña, G. G. (2021). Identificación de las figuras retóricas en la película Paprika del director Satoshi Kon. Anuario De Investigación De La Comunicación CONEICC, (XXVIII), 187-195.