Early life Satoshi Kon was born on October 12, 1963. Due to his father's job transfer, Kon's education from the fourth elementary grade up to the second middle-school grade was based in
Sapporo. Kon was a classmate and close friend of manga artist Seihō Takizawa. While attending
Hokkaido Kushiro Koryo High School, Kon aspired to become an animator. Kon entered the Graphic Design course of the
Musashino Art University in 1982. Afterward, he found work as
Katsuhiro Otomo's assistant. After graduating from college in 1987, Kon worked as one of five layout artists on
Mamoru Oshii's
Patlabor 2: The Movie in 1993, along with other animated films. Kon then worked with Mamoru Oshii on the manga
Seraphim: Wings of 266,613,336, which was written by Oshii and drawn by Kon. The manga was serialized in the monthly anime magazine
Animage starting in 1994. However, as the series progressed, the opinions of Kon and Oshii became divided, and the series went on hiatus and ended unfinished. It was the first film by Kon to be produced by
Madhouse, and producer
Masao Maruyama invited him because he was impressed in Kon's work on ''JoJo's Bizarre Adventure''. A suspense story centered on a pop idol, Kon was initially unsatisfied with the first script based on the original and requested to make changes to it. With the permission of the original author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, Kon was allowed to make any changes he wanted, except for keeping the three elements of the novel ("idol," "horror" and "stalker"). Coincidentally, Kon's next work would also feature a film studio going bankrupt.
Millennium Actress garnered higher critical and financial success than its predecessor and earned numerous awards. The screenplay was written by Sadayuki Murai,
Millennium Actress was the first Satoshi Kon film to feature
Susumu Hirasawa, of whom Kon was a long-time fan, as composer. In 2003, Kon's third work,
Tokyo Godfathers, was announced. The distribution company for the North American release was Sony Pictures-affiliated Destination Films. The film centers on a trio of homeless people in Tokyo who discover a baby on Christmas Eve and set out to search for her parents.
Tokyo Godfathers cost more to make than Kon's previous two films (with a budget of approximately 300 million yen), This work also marked the transition from celluloid animation to digital animation. In 2004, Kon released the 13-episode television series
Paranoia Agent, in which Kon revisits the theme of the blending of imagination and reality, as well as working in additional social themes. The series was created from an abundance of unused ideas for stories and arrangements that Kon felt were good but did not fit into any of his projects. In 2006,
Paprika was announced, after having been planned out and materializing for several years. The story centers on a new form of psychotherapy that utilizes dream analysis to treat mental patients. The film was highly successful and earned a number of film awards. Kon summed up the film with —roughly, "Everything but the fundamental story was changed." Much like Kon's previous works, the film focuses on the synergy of dreams and reality. That same year, Kon helped establish and served as a member of the
Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA).
Health deterioration and death Following
Ohayō, Kon began work on his next film,
Dreaming Machine. In May 2010, Kon was diagnosed with terminal
pancreatic cancer. Given half a year to live, Kon chose to spend the remainder of his life in his home. Shortly before his death, Kon composed a final message, which was uploaded to his blog by his family upon his death. As Kon explained in the message, he chose not to make news of his rapidly advancing illness public, in part out of embarrassment at how drastically emaciated and ravaged his body had become. The result was that the announcement of his death was met with widespread shock and surprise, particularly given that Kon had shown no signs of illness at relatively recent public events, as the cancer progressed to a terminal state in a matter of months after being diagnosed. Kon died on August 24, 2010, at the age of 46. After his death, Kon was mentioned among the
Fond Farewells in
Times people of the year 2010.
Darren Aronofsky wrote a
eulogy to him, which was printed in , a Japanese retrospective book of his animation career.
Dreaming Machine In November 2010,
Madhouse, the animation studio that had previously produced Kon's works, officially announced that they would continue to produce the unfinished "Yumemiru Kikai", and that the animation director Yoshimi Itazu would be acting as the director. According to
Takeshi Honda, animator and frequent collaborator with Satoshi Kon, Kon disappeared in the middle of production on the movie. He had not informed most of the staff on the movie about his pancreatic cancer, including producer
Masao Maruyama. Maruyama recorded the script to the movie on Kon's deathbed and promised to see the project to completion. However, the project was halted in 2011 due to financial reasons. By 2013, the completion of
Dreaming Machine still remained uncertain due to funding difficulties, with only 600 of the 1,500 shots being animated. At Otakon 2012, Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama, who was involved in all of Kon's films from
Perfect Blue to
Paprika and was also his friend and collaborator, stated: "Unfortunately, we still don't have enough money. My personal goal is to get it within five years after his passing. I'm still working hard towards that goal." In July 2015, Maruyama reported that
Dreaming Machine remains in production, but they are looking for a director to match Kon's abilities and similar vision. In August 2016, Mappa Producer Masao Maruyama said in an interview: "For 4–5 years, I kept searching for a suitable director to complete Kon's work. Before his death, the storyboard and script, even part of the keyframe film was already completed. Then I thought, even if someone can mimic Kon's work, it would still be clear that it's only an imitation. For example, if
Mamoru Hosoda took the director's position, the completed
Dreaming Machine would still be a good piece of work. However, that would make it Hosoda's movie, not Kon's.
Dreaming Machine should be Kon's movie, him and only him, not someone else's. That means we cannot and should not "compromise" only to finish it. I spent years to finally reach this hard conclusion. Instead, we should take only Kon's "original concept", and let somebody turn it into a feature film. By doing so, the completed piece could 100% be that person's work, and I'm OK with that. I also considered about doing a documentary of Kon." However, Maruyama has not completely given up on the production. He says, "If a talented director from overseas is willing to take on the project, it is not entirely without possibility," suggesting that the project is not entirely without a chance of restarting. ==Themes==