As one of the greatest creative minds in anime in the last 20 years, Satoshi Kon’s work has been a point of celebration for those trying desperately to get anime seen as a serious art form, with many of his films being classed among the best of the best, side by side with the likes ofSpirited AwayandAkira.
While he may have died young due to complications with pancreatic cancer, his legacy is hard to ignore, and the impact he has had on the anime scene, both as a writer and director, will be felt for years to come, particularly since several of his works have influenced major Hollywood films. But how do they compare to each other? These are all of Satoshi Kon’s anime movies and series, ranked.
Updated on December 3rd, 2024, by David Heath:People annoyed with praise for figurative sacred cows often retort that, if they didn’t create their big works/win the big game/make a new discovery, etc. someone else would have. Satoshi Kon’s premature passing at 46 didn’t put an end to dreamy, philosophical anime projects that impressed cinephiles as well as otaku. Yet few of them have matched the quality of Kon’s best work.
That’s partially why Kon’s last project, Dreaming Machine, never continued after his death. Madhouse and MAPPA tried, but without Kon driving his vision, the production slowly stalled to a halt. But his completed works still remain, and are still inspiring people to this day, be they famous directors like Darren Aronofsky and Guillermo Del Toro, or hopefuls who might become the next sacred cow cinephiles debate over. So, this list has been revamped and rearranged, ranking Satoshi Kon’s works against each other to see which ones show his style best.
8Good Morning
An Early Morning Routine All Summed Up in One Minute
UnlessDreaming Machinesomehow manages to get completed, the last piece of work Kon worked on before his death wasGood Morning. Narratively, there’s not a lot to it, as it just shows a woman getting up in the morning. Animation-wise, it uses translucent stills to show how the woman takes a while to fully wake up. She might be watching TV, but the rest of her is still climbing out of bed and getting something from the fridge. It’s not until she has her morning shower that she fully comes together and is ready to take on the day.
For a one-minute short, it really captures that groggy, early morning feeling. That’s not to mention its impressive animation, as it has more frames in its runtime than most 30-minute anime episodes. Still, it is just one of 15 segments made forAni*Kuri15, where NHK commissioned different notable anime studios and their directors to make shorts to fill in time between segments on their show. Others includeA Gathering of Catsby Makoto Shinkai,Project OmegabyMacrosscreator Shōji Kawamori, andProject MermaidbyGhost in the Shelldirector Mamoru Oshii.
7JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
How the Stardust Crusaders Helped Kon Get Into Directing
Everyone has to start their work somewhere. BeforePerfect Bluemade him a recognizable name, Satoshi Konworked with Katsuhiro Otomoon a few of his projects. He did some uncredited art assistance on theAkiramanga, before providing key animation and background art forRoujin Z. But the spark that led him into directing anime himself came from an unlikely source:JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Before the 2012 anime, fans only had A.P.P.P’s OVA series based onPart 3, which wasn’t exactly easy to find, and is much harder to get a hold of now.
Kon’s biggest contribution came in Episode 12, where he provided the script and storyboard for Joseph Joestar and Kakyoin’s first encounter with Dio. The OVA overall is more condensed and not as good as its 2013 successor, yet thanks in part to Kon and others, it does have better direction. Dio’s timestopping abilities are more subtle and eerie, compared to the bombastic time-fart effects of the later series. They impressed producer Masao Maruyama into offering him a chance to direct a little project calledPerfect Blue.
Kon got the job directingPerfect Blue, though it wouldn’t be finished until 1997. In the meantime, he worked with Katsuhiro Otomo on his anthology movie,Memories. Otomo’s name gets top billing as he came up with the short stories that its three segments are based on, and he showed his own impressive direction in theCannon Foddershort. However, the best short in the movie, and the only one that’s actually about memory, was written by Kon.
Magnetic Rosesees space salvage engineers Heintz and Miguel investigate an abandoned space station with a surprisingly intact classical European-style interior. They learn it used to belong to opera singer Eva Friedel, who disappeared decades prior. She’d be extremely elderly if not dead by the time Heintz and Miguel are on the ship, yet they soon come face-to-face with the young singer, or whatever’s using her image to manipulate them into staying. Despite not being its director or producer, Kon’s tragic tale is a good précis for his feature-length flicks.
For example,Paranoia Agentwas the only TV series Kon got to direct fully, and works in a similar field toMagnetic RoseandPaprika. Initially, it’s about Tsukiko Sagi, a character designer, trying to uncover the identity of ‘Li’l Slugger’- a boy wearing a cap and roller skates who attacked her with a baseball bat. The subsequent episodes follow Slugger’s other victims, the predicaments they got into, and the paranoia his sudden assaults have inflicted on the Musashino section of Tokyo.
That sounds simple enough, but as the furor around Li’l Slugger grows, the more things go astray as the little details don’t add up. Just asMagnetic Rosesaw its characters get controlled by their memories,Paranoia Agentshows how people get controlled by their fears,whether Li’l Slugger is a real threator a social phenomenon like the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. It’s an effective psychological thriller that’ll get viewers thinking while it twists their minds across its 13 episodes.
4Paprika
Dreamy Detective Story Shows How Reality and Fantasy Aren’t All That Different
Kon’s last feature-length project,Paprika, brings his slender oeuvre full circle, as it was also a psychological thriller based on a novel. Not that this was planned, as Kon had wanted to adapt thePaprikanovel since 1998. Its themes about how illusions and memories can affect reality, and vice versa, struck a chord with him. He dabbled with similar themes inMillennium ActressandParanoia Agentmainly because he hoped to animatePaprikaone day. He finally got his chance in the early 2000s, when he got the green light from its author, Yasutaka Tsutsui.
On the surface, it sees research psychologist Dr Atsuko Chiba help her patients by diving into their dreams as Paprika, a dream detective. But when the tech to do so is stolen by a ‘dream terrorist’, she enlists the help of Konakawa, a detective and patient of the program, to track him down. Beneath that, the movie shows how fiction and reality aren’t all that different from each other, and how people shape both to their heart’s content. Its surreal imagery inspiredthe dream-based thrillerInception, but not even Christopher Nolan could match Kon’s dynamic visuals.
Darren Aronofsky has voiced his appreciation for Kon’s work, though he denied his movieBlack Swantook inspiration fromPerfect Blue. They cover similar ground (female protagonists cracking under pressure until they can’t tell what’s real anymore) but go through different circumstances. For one,PB’s Mima is torn apart by a forced career shift from being a pop idol to a TV actress, an obsessive stalker watching her every move, and a website written by someone posing as her spreading false information.
It’s also technically an adaptationof Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s novel, except Kon was less faithful to it than he was toPaprika. Its subplot about how the internet can help stalkers attack their targets directly and indirectly, and Mima’s increasing psychosis as she loses track of who she really is, are all from Kon. Other internet-based thrillers tend to age pretty badly (Hackersis pure 90s cheese), but with internet stalking still being a serious concern today,Perfect Blueis still as relevant and anxiety-inducing today as it was back in 1997.
2Tokyo Godfathers
How Kon Uses Japan’s Social Problems to Tell a Feel-Good Story
Tokyo Godfathersis mild on the reality-meets-unreality themes Kon’s other movies have, as many of its predicaments are grounded in realism. Japan does have homeless people, they’re left homeless for a variety of different, often complex reasons, and they do get abused horribly.
But homeless hunters, criminal gangs, and rickety Nativity plays are just a few of the many obstacles that the alcoholic Gin, trans woman Hana, and teen runaway Miyuki face when they find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve. It doesn’t shy away from how gritty and ugly things can be either, especially when they try to find the baby’s parents. Yet they help show how hope can help people press on through to a happy ending. It’s the perfect picture for people who want a drop of seasonal joy, rather than the saccharine overdose other holiday TV specials offer.
1Millennium Actress
Most fans are familiar with Kon’s heavier work, where he delves into people’s minds to make them more paranoid, anxious, and thoughtful about big ideas like the thin line between fiction and non-fiction. But they serve to makeMillennium Actressstand out because it uses that thin line to tell a romance story. Instead of shocking viewers, it aims to bring them to tears instead. It follows filmmaker Genya Tachikawa, as he interviews famous actress Chiyoko Fujiwara about her career, with key events in her life told via scenes from her most famous movies.
Genya and his camera operator Ida find themselves literally drawn into her scenes, including her real flashbacks, as they learn why she got into acting in the first place. These scenes, taking place in occupied Manchuria, are heart-rending enough, but only serve to make its twist all the more heartbreaking. It’s a powerful, bittersweet movie that shows how strong Kon’s storytelling can be, and how sad it is that he didn’t make more romances like it.
