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once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress.

Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films.

Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.

While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.

As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions.

‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media. As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth. Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man.  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue. But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon
© Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max

Then something magical happens.

In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.

Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever.

I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. 

Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.

But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke.

But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase.

Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon"> ‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media. As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth. Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man.  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue. But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon
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once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress.

Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films.

Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.

While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.

As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions.

‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media. As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth. Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man.  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue. But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon
© Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max

Then something magical happens.

In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.

Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever.

I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. 

Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.

But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke.

But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase.

Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon">‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film

Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress.

Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films.

Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.

While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.

As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions.

‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media. As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth. Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man.  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue. But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon
© Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max

Then something magical happens.

In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.

Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever.

I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. 

Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.

But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke.

But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase.

Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon

Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going…

Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.

While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before. 

Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality. While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.  © Satoshi Kon/Kodansha If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet. Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.  But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about. While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age. © Satoshi Kon Dark Horse Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.  Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story. Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page. Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon. Available June 16. 🎀 💙 Pre-order now: https://t.co/AqyLo0ygZ3 pic.twitter.com/VsnVtJjTRq — GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) May 21, 2026 But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon
© Satoshi Kon/Kodansha

If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.

Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga. 

But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.

While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.

Opus manga volume cover.
© Satoshi Kon Dark Horse

Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond. 

Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.

Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.

Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.

But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.

Opus illustration by Satoshi.
© Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse

While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon"> Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality. While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.  © Satoshi Kon/Kodansha If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet. Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.  But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about. While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age. © Satoshi Kon Dark Horse Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.  Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story. Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page. Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon. Available June 16. 🎀 💙 Pre-order now: https://t.co/AqyLo0ygZ3 pic.twitter.com/VsnVtJjTRq — GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) May 21, 2026 But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon
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Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.

While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before. 

Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality. While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.  © Satoshi Kon/Kodansha If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet. Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.  But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about. While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age. © Satoshi Kon Dark Horse Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.  Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story. Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page. Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon. Available June 16. 🎀 💙 Pre-order now: https://t.co/AqyLo0ygZ3 pic.twitter.com/VsnVtJjTRq — GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) May 21, 2026 But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon
© Satoshi Kon/Kodansha

If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.

Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga. 

But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.

While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.

Opus manga volume cover.
© Satoshi Kon Dark Horse

Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond. 

Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.

Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.

Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.

But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.

Opus illustration by Satoshi.
© Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse

While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon">Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime

Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.

While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before. 

Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality. While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.  © Satoshi Kon/Kodansha If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet. Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.  But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about. While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age. © Satoshi Kon Dark Horse Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.  Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story. Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page. Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon. Available June 16. 🎀 💙 Pre-order now: https://t.co/AqyLo0ygZ3 pic.twitter.com/VsnVtJjTRq — GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) May 21, 2026 But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga. © Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon
© Satoshi Kon/Kodansha

If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.

Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga. 

But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex. Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.

While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.

Opus manga volume cover.
© Satoshi Kon Dark Horse

Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond. 

Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.

Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.

Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.

But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.

Opus illustration by Satoshi.
© Satoshi Kon/Dark Horse

While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.

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Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind…