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Animated film director Satoshi Kon dead at 46

AtheistPreacher

AtheistPreacher

Well-Known Member
https://popwatch.ew.com/2010/08/25/satoshi-kon-dies-at-46/

Most of you probably know by now that I'm a big anime nut. I've resisted starting any sort of general thread on anime, because this isn't really the place for it... I don't think there are really a lot of anime fans on this board.

And hence, the news that Satoshi Kon is dead at the far-too-young age of 46 probably won't mean much to most of you. I can only tell you that he was one of truly visionary filmmakers of his generation, animated or otherwise. And among directors of animated films, he is quite possibly the second-greatest Japanese director ever, behind only the peerless Hayao Miyazaki.

Unlike Miyazaki, Kon's films were not for the whole family, but tended to be dark and edgy -- his first film, Perfect Blue, a psychological thriller, depicted a pop-star turned actress who began to lose her sanity, unable to distinguish reality from the film in which she acted. Most of Kon's work, in fact, tended to blur the lines between dreams and reality, including his final film, Paprika, which Christopher Nolan has acknowledged as one of his influences for Inception.

With his untimely death, Kon's directoral film career encompassed less than ten years, wherein he released four films and one thirteen-episode TV series. I and many other fans were sure he would be making great films for a long time to come. It was only tonight, not ten minutes ago, that I was surfing Wikipedia and discovered that he had died of pancreatic cancer in August. I mourn for all that could have been... he had so much left to give. He had the vision and the talent to surpass anyone.

I'll leave some trailers here for his directoral works... if you're smart, you'll go out and see at least one of them. I'm too sick with sadness to write any more about him at the moment.



Perfect Blue (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Rj7nn0ZVs

Millennium Actress (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpGrD5wUzKE

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q6mcx2qF4Q

Paranoia Agent (2004) - A 13-episode TV series, and my favorite work of Kon's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UE490rgOCU

Paprika (2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9wAtCe8Oc




satoshikon.jpg


Satoshi Kon

October 12, 1963 - August 24, 2010

RIP
 
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I was wondering why you had that nazi dude from alucard as your avatar, in iran we dont get too much anime with Satoshi's mark, heck we dont even get pokemon but satoshi was amazing, tokyo godfather was beautiful baradar.
 
Now I've had some sleep... a few other things.

He left some last words, which his family posthumously posted on his blog. A translation can be found here: https://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

I just keep thinking about what a bright future he had. I was convinced that his best years were ahead of him. After all, if he had died at 46, Spielberg never would have made Schindler's List; Hitchcock never would have made Rear Window, North by Northwest, Psycho, or The Birds; Scorcese never would have made Goodfellas; Kubrick never would have made The Shining. And as for Miyazaki, if he had died at 46, we wouldn't have My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, or Howl's Moving Castle... all his best work.

Animation aimed at adults (rather than "stuck in the kiddie sandbox" as the NY Times put it in their review of Paprika) is only beginning to emerge as a legitimate venture in the States. Most people still don't take seriously the idea that animation can be just as powerful as live-action films, and that it doesn't have to be for kids. Satoshi Kon was Exhibit A of a director who was making smart, edgy animated films, the kind of movies that, had he kept making them, probably would have done a lot to make people realize the true power of animation, and what they were missing out on. And it's worth saying that while most directors make at least one dud, all of Kon's films were brilliant. Not one bad one in the lot.

I honestly cannot remember ever being this distraught over the loss of any other celebrity. But the best was yet to come, and now it will never be. I can only hope that his work will continue to be seen, and that there are plenty of other young directors waiting to pick up where he left off. Even then, there will never be another Satoshi Kon.

I will leave one more piece of video to look at -- it's my favorite episode of Paranoia Agent, episode 8, in which three members of an internet suicide pact meet for the first time to do the deed. They run into problems when the two men discover that their third member is a young girl who looks to be about 12 years old. The themes are dark, but the episode is actually a comedy, with the two men constantly trying to escape and kill themselves, while the girl continues to follow. At one point, the branch breaks on the tree upon which the two men had been trying to hang themselves... after tumbling to the bottom of the hill, the older man exclaims, "I thought I was gonna die!" Only Kon could have pulled this off.

The twenty-minute episode is split up into three parts on YouTube. It's the English dub, which is great, since they do a good job with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6JKvclqdEo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuRkW0oAg_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyjPhQvW6tY







EDIT: Just discovered this fan-made tribute video, it's a good one.

 
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Marcus said:
Meh... who?
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Really? Really?

Ignore it if you don't care. Why in god's name would you post just to say you don't care about another human being's death?

If you're gonna be an a-hole, have some balls and do it in person. Find a random person in a hospital dying of cancer and tell them you don't give a damn they're dying.
 
Johnnyfan12 said:
Really? Really?

Ignore it if you don't care. Why in god's name would you post just to say you don't care about another human being's death?

If you're gonna be an a-hole, have some balls and do it in person. Find a random person in a hospital dying of cancer and tell them you don't give a damn they're dying.
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Is there a reason "post" is in bold print or was it the simple result of your spazzing on the keyboard?
 
KrazeeEyezKilla said:
Is there a reason "post" is in bold print or was it the simple result of your spazzing on the keyboard?
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Because if I were saying it aloud, I would have put emphasis on that word to contrast it with the more sensible action of ignoring the thread if he didn't care, hence I transferred that to the written sentence. Not really a hard concept.
 
Boy this forum is swell. One guy mocks someone's death, and then people get testy with the guy who calls him out for it. It really sheds such positive light on Jazz fans.
 
Damn dude, you must be a huge fan to have not noticed that he has been dead for two months.

But seriously, the Japanese Health Care system sucks. They probably radiated the poor guy to death.
 
Duck Rodgers said:
Damn dude, you must be a huge fan to have not noticed that he has been dead for two months.

But seriously, the Japanese Health Care system sucks. They probably radiated the poor guy to death.
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It's not like we really hear about deaths in Japan over here in the States... and that was if I even kept up with any news, which I don't. But I would know if Spielberg died, because it gets around here just by word of mouth, even if I happen to care a lot more about Satoshi Kon. Which means the only way for me to know he died was to find out myself. But do you feel the need to check up on all the mid-forties celebrities you like every month just in case they've died unexpectedly from cancer? Because that's not something I normally do. I very greatly admire his work, and I watch it plenty -- I even exposed a few friends to Paprika just last month -- but I don't feel the need to keep up with the guy's personal life. Those things considered, I don't think it's much of a surprise that I hadn't heard. I was checking on the next film he was supposed to be doing, announced in late 2008 as his next project, figured it might be coming out soon. But I must admit, it was a major kick in the nads to discover it like I did... it always sucks to find that someone died young and unexpectedly, but even moreso when you're late to the funeral.

As for their health care system, he said that he refused medication. I'm not sure why. He was an odd bird like that. Liked to be unconventional. They told him he had six months to live at best when they diagnosed him... he lasted three. Medication probably would have extended his life a bit, but you don't generally recover from pancreatic cancer that's already metastasized to several bones. Maybe he just didn't want to linger on in pain longer than he had to. My grandfather died from pancreatic cancer, and it wasn't particularly pretty at the end. At one point he took a bit too much medication, and started imagining that we were all dopplegangers trying to kill him. He looked right at me and said he didn't know who I was. He wouldn't accept food from anyone but my mother because he thought all us dopplegangers would poison him. At that point, medication isn't helping you; it's time to check out. Hopefully Kon was okay at the end, or better than my grandfather, anyway.
 
Duck Rodgers said:
Damn dude, you must be a huge fan to have not noticed that he has been dead for two months.

But seriously, the Japanese Health Care system sucks. They probably radiated the poor guy to death.
Click to expand...

Get used to it brother... meet America +20 years.
 
Johnnyfan12 said:
Because if I were saying it aloud, I would have put emphasis on that word to contrast it with the more sensible action of ignoring the thread if he didn't care, hence I transferred that to the written sentence. Not really a hard concept.
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Do you care to dictate how you'd like the rest of us to respond? The only thing I now want in life is to act exactly as sensible as you would like me to. In fact, I want nothing more than to be as sensible as you.

Maybe you didn't notice this isn't the cemetery? It's an internet posting board.
 
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