Word: kon
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...ARTS Satoshi Kon: Animé's true grit...
...keeping with Kon's taste for offbeat topics, Tokyo Godfathers follows a makeshift family of homeless people?transvestite ex-drag queen Hana, scruffy middle-aged bum Gin and runaway teenager Miyuki?who discover an abandoned baby in a garbage heap and embark on a search for its parents. It's a briskly paced comedy with a gentle core and a prickly surface. ("You can't get milk from an old queer's tits," yells Gin, mocking Hana's burgeoning maternal instincts.) Set during Christmas in a gorgeously detailed, snow-softened Tokyo, it's also one of the most affectionate, meticulous...
...With his signature black turtleneck, neat goatee and long hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, the 40-year-old Kon takes pains to set himself apart from the stereotypical otaku animator who's too immersed in his cartoon world to ever change out of slippers and pajamas. But Kon's distance from the anim? mainstream is more than sartorial; he is one of the rare animators whose creative point of reference isn't other animation or manga. Instead, he takes his inspiration from reality: "My ideas for movies come from the world that I live in. When I walk...
...Kon's refusal to accept the conventional boundaries of his field that encouraged Masao Maruyama, founder and president of Mad House animation studio, to choose him to direct Perfect Blue, a paranoid psycho-thriller about a teen idol dragged through the sleazier realms of Japanese pop culture. The film turned out to be Kon's breakthrough. Until then, he had been making slow but steady progress through the industry, working his way up from being an assistant manga artist to drawing his own manga to directing occasional episodes of animated TV shows. One of these episodes caught Maruyama...
...Kon's growing virtuosity inevitably raises his second least favorite question: Can he become the next Hayao Miyazaki, whose Spirited Away was a global hit last year and which picked up an Oscar for Best Animated Film? Dream-Works' Daly believes he can; so does Maruyama. But ask Kon if he wants to follow in the footsteps of the reigning emperor of anim?, and after a moment of offended silence he starts to wave his hand violently in front of him as if warding off a curse. "I've never even thought about it," he insists, a little unconvincingly...