Sunday's New York Times included an article about anime director Satoshi Kon by Dave Kehr entitled, 'New Contender for the Anime Throne.'  Kehr identifies Kon as the leading member of a new generation of anime creators and correctly points out that, unlike most young anime directors, Kon's background was in creating manga, not in working in animation.  Kon has an artist's eye for composition and a penchant for multiple points of view and complex narratives.  He has only directed three feature films, the most recent of which, Tokyo Godfathers, opens in select cities on Friday.  Kon is currently working on his first television anime series, Paranoia Agent, which Geneon will distribute in the U.S. (see 'Geneon Has Kon's Latest').

 

In spite of this limited body of work, Kon's superb talent as an anime creator is beyond question, as Dave Kehr attests in his NY Times profile: 'Mr. Kon has no obvious peers in American animation.  He makes his movies for adults, using an intricate narrative style that weaves in and out of the past and present, the subjective and the objective, the real and the imagined...' For retailers wishing to take advantage of this very positive, high profile article, Kon's first two films Perfect Blue (Manga Entertainment) and Millennium Actress (Dreamworks) are available on DVD.