The live-action horror/comedy World Apartment Horror is about a young Yakuza hoodlum who is given one week by his gang bosses to get rid of the occupants of a derelict apartment house so it can be torn down and the land sold at a big profit. The building turns out to be haunted by some kind of spirit that protects its tenants. There is a strong subtext of social protest against Japanese arrogant attitudes toward other Asiatic nationals, but mostly the movie is a black comedy about the cocky gangster’s growing unease and fear as his attempts to intimidate the tenants backfire on him. World Apartment Horror was Otomo’s live-action directorial debut. Kon wrote the story, and also drew it into the published manga version of the movie.

After these two 1991 movies, Kon and Otomo drifted apart professionally for awhile. Kon was a background and layout artist on the 1992 Run, Melos! and the 1993 Patlabor 2 anime theatrical features. In 1995, Otomo and the Madhouse studio were preparing Memories, a feature-length triptych of three of Otomo’s most popular early sci-fi manga short stories, and Otomo recommended Kon as the screenwriter as well as the background and layout artist of one of the three segments. Both the public and Madhouse were so impressed by Kon’s sequence that, when Otomo recommended Kon as the director for Madhouse’s planned Perfect Blue feature, it was an easy sell. The rest, as they say, is history. Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers are also Madhouse productions.

Kon describes his relationship with Madhouse as very comfortable. (He is, of course, aware of Madhouse’s other very prestigious director, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, “but I do not have any [professional] relationship with him so far.”) Perfect Blue was already in development when Kon was invited to become its director; Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers were his own original concepts. Kon would like to continue making his future anime projects as different from each other as possible. “I try not to stay on the same subject or area on my films,” he told AWM, “to prevent from losing motivation and creativity. I am now working on a title called Mo-so Dairinin, a psycho thrill story for a TV animated series. After this, I will create a new animated feature with Madhouse studio, but the idea has not come yet.”

With the thriller Perfect Blue (left) and the epic romance Millennium Actress, what genre will Kon decide to tackle next? Perfect Blue 1999 © Rex Entertainment Ltd. and Manga Entertainment. Millennium Actress images courtesy of Go Fish Pictures.

Kon did not plan the strong feminine viewpoints in his three Madhouse features as a continuing theme. “It was simply my attention that I had at that time for making those films. Therefore, I would make a male-related story in the future if something related to this theme would interest me; or any other theme as well.”

Kon says that he and Madhouse are pleased with the marketing strategy that has made Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers better known and more prestigious on the international film festival circuit than as traditional theatrical releases in Japan. “I do not really intend to make ‘art films’ rather than ‘commercial films’, but the box office results have turned out to be that way. My goal is to create a film that has artistic value and is commercially accepted in the market.” Kon certainly has a sterling record in that regard. Each of his films, back to Old Man Z, have gotten excellent reviews. Tokyo Godfathers is sure to maintain that record, and anime fans are already eager to see what his first TV anime series will be like.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).