Person: Kon Satoshi

Kon Satoshi was a film director from Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan. Kon attended Musashino College of the Arts and intended to become a painter. After college, he worked with Ootomo Katsuhiro on the manga World Apartment Horror. Kon entered the anime industry by working as set designer for Roujin Z (1991), for which Ootomo was the screenwriter and mechanical designer. Kon's early work was strongly influenced by Ootomo due to Kon's experience with him. Afterwards, Kon made his screenwriting debut with Magnetic Rose, a section of the anthology film Memories.

In 1997, Kon Satoshi released his directorial debut film Perfect Blue, which was turned into a feature film from an original video animation in the middle of production. His next film, Sennen Joyuu (Millennium Actress), was released in 2001 to several film festivals and won numerous awards. Having created two films that blend dreams and reality, Kon decided to work on a more linear and traditional story and directed Tokyo Godfathers, his only film to date that doesn't deal with subjective reality. After creating the television series Mousou Dairinin (Paranoia Agent), Kon finished work on Paprika, a feature-length film that received a wide release to cinemas worldwide in 2007.

After Paprika, Kon was invited to create a short for the 2007 NHK television production Ani*Kuri15, titled Ohayou. That same year, he helped establish and served as a member of the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA).

Following Ohayou, Kon began work on his next film, Yume Miru Kikai. In May 2010, Kon was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Given half a year to live, Kon chose to spend the remainder of his life in his home. Shortly before his death Kon composed a final message, which was uploaded to his blog by his family upon his death. As Kon explained in the message, he chose not to make news of his rapidly advancing illness public, in part out of embarrassment at how drastically emaciated and ravaged his body had become. The result was that the announcement of his death was met with widespread shock and surprise, particularly given that Kon had shown no signs of illness at relatively recent public events, as the cancer progressed to a terminal state a matter of months after being diagnosed. Kon died on August 24, 2010 at the age of 46.