LAST YEAR'S MODEL

Mega bummertown.  I just found out that Satoshi Kon died yesterday.  He was the creator of a lot of awesome anime movies and one really amazing television series.  His work can best be described as a kind of magical realism / sci-fi crossover that tended to heavily explore the boundaries of fantasy vs reality, often with very dark, paranoid undertones.  Satoshi Kon’s works are modern day masterpieces and have always been an inspiration to me as a songwriter, so I wanted to share a little bit about his work with you.

I was first introduced to his work through his 1998 masterpiece (and directorial debut) Perfect Blue.

The story explores one pop stars descent into a world where she can no longer tell what is real and what is the television drama in which she is a character.  I guess it’s a psychological thriller…?  I don’t won’t to spoil it by going further, but Kon’s brilliant use of cuts between scenes lends itself perfectly to the portrayal of a human psyche on the brink of losing it completely.  Here’s the trailer, though it really doesn’t do the movie justice.

The second video is for Kon’s 13 episode series, Paranoia Agent. Once again, the trailer doesn’t do it justice.  The story follows a wide cast of characters who are in some way affected by Lil’ Slugger, a rollerblading killer who Read more

Let’s talk about rad comics!!  You may know about Taiyo Matsumoto…I think he’s most famous for being the author of Tekkonkinkreet.  It was made into a pretty rad anime movie, too.  But what I wanna talk about today is his newest manga, GOGO Monster, which came out in December of 2009.

GOGO Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto

I can’t speak for Matsumoto’s entire body of work, but of the manga I have read, he tells stories in the vein of magical realism.  I’ve always liked this genre of story, and GOGO Monster is the pinnacle of the genre.  It tells the story of Yuki Tachibana, a first grader who believes that there is a battle going on in his school between good and evil spirits.  He also believes that the good spirits that he used to see are abandoning him, and that soon his insides will rot because of it.  Of course, all this is is a thinly veiled coming of age story where Yuki’s fight to stay in his magical world parallels his desire to stay a child forever and also serves as an excuse to keep himself apart from the classmates he despises.  And though I’ve just explained the story in a nutshell, to say that that’s all there is to it would be an incredible disservice to a simple but beautifully subtle and dream-like tale about the end of youth.

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