Millennium Actress

Note: This review contains spoilers for Millennium Actress.

Though his career was tragically cut short, Satoshi Kon’s work has left an impact on Japanese animation with his unique style of visual storytelling that blends the reality with the surreal. Of his four completed films, his second, Millennium Actress, is the only one I have seen, albeit through a sub-only DVD release from 2003. When I was younger and watched this for the first time, I wasn’t mature or well-versed enough in anime to fully appreciate it, though I decided to give it another chance years later after watching an airing of Kon’s only episodic anime work, Paranoia Agent, on Toonami. After doing so through that same sub-only DVD, and later an English Blu-ray, I was able to fully appreciate it and got very invested in the narrative.

A once-prominent film studio known as Ginei Studios, known for their films starring Chiyoko Fujiwara, has gone bankrupt and been torn down. Genya Tachibana (Shōzō Iizuka) and his cameraman Kyoji Ida (Masaya Onosaka) have managed to secure an interview with Chiyoko (Miyoko Shōji), with the secondary motive of handing her a special gift. The gift turns out to be a key that has sentimental value to Chiyoko and has been intrinsically linked to her life. Chiyoko prefaces the interview by explaining how major events in her life have been tied to earthquakes in Japan, including her birth, soon after which a small earthquake strikes that she takes as a prompt to begin telling her story of the key.

As Chiyoko tells her story, the movie employs a rather unique storytelling device in which said story is told through events depicted in the movies Chiyoko starred in, during which Genya and Kyoji are transported into the story. Here, the two interviewers take on a role more akin to documentary filmmakers, able to interact with Chiyoko’s story at points without disrupting the narrative or end result of a scene. Genya evens ends up becoming so invested that he himself becomes an “actor” in the story, meanwhile Kyoji remains behind the camera and serves as a straight man to Genya’s antics. Satoshi Kon would later use a similar device in an episode of Paranoia Agent, though in a much different context and execution.

During Chiyoko’s story, it is later revealed that Genya happened to have been in a smaller role on the production of some of her films, even saving her life at least once. This leads to some scenes being shown from Genya’s perspective in addition to Chiyoko’s, filling in some small gaps in her story. One of these is a rather emotional plot twist tied to Chiyoko’s key, enhancing the emotional core of the film.

As they travel through Chiyoko's (Miyoko Shōji, left) life, Kyoji
(Masaya Onosaka, right) remains bewildered by the change in scenery.

Though produced in 2001, the animation holds up 19 years later, capturing the surreal elements of the movie in a way that only the animation medium could allow. From what little research I did, this movie was also apparently the final major animated film to be produced without the aid of computers, making the animation that much more impressive as a result. The animation also employs a good amount of carefully-calculated symbolism that I found a lot easier to pick up the second time. One that stood out to me was related to one point in Chiyoko’s life where she lost the key that was important to her, during which she starts to settle with another man. When another actress she had worked with, Eiko Shimao (Shōko Tsuda), had taken the key, the scene is depicted as taking place on a sound stage, which I interpreted as Chiyoko’s life having been partially manufactured, only for her to return to reality once she finally has the key back.

After my initial viewing through the original sub-only release, I wasn't sure I could comment as well on the voice acting since I am not fluent in Japanese. That said, the subtitles themselves were fairly paced and I could still feel the emotion in the Japanese actors’ performances, as they didn’t feel over-the-top unless for comedic effect from Genya. Since the original release, the movie has been dubbed into English twice, once in 2005 by Village Productions/Manga UK and again in 2019 by VSI/Eleven Arts, each with a different voice cast and the latter is available on a Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory.

I later watched the latter of the two dubs and I found it to be very well-done. Among the voice cast for the VSI/Eleven Arts dub, Ben Diskin and Christopher Swindle fit their respective roles of Kyoji and Genya perfectly, plus the decision to have three VAs for Chiyoko at different points in her life (Cindy Robinson (Old), Erin Yvette (Adult) and Abby Trott (Young)) lends some authenticity to the character. The talents of the voice actors combined with a faithful localization of the script allowed the emotional scenes to hit much harder for me compared to the original Japanese, since I was able to better appreciate the animation without being distracted by reading subtitles.

Frequent Satoshi Kon collaborator Susumu Hirasawa delivers excellently in the music department, providing a soundtrack that perfectly complements the events of the story and the emotions behind each scene. Hirasawa would also collaborate with Kon on Paranoia Agent and Paprika, as well as the unfinished project Dream Machine. Perhaps because of this, the song that plays during Millennium Actress’ end credits, “Rotation (LOTUS-2)”, sounded vaguely reminiscent of the opening to Paranoia Agent, “Dream Island Obsessional Park.”

Millennium Actress is an anime film that holds up even to this day. The presentation of the story takes full advantage of the animation medium to create a unique look and tone, while still telling a cohesive plotline. The emotional core is also tied to some well-utilized symbolism that comes together with the character writing to create an unforgettable experience. I would highly recommend this film to animation fans, especially those who are also fans of Japanese animation, though if you like this film and want to see more of Satoshi Kon’s work, I would also highly suggest checking out Paranoia Agent.