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.
