also known as Yoshihiro Vanibuchi, is a Japanese anime director and manga creator. He was a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA).
Satoshi Kon was born on 12 October 1963. Due to his father's job transfer, Kon attended Sapporo City from fourth grade elementary school to second grade middle school. While studying at Hokkaido's Kushiro Koryo High School, he wanted to become an animator. His favourite works at that time included the Space Battleship Yamato (1974), Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), Future Boy Conan (1978) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) anime, as well as the manga comic Domu: A Child's Dream by Katsuhiro Otomo. The works of writer Yasutaka Tsuzui influenced his drawing style.
Kon graduated from Musashino University of the Arts with a degree in graphic design in 1982.
While attending college, Kon debuted with the manga Toriko (1984) in Young Magazine (l-club Kodansha), and was runner-up in the magazine's 10th annual Tetsuya Chiba Awards. Later, he worked as an assistant for K. Otomo. After graduating from college in 1987,[3] Kon wrote the one-volume manga Kaikisen (1990) and the screenplay for K. Otomo's feature film World Apartment Horror. In 1991, Kon worked as an animator and production designer on the film Roujin Z. Later, he worked as an advisor to Mamoru Oshi on Patlabor 2: The Movie. Together with Mr Oshi, he wrote the manga Seraphim: 266,613,336 Wings, which was first published in Animage magazine in 1994. In 1995, he worked as screenwriter, production designer and art director on Magnetic Rose, the first part of K. Otomo's anthology Memories. Kon's later works were notable for their recurring themes that blended fiction with reality.
In 1997, he made his directorial debut with the anime film Perfect Blue.
While working on the anime film Dreaming Machine, Kon was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2010, from which he died on 24 August of the same year, aged 46. The film remained unfinished.
