04/20/2025
For ease of reference, in this post I talk about — Kintsugi (2020), Dee Dum (2017), Bestiary (2019), Keep It Together (2017) and Millennium Actress (2001).
Kintsugi
Kintsugi was a short and sweet game about the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using a lacquer mixed with gold pigment. The first thing that comes to mind to talk about this game is the absolutely insane music playing throughout it. I'm not saying that the game should totally lean into Thing Japan and play some wistful koto tracks if that's not what the creator envisioned for it but I did, at the least, expect a quiet and meditative song to fit with the calming nature of the game itself and instead got a very loud song I can only describe as Song That Plays During The Long Walk On Your Way To Face Off With The Final RPG Boss. It's so odd because it starts off very calm and chipper but gradually built to a point of total chaos where I straight up could not hear anyone I was streaming on call with. It simply did not match the vibe at all. Anyway, enough of that.
I thought the rest of the game was fine. Very simple. Fairly easy. I think something that would've been fun is if you dropped broken pieces, they too would also shatter into more pieces you had to put together. Or if when you were done with the game, you were told you were done with the game. What I mean to say is that it would've been nice if there was just a bit more care put into it. I guess maybe this was just meant to be a smaller lower-effort project, which is totally fine - I just didn't really personally get much from it.
Dee Dum
Dee Dum was another short game. I only really did a few levels because it's pretty easy to get a general idea of what's in store for you after a handful. I think the general aesthetic of the game needs a lot of work. I understand it's just a very simple shapes in puzzle game but there is nothing setting it apart from so many other games offering the exact same thing save for the fact that some of these other games simply look better. It was simply fine and I don't have a whole lot to say about it aside from that.
Bestiary
This one had so much potential. The crux of it is that you are a Professor tasked with cataloguing creatures from another world based entirely off of pictures sent to you from the exploring scouts. The game randomly generators a creature with a combination of top, mid-section and feet, you come up with a name, determine their diet and characteristics and send in the information. It sounds fun! But it's not nearly as fleshed out as it could be. After a few turns, you realize that the generator in the game does not have many assets to work with. The game also is never-ending. You don't really have goals to reach. Nothing really comes of the work you do aside from the game saving a screenshot of your work to a folder on your computer for you. This could've genuinely been such a great game but it was more of a concept of a project than an actually finished project. At least it's fun to collaborate and play with friends. Anyway, check out some of our little guys.
Keep It Together
Definitely my favorite of the night! You play as a bunch of rats in a trench coat and the goal is to navigate brief interactions with others in hopes of not being found out. Every wrong answer you give, your stress meter goes up. After each filled meter, you have to hold down a key on your keyboard as you continue to play. As you progress in the game, certain characters unlock traits to help you better curate which responses they'd react most positively towards. It goes on until you either can not hold anymore keys or the game bugs out because your laptop is not designed to have more than four keys held at any given time. The dev has cleverly pointed out how it serves as a metaphor. On the topic of bugs, that would be my main complaint of the game. Sometimes it decides to stop registering your responses entirely, other times it fills the screen with several faces of the people you're meant to be talking to one by one and asking you to press keys despite that game having just freshly booted up. It's fine, I'm honestly willing to overlook it just because this game is so much fun. This game — it is so addictive. Fun, quick, chaotic. I love the art in it too so much. It's so original and colorful and silly. It perfectly fits the vibe.
Millennium Actress
I've been meaning to watch more Satoshi Kon movies and when this one came up from the randomizer, I was pretty excited — but not really for the reason you'd think. I feel like Millennium Actress has always kind of been held at a distance from other Satoshi Kon classics like Paprika and Perfect Blue and I really wanted to try and learn why. The answer might surprise you. (Sorry okay I wanted to do the corny media article thing I won't do it again)
Millennium Actress' story, while very interest-piquing, is still water compared to a lot of what is admired about Satoshi Kon's usual writing style. But my question is, have other Satoshi Kon's movies ever really had a really interesting storyline or were you just transfixed by the cool art and surrealist imagery? Now, for the sake of clarity, I have only seen Perfect Blue*. I'm eager to watch Paprika but I unfortunately do not have the time to watch movies all day so it will get its time in the sun someday. Millennium Actress focuses on Chiyoko, an actress who met a concerningly vague-aged man as very much a high school student and fell in love with him. The two are driven apart as political tensions rise in Japan and the man happens to be a political revolutionary. She then vows to find him again, something that he seems laughably indifferent about. She becomes an actress in hopes that he will one day see one of her movies and they would then be reunited by it. The movie focuses on her as a 70 year old woman as she reflects through her filmography and how it balanced her constant failures in searching for this man. Whose name, just to point out, she does not even know. A lot of people argue that it is misogynistic to portray a woman so obsessively in love with this stranger, so much so that she is willing to alter her life and essentially form her entire personality around chasing him. I personally think it's misogynistic to do that and never tell us why.
I wish the movie cared about Chiyoko at all. I think so much of it was sweet. The scene where schoolgirls tease her about this fellow she loves so much, asking her if he's cute and what his name is — only for her to break down and cry because she doesn't even remember what he looks like. It got me, y'know? I could feel some connections to this character, who is so devoted to another. I just do not think enough effort was put into rounding her out and giving her writing the respect it deserved. And here's the thing, I remember finding Mima just about as one-dimensional as Chiyoko. That's the thing about Satoshi Kon, it's that he gets you with a concept and then he bombards you with stellar enough imagery to keep your mind off the fact that nothing is ever narratively explored as thoroughly as the visuals.
The entire situation with Rumi from Perfect Blue left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't like the way her character was handled at all, it was dismissive and weird and in all honesty? kind of fatphobic and ableist. But that's a conversation for another day. The point of bringing this all up is because I want to highlight that Satoshi Kon's writing has never been peak, especially when stripped of the aesthetics the films are famed for. So what does that leave then? If the writing is as bad, then what makes Millennium Actress a less favored movie than other Satoshi Kon works?
I think it boils down to the aesthetics and surrealism. Millennial Actress is one of the more visually grounded of the movies. It doesn't go full surrealist but it plays with set design, time period, location, clothing, and so much more to keep constantly questioning — what is going on? Chiyoko's life as an actress keeps you wondering what is real and what is film, and I really loved that so much. It would have been cool if that was dug into more, could playing all these roles starting from such a young age have stripped her from developing an identity of her own? With nothing but a key the man left behind to hold on to? The surrealism was subtle enough to trick you and keep you engaged. And it was one of my favorite things about the movie, but I don't think it hit with other people like it did me. It's a bit disappointing. I don't want to sound pretentious or whatever — but I think a lot of people do not engage with Satoshi Kon's movies with any amount of respect. With the mindset of a Cocomelon toddler, they just want to sit and watch the pretty colors go. They don't want to have to pay attention. They just want it to be indecipherable from the jump so they can say, "that was cool" and then feel cultured or whatever.
Anyway, do I think Millenium Actress is Satoshi Kon's best work? I don't know. I've only seen two of his movies* and I liked this one about as much as I liked Perfect Blue so ... whatever that means.
Also, unrelated but at one point Ro and I were in hysterics shortly after finishing this because it was 3 AM and I logged onto Letterboxd to read the reviews people had written and I was confused as to why nothing came up when I searched it only to find I had typed Millennial Actress so ... American remake when?
Also when the Godzilla monster came up, Ro referenced this post and we also died laughing about it for like ten minutes.
Okay, that's it. Bye.
* Follow-up edit made on 04/28/25: A few days after posting this, a kind friend reminded me that I have, in fact, seen another Satoshi Kon movie — Tokyo Godfathers. I had completely forgotten because this movie is so good I forgot to associate it with him and also because it only ever exists to people during the month of December for whatever reason so it slipped my mind. Anyway, I just so happened to have watched Paprika this weekend so consider this movie brought up and added into the dialogue of Satoshi Kon's works there for the sake of preserving my thoughts in this post.
