“The 1990s saw the retirement of the generation that had created post-war entertainment. In the anime world, multiple studios were merging, folding or changing ownership as the surviving founders and primary shareholders cashed in their chips and went off to play golf. A new generation of bright young things, including Kon himself, was taking over – either with a sense of sympathy and respect for the old guard (like the character Genya) or with a blithe dismissal of them (like his cameraman Kyoji Ida).”

Over at All the Anime, I write about Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress as a point in time within movie history. This is an excerpt from a much longer piece I wrote as part of the Blu-ray booklet.