There are very few illustrators and animators as beloved and respected as Satoshi Kon. Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent, and Paprika are his most well-known works—all of which redefined what an animated movie could be or how to tell a story through an animated series. His place in animation history is cemented. But his manga work, namely is work in the 80s, is where he got his start with storytelling. Throughout the decade, he crafted a variety of short pieces that played with many of the concepts and ideas that would come to define his animated work from the late 90s onward. And in Dream Fossil, we have those stories finally in one place.

Dream Fossil is difficult to pin down as a collection. Stories range from a variety of pieces on childhood and what it means to grow up, but also the overbearing presence of technology and how that can lead to societal oppression. And in between all of this we have ghosts, a chase story, legendary beasts in the mountains, Santa, and kidnapping. It’s a wealth of stories that run the range of Kon’s interests but also his skill to tell an engrossing story in roughly thirty pages. While pieces like “Horseplay” and “Baseball Brats” dive into the different ways baseball has come to define young character’s lives, “Waira” dives into horror-adjacent historical fiction and the violence of the feudal era with a supernatural beast. 

While Kon’s range of stories being told throughout Dream Fossil is fascinating, his thematic consistency makes these pieces classics. Connection and isolation provide the foundation for each idea to thrive—familial, spiritual, physical. A grandmother’s stretcher rolls out of control through a small seaside town because she wants to spend time with her family on a beach. A man is chased by his brother-in-law through the mountains in an attempt to supplant him. Forced into obedience, high school kids find ways to live their lives with the threat of mental rehabilitation hanging over them. They all point in the same direction and it’s this desire to fully connect with the people around us despite the obstacles that makes Kon’s work so gratifying. It lacks the common cynicism that can bog other pieces dealing with similar subjects down, but it maintains that, despite everything, the connections we have with the people around us are what make life worth it in the end. 

Kon passed in 2010, five years before this collection was released. But it’s collections like this that keeps his work in the world and keeps the memory of these stories alive. We’re able to connect with his worlds and his work despite everything and can experience a bit more of his art after marathoning his films again for the fifth or sixth time. 

Get excited. Get connected. 

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.