Satoshi Kon | Anime director, 46

Acclaimed animated-film director Satoshi Kon, 46, known for

Tokyo Godfathers

,

Millennium Actress

, and other prize-winning movies, has died of pancreatic cancer.

Considered one of Japan's most exciting directors of anime, or animated films, Mr. Kon was born in 1963 on the island of Hokkaido and began as a comic-book artist while still a student at Musashino Art University near Tokyo.

He began making animated films about 1990, establishing a style that blurred the boundaries of reality and fantasy (see a filmography and clips of his work via http://go.philly.com/kon).

He died Tuesday, his wife, Kyoko, said in a statement on his website, Kon's Tone.

In his Oscar-nominated 2003 Tokyo Godfathers, loosely based on the 1948 John Ford movie 3 Godfathers, Mr. Kon featured three homeless people instead of three cowboys, breaking with the clean and ritzy image of the Japanese capital. His characters - a drag queen, a runaway high school girl, and a former professional bicycle racer - pick up an abandoned infant from a garbage dump on Christmas Day and set out to find the parents.

In a "goodbye" statement released Wednesday, Mr. Kon said his doctor told him in May that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. He thanked his parents, his wife, and his fans for their support. "Thank you everyone," he said. "I'll go ahead now." - AP