Perfect Blue
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Template:Infobox Film Perfect Blue is a feature-length anime film, directed by Satoshi Kon (loosely based on the novel of the same name by Yoshikazu Takeuchi). The film is a psychological thriller about Mima Kirigoe, a member of a Japanese pop idol group called "CHAM!" who decides to become an actress. Some of her fans are displeased by her career change, particularly the stalker named Me-Mania. As her new career proceeds Mima's world becomes increasingly Hitchcockian and Phildickian; reality and fantasy spiral out of control as Mima discovers that Me-Mania is the least of her troubles.
Tagline: excuse me...who are you? (US release)
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Plot
A pop star Mima Kirigoe from a j-pop group called "CHAM!" (sic) decides to leave the group to become an actress. Her first project is a direct-to-video drama series called "Double Bind". Some of her fanbase is estranged by her change in career and and persona, not least the stalker known as "Me-Mania". Shortly after leaving CHAM!, Mima receives an anonymous fax calling her a traitor.
Mima finds a website called "Mima's Room" that has public diary entries which seem to be written by her discussing her life in quotidian, explicit detail. She confides in her manager Rumi, a middle-aged woman, about the site, and is advised that that's just the cost of fame and to just ignore it.
Meanwhile on the series Double Bind Mima succeeds in her campaign for a larger part; the producers offer her a rape scene set in a seedy nightclub. The work traumatizes her so much that she increasingly becomes unable to separate reality from fantasy, her real life from her work in the trenches of show business.
Matters take a dramatic turn when several of those who had forced unsavory work on her are gruesomely murdered. She finds evidence which makes her appear to be the prime suspect, and in addition she can't in fact recall if she had committed any of the killings or not.
It turns out that the diarist of "Mima's Room" is herself is totally delusional and very manipulative, and that an intense folie à deux has been in play. The faux diariest, who believes herself to be a Mima who forever young and graceful, has made a cat's-paw and serial killer of the stalker Me-Mania.
Mima kills Me-Mania in self-defense and runs to her only support she has left left alive, her manager Rumi -only to find that she was the delusional diarist! She manages to incapacitate Rumi in self-defense after a phantasmagorical chase through the city despite being wounded herself.
In the anime's denouement Rumi remains permanently delusional and institutionalized whereas Mima has become a famous actress with a thriving career.
Background
Originally the film was supposed to be a live action direct to video series, but after the Kobe earthquake it was changed into an OVA. The reason for this change was that the earthquake damaged the production studio which made the budget too low to be produced in live action. During production it was changed from an OVA to a theatrically released film. Katsuhiro Otomo was credited as "Special Supervisor" as a means to better sell the film abroad and as a result film was screened in many film festivals around the world. While touring the world it received a fair amount of acclaim, jumpstarting Kon's career as a filmmaker.
A live action film was later made that is much closer to the novel called Perfect Blue: Yume Nara Samete (2002) and was directed by Toshiki Sato. Kon and Murai didn't think that the original novel would make a good film and asked if they could change the contents. This change was approved so long as they kept a few of the original concepts from the novel.
The US remake rights, purchased for $59,000, are owned by Darren Aronofsky who referenced a scene from Perfect Blue shot by shot, within a similar thematic context in Requiem for a Dream (2000). The scene is where Mima/Marion is curled up naked in a bathtub and both characters yell underwater. Thematically the two scenes are similar because both characters in the scenes are mentally distressed over being the subject of sexual exploitation in both films.
Like much of Kon's later work, the film deals with the blurring between fantasy and reality in contemporary Japan. Also like his later work Paranoia Agent (2004) (TV), it portrays a negative viewpoint of popular culture. Furthermore its subject matter is highly unusual for anime, dealing as it does with with serious psychological issues as opposed to fantasy.
Reception
The film was critically well received in the festival circuit, winning awards at the 1997 FantAsia Film Festival in Montréal, and Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal.
Critical response in the United States upon its theatrical release was mixed, with many critics being baffled at why it was done as an animated film and many others associating the film with common anime stereotypes of gratuitous sex and violence.
Despite its unorthodox nature the film is well known in western anime circles, possibly better known in western fandom than in Japanese fandom.