is a 1997 Japanese animated psychological thriller film directed by Satoshi Kon. It is loosely based on the novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, with a screenplay by Sadayuki Murai. Featuring the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shiho Niiyama, Masaaki Okura, Shinpachi Tsuji and Emiko Furukawa, the plot follows a member of a Japanese idol group who retires from music to pursue an acting career. As she becomes a victim of stalking by her obsessive fan, gruesome murders take place, and she begins losing her grip on reality. The film deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, a commonly found theme in Kon's other works, such as Millennium Actress (2001), Paranoia Agent (2004), and Paprika (2006).
The film garnered critical acclaim and is now regarded as a masterpiece of animation and one of the greatest animated films of all time.
Plot Mima Kirigoe decides to leave the J-pop idol group CHAM! to become a full-time actress. Many of her fans are dismayed by her change from a clean-cut image, particularly an obsessive fan, Me-Mania, who begins stalking her. Following directions from a fan letter, Mima discovers a website called "Mima's Room" comprising public diary entries written from her perspective, recording her daily life and private thoughts in great detail. She confides in her manager, former pop idol Rumi Hidaka, about the site, but Rumi advises her to ignore it.
Mima lands a minor role in the television detective drama Double Bind as Yoko Takakura; however, her agent, Tadokoro, lobbies the producers of Double Bind and succeeds in securing Mima a larger part, though her new role requires her to film a rape scene at a strip club. Despite Rumi's objections, Mima accepts the role, but filming the scene proves distressing, prompting Rumi to leave the set in tears, and Tadokoro shows regret. Mima begins to fall into a delirious state during the rape scene. When Mima returns home and learns that her fish have suddenly passed away after irregular feedings, she goes into a rage, destroying her apartment, saying she "of course" didn't want to film the scene but felt she had no choice but to secure her role as an actress. Between the ongoing stresses of filming Double Bind, her lingering regret over leaving CHAM! after learning that her former groupmates' next single without her has become a hit, and the paranoia she experiences from being stalked, Mima is distressed about her double life and begins to suffer from psychosis. She especially struggles to distinguish real life from her acting pursuits, and is repeatedly visited by an apparition of her former idol self, who claims to be "the real Mima."
A string of murders is committed, all against people who have been involved in Mima's acting career in some respect. Mima finds evidence in her closet suggesting her to be the prime suspect. Her increasing mental instability makes her doubt her own memories and innocence, as she vaguely recalls brutally murdering photographer Murano after he implored her to allow him to take naked photos of her. Mima manages to finish shooting Double Bind, the final scene of which reveals that her character killed and assumed the identity of her sister due to trauma-induced dissociative identity disorder. After the filming staff have left the studio, Me-Mania, acting on e-mailed instructions from "the real Mima" to "eliminate the impostor," corners Mima and attempts to rape and kill her, but Mima bludgeons him with a hammer and escapes. Rumi finds Mima beaten and disheveled, prompting her to take Mima to her home. Later, Me-Mania is murdered by "the real Mima" for failing to kill Mima.
Mima awakens, believing Rumi has taken her back to her apartment. She notices the fish are alive and well. Mima discovers that Rumi's bedroom is a replica of her own and realizes that Rumi is the one behind "Mima's Room," the serial murders, and the doppelgänger who manipulated Me-Mania: Displeased by Mima's retirement from the idol industry, Rumi's underlying schizophrenia developed an alternate personality of the "real Mima," now seeking to destroy and replace her in order to redeem her image. As Rumi pursues Mima through the city, Mima pulls Rumi's wig off resulting in Rumi unintentionally impaling herself on a glass shard during the struggle. Rumi stumbles into the street and the path of an oncoming truck; hallucinating the headlights as stage lights, she smiles and poses instead of moving out of the way, but Mima tackles her, allowing Rumi to be apprehended.
Sometime later, Mima, now established as an actress, visits Rumi in a mental institution. Rumi's doctor says Rumi still believes she is a pop idol most of the time. Mima says she has learned a lot from her experiences with Rumi. As Mima leaves the hospital, she overhears two nurses, who recognize her but conclude that she must be a look-alike, as the real Mima Kirigoe would have no reason to visit a mental institution. As Mima enters her car, she smiles at herself in the rear-view mirror before declaring, "No, I'm the real thing."
Cast Character Japanese English Main characters Junko Iwao Ruby Marlowe Rica Matsumoto Wendee Lee Bob Marx Television drama personnel Yōsuke Akimoto – Yoku Shioya – Hideyuki Hori Sparky Thornton Emi Shinohara – Masashi Ebara – Kiyoyuki Yanada – Assistant Director Kyousei Tsukui – CHAM personnel Gil Starberry Tōru Furusawa – – Shiho Niiyama – Kōichi Tōchika – Sōichirō Hoshi – Kishō Taniyama – Other characters Akio Suyama – Shin-ichiro Miki – Osamu Hosoi – – Emi Motoi – – – –
The following actors in the English adaptation are listed in the credits without specification to their respective roles: James Lyon, Frank Buck, David Lucas, Elliot Reynolds, Kermit Beachwood, Sam Strong, Carol Stanzione, Ty Webb, Billy Regan, Dari Mackenzie, George C. Cole, Syd Fontana, Sven Nosgard, Bob Marx, Devon Michaels, Robert Wicks and Mattie Rando. – closing credits
Analysis In an analysis of Perfect Blue and Kon's other works, professor Susan Napier states that "Perfect Blue announces its preoccupation with perception, identity, voyeurism, and performance — especially in relation to the female — right from its opening sequence. The perception of reality cannot be trusted, with the visual set up only to not be reality, especially as the psychodrama heights towards the climax." Napier also sees themes related to pop idols and their performances as impacting the gaze and the issue of their roles. Mima's madness results from her own subjectivity and attacks on her identity. The ties to Alfred Hitchcock's work are broken with the murder of her male controllers. Otaku describes the film as a "critique of the consumer society of contemporary Japan."
Critics have also noted the film’s deliberate narrative ambiguity. The story frequently blurs the boundaries between Mima’s real life, scenes from the television series Double Bind, and possible hallucinations, creating uncertainty about which events occur objectively and which may be subjective perceptions. Reviewers have described the film as presenting Mima’s experiences through an unreliable perspective that causes viewers to question "where reality ends and delusions begin." Scholars and critics have therefore interpreted the film as exploring the fragmentation of identity and the instability of perception in modern media culture.
Production This film was Satoshi Kon's first directorial effort. Masao Maruyama, a producer at Madhouse at the time, appreciated Kon's work on the OVA JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and contacted him to ask if he would be interested in directing in the fall of 1994. The original author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, allegedly first planned a live-action film based on his novel. However, due to funding difficulties, it was downgraded to direct-to-video and then direct-to-video animation. When Kon received the initial offer, it was for an OVA project, so he made Perfect Blue as a video animation. Then, it was decided to be released as a movie in a hurry just before its completion. This work was originally made as a video animation for a narrow market, so it was expected to disappear as soon as a few people talked about it. The fact that such a work was treated as a film, invited to many film festivals around the world, and released as a package in many countries was unexpected for those involved. Psychological horror was not a mainstream genre in Japanese animation, and there was no precedent for it at the time, so it would normally have been rejected.
By the time Kon was offered the job, the title Perfect Blue and the content, a story about a B-class idol and a perverted fan had already been set. He had not read the original novel and only read the script for the film, which was said to be close to the original and was never used in the final film. There is no play-within-a-play in the original story, nor is there a motif of blurring the boundary between dream and reality. The first plot was a simple splatter/psycho-horror story about an idol girl that is attacked by a perverted fan who cannot tolerate her image change, and there were also many depictions of bleeding, so it was not suitable for Kon who does not like horror or idols. Kon said that if he were free to make a plan, he would never have thought of such a setting. This genre was overused, having already been dealt with in various works such as Se7en, Basic Instinct and The Silence of the Lambs and was also something that anime was not good at. Since most of the works in that genre pursue how perverted or crazy the perpetrators, the murderers, are, Kon focused on "how the inner world of the protagonist, the victim, is broken by being targeted by the stalker" in order to outsmart the audience. On the other hand, the play within a play, Double Bind, is more like a parody than a straight psycho-horror, and he made it with the intention of criticizing Japanese TV dramas that are easily made by imitating Hollywood fads immediately.