Perfect Blue

The young "Mima" has a successful, if limited, career singing with a girl band, but she is restless. Her manager insists he can get her an acting job on a popular soap - and that's the way to fame and fortune. Like so many other impressionable young folks, she tries to follow her dream - but is really only following his, and is soon being photographed (intimately), denigrated and her grasp on reality is soon compromised. When things start to take an altogether more sinister turn, though, we start to wonder just who is responsible for a series of murders amongst those known to hold disparaging views on the young woman. Might she be developing some form of lethal schizophrenia or is she (and are they) really the victims of an over-zealous fan. At times this is actually quite harrowing. The plundering of her innocence by those both venal and neglectful of this young woman is writ large and...

I caught this in High School and it instantly took me as an eerie Alfred Hitchcock show that did an outstanding job of feeding on pure paranoia. It was unsettling, it was scary, and at the time it seemed as realistic as it could be for an anime movie. As I rode through it, I started doubting what was real and what wasn't and that is a hallmark of a great movie, that ability to keep the viewer on their toes.

Perfect Blue perfectly blends psychologically disturbed fantasy with grounded reality. Mima Kirigoe. A pop-idol. An actress. An X-rated model. Public image and its personifying echoes circulate around the world, adhering to the desires of endearing fans alike. But when their inspirational idol haphazardly shifts career, from pop sensation to dramatic actress, the psychosis of the modern consumer society ultimately changes with her. Saddened, angered and crazed. Mima’s abrupt persona altering career move may have developed maddened stalkers, including her fantastically imagined past self haunting the newly suppressed version. The late Satoshi Kon was known for seamlessly blending fantasy with reality. Depicting an opaque blurred line between delusions and actualities. None more so, than in his exaggerated psychologically disturbed work in Perfect Blue. For many the art form of Japanese...

Just seen this on All Hallows' Eve. It's a bit old, but gold! I definitely have to rewatch this, because you just got to pay attention to 'know' what is happening and follow the story. I think you'd better understand/follow the story and that it will make more sense when you watch it a second time. The whole movie experience was pretty much like every time you think you got it all figured out, you learn something new and turn out to be all wrong. I loved all those twists and turns and the is-it-real-or-not feeling like, is it really REALLY happening? Is it really acting for her job as a actress, or is it all just a trick of the mind...