This review was part of Anicord's Winter 2025 Contracts

I am not a movie person. Anime vs live action, I can never really convince myself to sit down and watch a movie unless my wife asks me to. The last anime movie I watched of my own free will was JJK Zero, and before that was probably the Konosuba movie. I’ve now seen a total of 10 anime movies, though I technically watched the episodic cut of Mugen Train, and the Toaru movie and Irregular at Magic Highschool movies I only watched in case it was relevant for Railgun and Season 3 of irregular. Two more of those were My Hero Academia movies I watched with friends, so Perfect Blue is among a small group of stand alone anime movies (literally just My Neighbor Totoro) I’ve actually seen. I have no issue watching 10 episodes of anime in a row, but I think because movies require me to commit typically 1.5-2 hours of time at once, I’m just not drawn to them. I definitely had reservations going into a movie that came out a month after I was born, but I was pleasantly surprised and can say the ratings it has are definitely deserved.

#Plot (10/10)

Watching this movie was a wild-ass ride. I’m a fan of thrillers even though I don’t like scary stuff, so I was glad this ended up on the psychological side of the spectrum. In short, we have Mima as our idol turned actress, and the story focuses on her slow decent into insanity. It is fairly obvious that the more recently created Oshi no Ko draws inspiration from this plot, and for good reason. There was never a moment (in the 2nd half) where I truly knew what was going on. And to me, that is a great compliment if everything is resolved in the end. I love shows that don’t treat you like an oblivious kid that has no idea how things come together. It’s much more interesting to me to have to piece things together, even if they don’t make sense, then have a big reveal at the end. And on that front, Perfect Blue definitely delivers. Even my main concern (how unbothered everyone around Mima seemed) was remedied by the end, so plot-wise I think this was fairly flawless.

#World/Setting (7.5/10)

Fairly basic modern Japanese setting.

#Characters (8.5/10)

If I was rating this before the ending, it would be much lower, but the ending bumped this score up a bit. Don’t want to dive to deep to avoid spoilers, but the ending remedied the big question I had throughout the 2nd half (assuming the ending was “real”).

Mima is an excellent character that in my opinion, is surrounded by good renditions of bad people. Nearly everyone she mainly interacts with has some ulterior motive, and it seems like they don’t truly care what happens to her. Watching her decent into paranoia was genuinely chilling at times, which made me feel much more connected with the absolute gaslighting she was experiencing.

#Visuals (7.5/10)

Don’t want to be too harsh here, as this was made over 25 years ago, but my one major complaint was the faces on some of these characters. Maybe I’m naive and they were drawn a certain way for a reason (maybe having to do with Mima’s psyche), but at times it was genuinely distracting how out of proportion some of their faces were.

#Audio (7.5/10)

This was a wash for me too, as some of the voice acting was great, but some of it was really not. And also some of the sound effects were super soundboard-ish.

#Enjoyment (9/10)

This movie genuinely surprised me as something I expected to find mid. The plot was outstanding and I was literally glued to the screen in the second half. Honestly, after watching Oshi no Ko, I’d love to see what a remaster of this would look like, as the plot very easily holds up in 2025.

#Final Score (8.4/10)