“Director Satoshi Kon could have wished for a worse film when he made his debut as a director in 1997 with the internationally successful and critically acclaimed Perfect Blue. With its dazzling storytelling technique and strikingly mature subject matter, Perfect Blue finally convinced a lot of people that animation might be more than just a children's medium.” – Interview with Kon from midnighteye.com, 2/11/2002

The life of a celebrity must be tough. I think about the number of child stars that went nuts. I wonder what lead them to destroy their careers, tear themselves to shreds in drugs, and choose to become a mockery in the world which out them in the spotlight.

Look at Lindsay Lohan.
Or Macauley Culkin.

Hell, how about dead ones, like Amy Winehouse? Or Whitney Houston?

Even the recent Robin Williams…

After hearing about Williams’ death, while scrolling through my list of completed animes, I found and rewatched Perfect Blue, and finally got a clear look. Surreal elements and fanboying aside, Perfect Blue presents the most believable “biography” of an idol, coldly portraying to us the result of a passion gone too far.

She’s Mima. She’s cute, popular, and the best. Now she wants change. (93/100)
Mima Kirigoe’s career as a pop music idol has flourished, and she now wishes to see herself blossom into the theater as she always dreamed. She struggles like all beginning artists to enter the new genre, when suddenly people around her end up brutally murdered.

Naturally it’s not uncommon to blame someone like “Me-Mania,” the random creep that stalks her left and right. Her manager, Rumi, blames Mima for taking on a career path that isn’t designed for her. Then more things go wrong, and soon Mima finds herself unable to tell where her life is headed. What sort of nightmare has descended on her?

For a person whose life is exposed constantly to the public, I imagine nothing is scarier than losing control of it. In Mima’s case, having one of the most disturbed looking anime characters I’ve ever seen (i.e. Me-Mania) leaving her the most disturbing messages, the feeling of control is completely gone. The story grows more and more complicated, as Kon begins to mesh the elements of paranoia into the timeline. Mima’s thoughts begin to intertwine with questionable actions, and the timetable gradually breaks down as she chases her doppelganger. Kon knows that the audience would easily get lost this way, and by the middle of the film we begin to question what we see of Mima.

Towards the end, the nightmare begins to piece together, and we learn that the antagonist isn't just Me-Mania. Though the elements are always there, Kon leaves the package partially open to reveal to us how the true antagonist came to be. Cleverly deceitful, I realized how easily this anime plays a trick on the mind in such a moderate disguise.

Which makes characters like this…revealed. (91/100)
A movie like this could have the worst set of stock characters and still conclude with some artistic authority. Your average, indecisive, teenybopper can closely relate to Mima. She’s cute, and she knows she is. She has a lot of options, yet is not ready to throw in all her cards at a one-dimensional pop music career. Her character amasses so many peculiarities of an emerging artist that I cannot help but insist on high ratings—it's as though I'm witnessing the life and circumstances of a famous persona. In fact, the most unnatural thing about her could be the fact that she has pubic hair (ahem, you do see it at some point.)

Because the movie is so entirely focused on Mima, it makes sense to say that all other characters aren’t really developed—or rather “developable.” Rumi sort of sticks to being a stock character for most of the movie, as does Me-Mania play out to be your normal, happy, loving, budding dissociative murderer who spends too much time on Anilist.

Well okay…maybe NOT Anilist, but definitely MoeBoard.

Perfect Blue would not have benefitted, though, had other characters more development. In fact, since the premise of the story is so basic and approachable, Kon's method of delivery would not have been as effective had more been revealed about the people around her. By focusing on Mima and limiting our knowledge, the sensation of being "trapped" and "stalked" made every character a questionable source, giving this movie all the "character" element it would have ever needed to be a success.

Visually compelling, with outstanding artwork. (90/100)
The jiggle factor in this movie stayed well within appropriate levels, although the choices of nudity and a compelling amount of blood ironically yielded artistic maturity. I feel like a newcomer to anime would have a powerful reaction to the style, since it is not the generic style that you see on the internet, or rather the bulletin boards in Tokyo. Instead, it is significantly closer to Disney's style, as the body structure and stereotypical anime “eye size” departs significantly from the usual Japanese. Kon clearly makes a statement of realism in this form, as larger eyes have always been a tactic to appeal more greatly to the emotions in the history of anime.

Kon’s direction and arrangement of scenes is a prodigious achievement. He purposefully puts in distracting images to keep the eye pondering what its seeing. There are often moments where he delivers too much information at once—normally with the effect of causing terror—but in this case causing inner panic. Mima’s dreams overlap with reality, and we begin to question which reality is real and which dream is actually a dream. Kon turns Mima’s “disconnect with reality” to become partially the audience’s responsibility, as we ourselves try to keep in pace with what we see. This effect is probably the biggest reason why this movie brilliantly plays out a simple story of obsession so naturally, leaving our minds to complicated questions that wouldn’t even be a thought without this effect.

Masahiro Ikumi—my hero. (94/100)
Literally, 1/3 of the psychological terror of Perfect Blue is the soundtrack. To start, the movie doesn’t exactly have an “opening theme.” It starts with a typical 20th century dance pop song, along with Mima and her cute bunnies doing the para-para like many a J-idol at Budokan. This can be seriously deceiving enough to already mislead us into believe we are watching a cute love story. It turns out that the jazz fusion, electronic style of Ikumi does an even better job with tracks like “Virtual Mima,” wherein a grinding set of oscillating hums resonate through the film, looming over our ears as though someone is watching us from behind. This “stalker” sort of theme masks the nightmare, as the mood often subtly changes between soft jazz and grinding, aurally-terrorizing semitones.

That along with excellent seiyuu work completes this scoring. Me-Mania, or “Uchida’s” voice (Masaaki Ohkura) at first sound is so unnatural to the face that this choice alone reminds us of how creepy people can get. The high, whiny tone of Ohkura turns a somewhat hideous face into a hideous “creature,” adding a third dimension of tenorial villainy that would expectedly be a gritty, low tone. This experiment makes Perfect Blue’s stalker as unnatural as the idea of stalking itself; a sin in human form.

If you want to ponder the meaning of life for weeks afterwards, watch this. (98/100)
Serious ponderage. Like the kind you do when you find those nasty socks that hid under your bed for a year and grew moss on them.

But really, depending on your company, this isn’t a bad choice of a movie if you’d like to have a discussion afterward. A movie like this guarantees a serious conversation, as the plot element and visual detail will provoke so many different thoughts. Some may detest this movie, as elements of rape and obsession play a key role; I wouldn’t necessary dismiss these people, either, since Kon’s creation will dig well into the psyche and reveal our deepest fears.