Perfect Blue

kainbloodheart

kainbloodheart

Active Member
Perfect Blue

Synopsis, screenshots, recommendations ~ Add Recommendations

Discuss individual episodes and first impressions of this anime here; reviews and final impressions should be posted in the Anime Reviews Forum. Post format and full rules can be found here.
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I realy enjoyed the story behind this one, it was realy refreshing to everything else i have been watching recently. I allready had a vague idea as to what it was about, because someone had told me about it, but actualy watching it realy showed me why my friend liked it. This is a great movie for anyone who enjoys pshycological thrillers. I give it a 9.5/10

Fav Bits are:
1. When it keeps cutting back to her room making seem like a dream
2. When the scence in the series she is acting for relate to her life
3. The way the idea of dual personas is used
 
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kainbloodheart said:
When it keeps cutting back to her room making seem like a dream
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I really like stories that make use of characters being unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, and would agree that it's a major, if not the main, strength of Perfect Blue.

It worked well in one of my favourite episodes of Futurama, too.
 
there are no good new movies(5cmps, tpptoed, paprika, etc.). they just look good, the story is either damn slowly progressing and the kind of love stories i really really hate or the story just sucks.

perfect blue looks great and the plot is just tooo awesome. i really really like madhouse older movies(pb, millennium actress, etc.). they look truly great and have a over the top storyline!

P.S. why is the movie called "Perfect Blue". i couldnt figure this one out :)
 
tppioed not tpptoed. sorry. it was a slowly progressing love story i just didnt like. just like 5cmps
paprika was the movie with the stupid storyline. should have made this one clearer :D
 
Oehr said:
tppioed not tpptoed. sorry.
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Very helpful.

Think I figured it out, though. The horror of international titles. Made worse by abbreviation. Next time just write Kumo no mukou.

Didn't watch anything by Shinkai yet. Too depressing.

Know Tekkon kinkreet?
 
ive it, i just havent watched it yet :D
im pretty sleepy and i heard that the movie should be really great, so ill watch it tomorrow when im energetic again :D
 
I liked it although at the end I was still confused about what exactly was a dream, what was an acting job and what was reality.
 
Mr. sickVisionz said:
I liked it although at the end I was still confused about what exactly was a dream, what was an acting job and what was reality.
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That's the whole point, really.

alexander said:
Don't remember that. Which one?
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The Sting

"A mission to collect honey from deadly space bees apparently leads to Fry's sting-induced death. Leela is wracked with remorse, until Fry visits her in her dreams. As Leela's hallucinations intensify, she begins to suspect that she might be going crazy."
 
ForgottenSon said:
That's the whole point, really.



The Sting

"A mission to collect honey from deadly space bees apparently leads to Fry's sting-induced death. Leela is wracked with remorse, until Fry visits her in her dreams. As Leela's hallucinations intensify, she begins to suspect that she might be going crazy."
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Its a been a while since I've seen this film. But in the end all of her selves come together. Like when she looks at herself in the mirror.

riseofanimal said:
It could have been an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
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Yeah but with better direction. He should just be a writer.
 
Ok Ok, I have to ask everyone after seeing this movie for the third time now and still not being able to decide. I know it's possibly an age-old question since the movie's been out forever, but:
Did Mima kill the photographer? I know that either rumi or me-mania are held responsible for the other deaths, but it's not as clear with this case. The clothes that were supposedly worn during the murder are in her closet, and her apartment door is locked. Does that mean it had to be her? Or is there some way that rumi got into her room, maybe put them in there at some point before Mima returned home or something? Anyways, detailed thoughts would be appreciated, but please don't just leave a simple "yes"/ "no" answer
And yeah I'm aware of the possibility that it might be deliberately indeterminate, but I'm just looking to see what the most convincing arguments for and against it are. Thanks~
 
I recently watched Perfect Blue from a friends recommendation. I don't know what I expected, but it was not what I received. The age of the movie, definitely is glaring, but age has never been anything that's stopped me in the past. The story, seemed really cliched in portions, but still intriguing. The characters, I really couldn't form any bond with, and the ending, almost made watching the whole movie seem worthless. It was such a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, and the ending just really didn't deliver for me.

It wasn't anything really special, nor particularly good. Maybe I'm just missing something about this that everyone else picked up on, or was that all that it had to offer? :|
 
In response to your post Minai, I think that the murder of the photographer was
intentionally ambigious due to Mima's inability to differentiate her reality from the role she played in her acting career. During the sequence of the photographer's death, Mima's life was a blend of the role she played as murderer and the issues she was dealing with in her real life. I think that the bloodstained clothing she found in her closet may have actually been clothing from her rehearsals of the murder scene shooting that followed. However, because her role in the film was parallel to the issues she was having in real life, it became her reality. The main reason behind my theory is the inconsistency of the sequences that occured before and after the murder. She would be in her bed and hear the director yelling, TAKE 2! or something, and then she would also hear the same news stations repeated over and over. Additionally, another example would be that her fish were not actually dead in one of those scenes, which led me to believe that those scenes were not necessarily consistent with the beginning of the film up until the point her mental state became so unstable. I dont think that Me-mania would jst enter her room to hide clothes in it; he was pretty desperate to get in her pants, so I imagine he would have done much more than just drop off some bloodstained clothes. Rumi was the most likely candidate for the murder because the nude photos of Mima probably drove her crazy since they were such a low blow to Mima's innocence as an untainted pop idol. While she was murdering the photographer, there were intermittent flashes of the nude photos, which suggests that they were the motive for the murder, of which Rumi would be most likely to react to.

:pokerface:

Idk, its pure speculation, so let me know what you think happened!
 
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Worry said:
I recently watched Perfect Blue from a friends recommendation. I don't know what I expected, but it was not what I received. The age of the movie, definitely is glaring, but age has never been anything that's stopped me in the past. The story, seemed really cliched in portions, but still intriguing. The characters, I really couldn't form any bond with, and the ending, almost made watching the whole movie seem worthless. It was such a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, and the ending just really didn't deliver for me.

It wasn't anything really special, nor particularly good. Maybe I'm just missing something about this that everyone else picked up on, or was that all that it had to offer? :|
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Well I certainly know that feeling. For me, the initial experience was, more than anything else, a feeling of being utterly disturbed by it. In a good way, somehow. Just looking at your list of shows watched (school days, another both 5/5), I can see why the level of violence wouldn't bother you. It also seems like you've mostly watched very new shows, so I can see where you're coming from with the age. If I remember correctly, it didn't have an amazing budget, and afaik the animation for perfect blue has never been a major point of praise, but then again, it's Madhouse in their prime, so the level of detail in the movie is good as usual, and the muted color palette and lack of glossiness that comes with all new anime only serves to heighten the experience imo. What *were* your expectations going into it? More than the level of violence itself, for me what makes it good is the explicit perversion of something that starts out as so innocent, and imo it does it better than school days or another, by far. school days and another come across for me as very shallow, but for some reason perfect blue kept me absolutely on the edge of my seat til the end of the movie, so I dunno. I like that it goes to a dark area that most other shows don't go to or can't seem to go to without solely relying on shock factor like the shows above, eg elfen lied, etc.
Yes, it has violence, and perversion of sexuality, but what makes these things significant is the context, the fact that it's happening to such an initially pure, virginal character.
 
Minai99 said:
Well I certainly know that feeling. For me, the initial experience was, more than anything else, a feeling of being utterly disturbed by it. In a good way, somehow. Just looking at your list of shows watched (school days, another both 5/5), I can see why the level of violence wouldn't bother you. It also seems like you've mostly watched very new shows, so I can see where you're coming from with the age. If I remember correctly, it didn't have an amazing budget, and afaik the animation for perfect blue has never been a major point of praise, but then again, it's Madhouse in their prime, so the level of detail in the movie is good as usual, and the muted color palette and lack of glossiness that comes with all new anime only serves to heighten the experience imo. What *were* your expectations going into it? More than the level of violence itself, for me what makes it good is the explicit perversion of something that starts out as so innocent, and imo it does it better than school days or another, by far. school days and another come across for me as very shallow, but for some reason perfect blue kept me absolutely on the edge of my seat til the end of the movie, so I dunno. I like that it goes to a dark area that most other shows don't go to or can't seem to go to without solely relying on shock factor like the shows above, eg elfen lied, etc.
Yes, it has violence, and perversion of sexuality, but what makes these things significant is the context, the fact that it's happening to such an initially pure, virginal character.
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My expectations going into it were skewed a little. My friend lead it up as a very unique Psychological Thriller, with a story that was "The best he had seen from an anime movie." I tried to go into it as blind as possible, but just his hype for the show, kind of had a detriment on my viewing.

I'll agree, Perfect Blue does Psychological Thriller much better than both School Days and Another (Quick tangent, I can't believe I rated School Day's so highly when i first saw it, upon recent re-watching I would probably place it in the low 2-3/5 region, hehe), the story seemed a little "shallow" to me though. Maybe it was the length, and not having the time of a full fledged series to add emphasis the plot, but it just didn't seem "full" to me. A lot of it seemed cliched from T.V. dramas such as Cold Case or Law and Order.

Perfect Blue, at least for me, maybe I'm just really jaded, didn't really bring the "thrill" to Psychological Thriller. :[
 
Worry said:
My expectations going into it were skewed a little. My friend lead it up as a very unique Psychological Thriller, with a story that was "The best he had seen from an anime movie." I tried to go into it as blind as possible, but just his hype for the show, kind of had a detriment on my viewing.

I'll agree, Perfect Blue does Psychological Thriller much better than both School Days and Another (Quick tangent, I can't believe I rated School Day's so highly when i first saw it, upon recent re-watching I would probably place it in the low 2-3/5 region, hehe), the story seemed a little "shallow" to me though. Maybe it was the length, and not having the time of a full fledged series to add emphasis the plot, but it just didn't seem "full" to me. A lot of it seemed cliched from T.V. dramas such as Cold Case or Law and Order.

Perfect Blue, at least for me, maybe I'm just really jaded, didn't really bring the "thrill" to Psychological Thriller. :[
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Haha I'm glad to hear that about school days. xD What about it did you think was cliched? Can you give specific examples of cliche things? In general I'm not a fan of american crime dramas, I find them to be extremely boring, so I don't really have perspective on how much perfect blue might borrow from them, but for me anyways, perfect blue is waaaaaaay more intense and meaningful than they could ever be. I could maybe see perfect blue being longer, but then again, that's perhaps something to be taken into consideration going into watching it. Movies have to tell a much more compact story than an anime tv series has to, which means having to leave parts out. I'm not sure as to the authenticity of the story, but for someone who has not watched much crime drama, it was a very convincing movie. imo they did an excellent job of giving the viewer a vicarious experience as Mima's world spins frightfully out of control, while at the same time taking clear jabs at different commercial industries in Japan. At a very basic level, I think they managed to make me care for Mima, so I was fully emotionally engaged in the experience as I saw her world fall apart. I suppose that for whatever reason, you were not fully engaged in the movie, but I can personally attest that the movie has the ability to disturb the shit out of someone. I had to stop it several times and just walk away to take a breather the first time I watched it. :p
 
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