Perfect Blue - Reviews

Story

The story is basically an observation of how obsessive and extreme people can become when they want to preserve a certain image of a celebrity. It's fairly slow-moving but if it was paced any faster almost all of the atmosphere and build-up would be taken away. It keeps you gripped and constantly wanting to know who this stalker is and what he wants/why he's going to such lengths.

Through a lot of the film I was completely unsure on whether what Mima's seeing is real or if she's hallucinating due to intense paranoia. Metaphors and illusions are used brilliantly and nothing is spoon-fed to you. The whole premise of the film strikes me as a stab at Japanese celebrity culture, and the execution is demented and even disturbing at some points. Mima's acting roles are often used to represent her train of thought and the fact you often view events through her eyes really adds an original touch.

Animation

Colours in Perfect Blue are very washed out and dull, which creates an incredibly realistic atmosphere. Because the colours and appearances of things are so ordinary I almost forgot it was animated. There's definitely a sense of realism to the art style. As well as that, the muted colours make for a very dramatic change when something violent happens; blood is much more vibrant in colour compared to everything else so it's a shock to the system.

Animations flow very smoothly and the character designs are pretty good. Some characters look deformed but it's almost like the appearance of each character mimics their mental state. It's a very interesting use of appearance in relation to reality.

Sound

I found the opening theme forgettable, but the music in the actual anime is incredibly well thought-out, It fits in with the creepy, surreal feel the whole film has to it. In a couple of violent scenes, music from Mima's band is used. That definitely makes for a disturbing touch.

The voice-acting is very good (subbed) - the characters sound real enough for you to genuinely feel tense when something bad may be about to happen to them. A special mention is definitely deserved for Mima and Rumi's voice actors, and the voice given to Uchida fits him perfectly.

One thing I loved about Perfect Blue was the use of silence. There isn't constant music like there seems to be in a lot of thrillers and horrors. Silence and a lack of music is used for maximum effect and it results in some incredibly creepy and harrowing scenes.

Characters

The characters aren't original - there's the pop idol, the protective agent and the crazy stalker... but the way they're used makes their personalities perfect. It would be hard to get quite as striking an effect with different character archetypes.

Mima was quite a well-rounded character in that you see her go from a normal well-adjusted pop idol to a raving, gibbering paranoid wreck, and it's done incredibly convincingly. Rumi again fits into a stereotype but her character is essential to the story.

I personally found Uchida terrifying. His demeanour and general attitude was quite realistic and the way he was drawn, although bordering caricature, somehow made him even scarier. He's every celebrity's worst nightmare.

TL;DR

Perfect Blue is a gripping thriller with a well-rounded and developed cast of characters, very good voice acting and interesting social commentary on celebrity culture. It twists and turns and keeps you guessing, and when you finally reach the end of this disturbing mental rollercoaster chances are you'll be surprised at where you end up. DEFINITELY recommend.

Reccs

*Boogiepop Phantom (similar moods and art style)

*Death Note (themes of insanity and uncertainty)

Perfect Blue is a movie about a retired Pop Idol, Mima. She retired from pop music so she could become an actress, little did she know this decision would throw her into the worst possible situation. Murder after murder, threat after threat, Mima starts to lose it as her stalker-- or prehaps stalkers-- destroy everything around her.

Perfect Blue is a crazy, intense, confusing, thriller. Personally, I had to look up a plot summary to truly understand it all. I highly reccomend this movie for those who love twists and dark storys. 

Whereas, if you're faint of heart, hate anything that has to do with blood, gore, nudity, and sexual assult, steer clear of this movies, because theres a lot of all of that.

Lemme tell you something , still have no fucking clue tf happend especially at the end so the question here did I get an idea about the movie , ofc I did but not a clean of an overall one which means I can't explain the whole god damn movie to you ppl so I'm assuming everyone has his own vision of this movie , this typical of psychology horror is one of my favorite genre but the thing here is , too much mixing between reality and the dream and that what make me feel dumb and frankly this movie remembered of evangelion anime same confusing shit , so trust me this kind of shows you have to watch it while u high and stoned af why ! Because your imagination would work perfectly fine  I did that many times so ik what I'm saying , eventually watch it just don't think about it to much , u will summon your own mima lol so stay safe mate

Story: I did mark this down a bit because I saw one of the major twists coming very early. However, one twist did surprise me. I can't really elaborate on that, as I don't wish to spoil anything for anyone. Suffice to say that I expected this film to take an idea mentioned and go in the most obvious direction with it. I was pleasantly surprised when Perfect Blue did not fall into that trap.

I LOVED how the film kept making you wonder what was reality and what was fiction. The atmosphere, tension, twists, and level of suspensful anticipation all made me think of Hitchcock.

Animation: Rumi's character design was just awful, and Me-mania's look was a bit too much: I would have liked to have seen a more subtle design for him. However, there were certain scenes that really impressed me: not so much the animation itself, but rather the manner in which the "reality vs. fiction" aspect was handled visually.

The film was done in the 1990s, so I judged it by that standard, not comparing it with a modern work or holding it to modern aesthetics.

Sound: Perfect. It was chilling and added a sense of fear and paranoia without being cheesy or overdone.

Characters: I would have liked to have seen them developed just a little more, but nonetheless they were well-acted and I found myself caring about what happened to Mima, the heroine.

Overall: I will give out a few warnings for sensitive viewers: there are a few gruesome and violent scenes, full-frontal female nudity, simulated rape, and a few other unpleasant sights. However, these scenes are not the majority of the movie and are fairly limited. If you can look past that, this movie is definitely worth watching.

Perfect Blue was the first work of now-deceased anime director, Satoshi Kon, and was based on the novel of the same name by Yoshikazu Takeuchi. It would be the mark that would pave the way for Satoshi Kon’s career as a director and showcased the themes he would consistently cover later in his other works. It follows Mima, a popular idol who decides to leave behind her cutesy girl-band image and pursue a career as an actress. This leads to blurred reality and fiction as murders are committed and Mima is confronted by crazed stalkers, an unpleasable public and her own crumbling psyche.

Works such as Perfect Blue and his later singular series-work, Paranoia Agent, only serve to convince me more and more that Satoshi Kon was absolutely ahead of his time when it came to understanding the nature of people. In my opinion, Perfect Blue’s greatest strength lies not in its core mystery but in its portrayal of media culture and our nature towards celebrities and the over-sexualisation of women in particular in regards to this. And with the birth of the online world and infinite ways of communication, there is no denying that this issue has only gotten worse, which is why it astounds me how hard this movie hits home when it was made in 1997.

Animation 7/10

The sometimes only passable animation budget is made up for in spades by excellent visual direction. Blurred camera angles and point-of-view shots are used excellently to further illustrate the themes of the story, once such use being at the very beginning during one of Mima’s concerts, where we see a crazed stalker obsessed with her sweet, innocent image, holding his hand sideways in front of his head. It then switches to his point of view and we see that the angle of his hand is directly under where Mima is dancing, looking like she is literally dancing in the palm of his hand. Visual tricks like that are excellent and greatly help the uncomfortable tone of the film (another one of note is the murder of a photographer, as we see Mima relentlessly and brutally stab him to death while the scene cuts back and forth to explicit photos he’d taken of her earlier. This scene becomes even more uncomfortable and confusing when we find out that the character committing the murder is, in fact, not Mima).

That being said, some of the designs can be rather distracting and some animation shortcuts do become noticeable. The design of the stalker in particular feels far too overdone and, despite the threat he poses near the last third, he can sometimes come off as a little too exaggerated to take seriously. Mima’s manager, Rumi, is also inconsistently designed, looking perfectly normal in some shots and having bizarre eyes that are too far apart to look natural in others. Mima’s design and animation, though, is always on point and the visual direction greatly overshadows some animation hiccups and strange designs.

Sound 7/10

With the exception of many of Cham’s (the pop band Mima was formerly the lead singer in) songs and one excellent track near the end during the climax titled ‘Virtual Mima’, Perfect Blue is mostly dominated by loud, off-kilter sound effects and silence. The loud screeches of cars and amplified shutters of a camera help to build the atmosphere, along with the unfitting blasts of many of Cham’s upbeat j-pop songs during particularly unsettling moments. Also, as a side note of personal preference, the very first of Cham’s songs played in the first scene of the film at the aforementioned concert, ‘Angel of Love’ is ridiculously catchy and addictive. I do have to criticise one aspect of the musical score though; the upbeat pop song which plays during the end credits seems far too out of place (while not a bad song in itself).

In terms of voice acting, both Junko Iwao and Bridget Hoffman do an excellent job as Mima in both Japanese and English Dub. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, there are points where Mima’s stalker can come off as unintentionally silly at points and the casting of Robert Martin Klein in the English Dub only heightens this. The same may be true of the Japanese version but I’m not well-versed enough in the language to judge. It just comes off as too exaggerated and a little too hammy to actually convince.

Story 7/10 (Characters – 7/10)

As I stated before, the greatest strength of Perfect Blue is in its portrayal of the nature of the media and the objectification of women in celebrity culture, not in its core mystery. The mystery itself, while intriguing in the sense that the viewer is eager to find out what’s going on, feels a little too unfocused and nonsensical as it progresses. I don’t mean it doesn’t make sense in the way Kon’s works normally don’t, I mean that it’s rather inconsistent with Mima’s psychosis and how far gone she actually is. As the film progresses, Mima begins to confuse fiction with reality and doesn’t know if she is herself or the character she plays in a sleazy TV drama and the film makes it clear that we can’t trust what we’re seeing since we’re seeing the situation through Mima’s eyes. There are times where this is used to great effect and others where it feels a little confused. The final twist at the end, while a shock, makes less sense the more the viewer allows themselves to think about it and the ending indicates a completely happy ending for Mima who somehow was completely cured of her delusions and broken psyche just by the revelation of the twist ending. It feels like it completely diminishes any impact previous scenes may have had on us and, like I said before, that out-of-place pop song during the end credits certainly doesn’t help.

But, despite this, it’s impossible to ignore what Perfect Blue does right; it examines the nature of the media and how unforgiving we can be to those in the entertainment world. After Mima finishes her debut as a pop idol, immediately threats and complaints come in from angry fans who can’t accept the idea that Mima is a human being with thoughts and feelings and not an image. How many instances like that have we heard about when celebrities decide to do something unconventional and their fans react badly? Satoshi Kon also expertly knows how to make the viewer uncomfortable when he is trying to make a point. As mentioned before, Mima has explicit photos taken of her by a sleazy photographer despite not wanting to, photos that she thought wouldn’t be published. Several days later, they’re on every magazine cover, with former male fans laughing about how she’s shamed herself and yet still buying the magazines. The film Mima stars in also includes an extremely uncomfortable scene where Mima is attacked by a group of men in a strip club screaming for them to stop and, as the lights begin to spin, her eyes become dead. It’s the kind of cheap B-movie smut seen all too often in pornography and in any other hands, this would be dismissed as tacky fanservice. However, Perfect Blue never glamorises any of it. It shows the perverse nature of the media and how quick many are to judge the actors and actresses who subject themselves to these kinds of roles and yet will still shamelessly exploit it. Much of the media never stops to think about these celebrities as actual people as much as an image that they can hurl death threats at and laugh at how quickly they became a sell-out. In regards to these themes and ideas, it’s safe to say Satoshi Kon absolutely knows what he’s talking about and this forms the best aspect of Perfect Blue as a whole.

Conclusion 7/10

While the core mystery of Perfect Blue is flawed, it’s portrayal of humanity and the media most certainly is not. While his first film feels like Satoshi Kon was just finding his feet when it came to narrative and character consistency, Perfect Blue cemented his stance in the anime world as an ambitious and excellent visual director and his later debut as a fantastic writer would be seen in his later works such as Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent and Tokyo Godfathers. As such, Perfect Blue remains similarly ambitious and fascinating.