Perfect Blue

Note: This review contains spoilers for Perfect Blue.

Among the legendary directors of Japanese animated films, one name that doesn’t receive as much attention is Satoshi Kon. A few years into his animation career, which interestingly included directing the twelfth episode of Studio APPP’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA (“DIO's World: Kakyoin -Duel in the Barrier-”), Kon would make his feature directorial debut with Perfect Blue in 1997. Based on the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, the film would showcase Kon’s longstanding theme of blending fantasy and reality, which would inform his later works like Millennium Actress (2001) and Paranoia Agent (2004). When I finally obtained a copy of the English dub of the film on Blu-ray, I wanted to take a look back at where Kon’s output started and while I think his later works perfected the techniques he employed here, it’s still nonetheless an incredibly strong start.

Mima Kirigoe (Ruby Marlowe) of the J-pop idol group CHAM! makes the difficult decision to leave the group and become a full-time actress. Her agent, Tadokoro (Barry Stigler), fully endorses this decision while Mima’s manager, a former pop idol named Rumi Hidaka (Wendee Lee), is more reluctant. Shortly into her new career, however, Mima is stalked by an obsessive fan who is not only upset at the sudden change in her image, but runs a fan site called “Mima’s Room” that contains disturbingly-detailed diary entries written from her perspective. As she films the detective drama Double Bind, she starts questioning her own reality, especially once those close to the production start dying.

Mima Kirigoe makes a dramatic career change.

For roughly the first third of the film, Perfect Blue plays out normally, setting up the atmosphere and major plot elements while foreshadowing future events. At this point, we can see the friction between Rumi and Tadokoro regarding Mima’s career, as well as Mima’s self-doubt and how her stalker creeps her out. Even as people in the production of Double Bind start dying, the story remains pretty straightforward and easy to follow. However, these deaths also mark the turning point for the film, where it fully takes advantage of the power of animation in a way that only Satoshi Kon can.

When Mima starts seriously questioning her career change based on the drastic difference in her image, she starts seeing visions of her former self taunting her through reflections before running away, all with an unbroken smile. I interpreted this from Mima’s perspective as her worrying that her innocence is leaving her and possibly forever out of reach. With each successive death, Mima also questions her reality, which the animation illustrates by seamlessly blending fantasy and reality to the point where the audience themselves also question Mima’s reality. This presentation also blends in with a storytelling technique where the plot of Double Bind as it progresses acts as a commentary on Mima’s mental state and her own worries in reality. While Satoshi Kon implements this technique very effectively, he would perfect it five years later in his next film, Millennium Actress.

Mima sees visions of her past self wherever she goes.

Throughout its runtime, Perfect Blue tastefully tackles mature subject matter without talking down to its audience. We see not just the stress of making a dramatic career and image change, but also the fear that comes from discovering you have a stalker while feeling helpless to do anything about it. Mima also has to deal with subtle mental abuse through the terrifying and all too real effects of successful gaslighting.

As effective as Perfect Blue is at telling its story, it helps that the animation has held up remarkably well. Both the characters and world are rendered in an attractive art style that still captures the full detail of reality and the darkness of Mima’s situation. Even the movements of the characters have clear thought put into them, with a sense of weight and realistic differences between body types, as are the reflections that not only accurately mirror movements, but also help visualize the differences between fantasy and reality from multiple perspectives. During my viewing, however, I did notice a minor visual continuity error where an acronym on a bag has periods the first time it’s seen, but the periods are missing the second time.

The only time this bag has periods (this doesn't detract from the experience).

Since this review is based on a viewing of the English dub, I can say that the voice cast did a great job capturing the nuanced emotions of their respective characters. The dub script also matched up very well with the lip flaps and from little I saw of the Japanese version, the CHAM! song at the beginning, “Angel of Love”, had an accurate English translation of the lyrics while still keeping time. Masahiro Ikumi’s score in general does an incredible job at capturing the tone of the film at just the right time, especially the memorable track “Virtua Mima”. The track that plays over the end credits, “Season”, sounds surprisingly upbeat after what the audience had just witnessed beforehand, but the song’s lyrics generally match the core themes of the film and the tone acts as a solid bookend to the upbeat beginning of the film.

I also thought it worth mentioning that Perfect Blue has had a noticeable impact on other projects, including the music video for Madonna’s “What It Feels Like for a Girl” and, most notably, the work of Darren Aronofsky. He would homage a bathroom scene from Perfect Blue in his 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, though critics would later note striking similarities between Perfect Blue and Black Swan (2010). Aronofsky would later acknowledge the similarities, though he would claim they were unintentional.

Whether you’re a fan of Satoshi Kon’s other work or are just discovering him for the first time, Perfect Blue is a great film to watch. The engaging story and incredible animation showcase his unique talents as a director and draw more of the true power of the medium. If you enjoy this and want to watch more of Kon’s work, Millennium Actress would be a good next step.