A surprisingly thoughtful analysis of the Japanese pop icon phenomenon. Mima is an ex-pop idol who was worshipped by the masses before fashion dictated otherwise. In order to salvage her career, she decides to drop music and pursue acting. A soap opera role is offered but Mima's character is less clean cut than desired. Regardless, she agrees and events take a turn for the worse. She begins to feel reality slip. She discovers (imagines?) her identical twin, a mirror image that hasn't given up singing. Internet sites appear describing every intimate detail of her life and a figure stalks her from the shadows. Her friends and associates are threatened, and killed, as Mima descends into a dangerous world of paranoid delusion. She fears for her life and must unravel fact from illusion in order to stay alive.
(20 votes)
2.
One of the most ambitious animated films to come out of Japan (or anywhere, for that matter), Perfect Blue is an adult psycho-thriller that uses the freedom of the animated image to create the subjective reality of a young actress haunted by the ghost of her past identity. Mima is a singer who leaves her teeny-bop trio to become an actress in a violent television series, a career move that angers her fans, who prefer to see her as the pert, squeaky-clean pop idol. Plagued by self-doubt and tormented by humiliating compromises, she begins to be stalked, in her waking and sleeping moments, by an accusing alter ego who claims to be "the real Mima", until she collapses into madness as her co-workers are brutally slain around her. Director Satoshi Kon, adapting the novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, shows us the world from her schizophrenic perspective: days blur, dreams cross over into the waking world, the TV show blends into her real life, until her life merges with her part and she can't separate the ghosts from the real-life stalkers. Though the pat ending sweeps the psychosis and anxiety away with nary an emotional scar, it remains a smart, stylish thriller and one of the most intelligent and compelling uses of animation in recent years. Though tame by the extreme standards of "adult anime", there is nudity and a few sexually provocative scenes, and the animation is detailed and stylised (if somewhat stiff and jerky by Disney standards). --Sean Axmaker
(19 votes)
3.
Satoshi Kon's Animated Psychological Thriller
Pop singer Mima Kirigow looks forward to a bright new career when she quits her chart-topping trio to become an actress. When she lands a role in a sexually charged murder mystery, Mima's life begins to fall apart. Reality and hallucinations merge into a terrifying netherworld where innocence is lost and dreams become nightmares
Quickly descending into a dangerous state of paranoid delusions, Mima discovers Internet sites describing every intimate detail of her life. Helpless and afraid, she watches as her associates are threatened and killed by a mysterious stalker.
In the tradition of great suspense masters, director Satoshi Kon (Memories), special advisor Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and Madhouse Studios (Ninja Scroll), bring Yoshikazu Takeuchi's thrilling suspense novel to the screen, in a tour de force that brings animation to a bold new level.
(19 votes)
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