Perfect Blue 1998

 Story

The story for Perfect Blue is simply a masterpiece of psychological thriller and disturbing in a way, the whole anime is a trippy one it revolves around the struggles of women in the entertainment industry which when this was made the internet was just a new concept so Satoshi Kon focused it on the new technology and perfectly predicts what could happen with the age of people behind there screen obsessing over celebrities. Mima starts off as an idol but because of obsessive fans that are outraged then proceed to send her hate mail and death threats she decides to leave the group which is what starts the psychological trauma after gets offered an acting role but it has a rape scene in; Rumi doesn’t want Mima to do it but she decides to do it, now this when the movie starts getting weird when she does the scene she actually believe she is getting raped the scene is really disturbing and spooky this starts of Mima being disconnected by reality and thinks her fantasy of her acting is actually real which is very convoluted because you get to actually experience her trauma from the narrative which Satoshi Kon did perfectly.

Her trauma becomes so severe that she starts hallucinations of her acting persona tormenting her then gets possessed by her persona so much that the fake one murders a pizza boy and then her stalker attempts to rape her but she knocks him unconscious, then it gets even more corrupted and disturbing as a hallucination of Rumi appears dressed in her idol outfit and decides to take out the real Mima which she thinks is the fake Mima as in her mind she is confused her fantasy with reality which is very hard to first understand this movie as its very subliminal making it just a trip. Mima gets chased by Rumi and corners her but Mima stabs her she limps into oncoming traffic then a truck is going towards her Mima thinks the headlights are stage lights and saves her

Now this whole part could all be her imagination like Rumi I think is not real and it's just Mima hallucinating this whole part reminds me of Fight Club which might have inspired the movie and the narrative of both. The whole is absolutely amazing in my opinion, which leaves the audience wondering what the heck just happened throughout the whole thing. Mima leaves the mental ward in a car and the nurse say she is a lookalike, when she looks in the rear view mirror she says “no, I’m real” now this part is just so deep and has so many questions like first thing it could be is that she has recovered from her mental state and saying she is her normal self or the outcome I love and think it absolutely crazy is that I think because the nurse say she is a lookalike and looking in the mirror it could mean that she is actually fake Mima and taken over her which when I re-watched and found this out just shocked me then exploded my mind.

Predictions of the Entertainment industry

This psychological masterpiece of a movie was made before our age of mobile phones, social media and the technological spike with the public being addicted to famous people and also the public getting lost in fantasy of thinking everything they see on media is real also famous people being also the same with getting lost in delusion with technology which wasn’t that common back then but now it is common place and this movie was way ahead of its time because of this. You can see in this movie the main character being harassed, having the spotlight on her life all the time, death threats, judgement from everywhere constantly

This might have been over the top for back then but there’s also attempts of stalker trying to hurt the famous person which unfortunately happens nowadays even some influencers have actually been murder from crazy stalkers typically female idols which I think Satoshi Kon actually could see into the future as he just a complete genius; he must be an alien or from the future, I swear. You know when I mention about the spotlight well remember at the end where the truck headlight symbolised the spotlight I think that this was more psychological development of Mima being in the spotlight all the time daunting on her and trying to run away from it she can’t escape it then the spotlight literally comes straight to her trying to hit her which is a genius way of portraying the idol mentality in result it’s executed extremely well because of this I for sure find the movie to be a certain masterpiece.

It is kind of ironic that a movie about obsession of famous people has created a cult fanbase of people that are completely obsessed with this movie but for good reason to as this movie is a unique and one of a kind film about serious topics that after 2 decades still hold up to this date because you can see it still happening now. I find this movie to be amazing as well because it’s a production of film that mimics the production film, for example this movie had directors and whole cast playing another cast of actors inside the movie which is another layer of meta because of this it just adds to how great Perfect Blue is. This movie is also based on a novel which people say that novel based anime are usually badly executed but this was one of them and if the people who make light novels into anime can take a leaf out of this book or should I say movie then novel anime would be better. If you like a mature psychological mind-frick then this is for you, it's absolutely amazing that takes a lot of watches to fully understand and wrap your head around because of how disturbingly beautiful it is.

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