Perfect Blue (1997) is an “adult-oriented anime psychological thriller film”. The storyline follows a pop idol, Mima, who is undertaking a career change to become an actress whilst contending with an obsessed fan and, consequently, her lapsing sanity. If you have not seen the film, please do not research it or read past this paragraph—it is best experienced by going in blind. The themes in Perfect Blue make it an uneasy watch, but it is thought provoking so long as anime does not shatter your verisimilitude. 

The late director of Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon, was devoted to the format of anime, with this being his first film. He has been quoted saying live-action films were not of interest for him to create as he wanted to “depict the moment when landscapes and people that look as if they are real suddenly reveal themselves to be ‘fiction’ or ‘pictures’”. And for this purpose, anime suits, given its untethered relationship to visual realism.

Perfect Blue extensively plays with layers of reality. Initially, you are slowly submerged into disorientation as the protagonist, Mima, begins her career change. She becomes haunted through mourning her past opportunities, which have noticeably blossomed under her former colleagues; and by her current career choices, that are proving to be intensely demeaning; in addition to the (absent) presence of a stalker who is instilling dread and paranoia by detailing her day-to-day life with varying degrees of factuality on an online blog purported to be by Mima. The merging of these circumstances and emotions serve as a sharp accelerant toward the blurring of her reality.

Disentanglement from reality is heightened towards the third act during a sequence that ostensibly takes place in dreams, reality, delusions, and protagonist-unaware metafiction, all of which repeat and double-in on one another. You are dragged down into Mima’s paranoia, as It quickly becomes impossible to know whether what you are watching represents reality, a TV scene being filmed, a delusion, or dreams. I particularly liked that the delusions in the film start as snatched glances of defiant reflections which, over the course of the film, increasingly gain their independence to eventually become ghosts roaming free.

The reality blurring can be reframed as loss of, or questioning of, identity over time, and in physicality. Identity here meaning sameness and, as a corollary, difference. Attached to this is interrogation of one’s own agency. In Perfect Blue, celebrity as well as identity are key components to the plot, but its key themes sidestep the typical intersection of these two (the  camera-facing brand persona vs the private). Instead, Mima’s identity seems as one, in flux over jagged reefs of paranoia, fear, and degradation. The narrative invites the audience into the flux, into disorientation.

Early in the film, there’s a scene of Mima and one of her managers, Rumi, unboxing and setting up a novel technology, the Apple Mac. Watching this in 2023 is part hilarious, part painstaking, as Rumi explains what a World Wide Web browser is and how to enter a web-page address. Shortly thereafter, whilst on her own, Mima discovers the online blog purported to be authored by her, detailing her own life. The discovery starts whimsically but becomes dread filled in the insidious milieu of detailed non-fiction and lies. 

The blog reading scene is reminiscent of social media these days. Harkening to individuals curating an image of themself to platform and project out, which then folds in, causing a mix of anxieties and maladies in effort to beget the projected identity. Of course, for Mima, there is another person authoring the blog. Even so, what stuck out, in comparison to social media, was when the lies became desired to Mima: the blog was no longer at fault but she was, for not living up to it.  

On an aside, social media seemingly has a closer relationship to grovelling materialism and hedonism than blogs, however this may be due to the anachronism of blogs which were supplanted by the readily accessible sphere of social-media platforms.

Another central theme to Perfect Blue is the male gaze. There is rampant female nudity, and no lovemaking. With this comes a clear use of aesthetics to titillate. Practically all scenes with nudity concern negative aspects of the male gaze, with many being about male consumption. Such scenes include: filming of a rape scene for a fictional TV show (Double Bind); a glamour photoshoot where it is heavily implied the photographer used soft power to further expose the protagonist; and an attempted rape by an obsessed fan. In these scenes Mima is subjected to men (director, photographer, fan). 

The representations of entertainment industries lauded over by men are unmissable; afterall, the story hinges on two women grasping with the aestheticization of the feminine body by said entertainment industries. Anime enables ideal points of view (cinematography); consistent doll-like faces void of bone structure; and extreme high-pitch voices. These heightenings are, to my mind, enabled by the distance from the aesthetic of realism that anime holds. Consequently, I wonder if anime, and other formats not grounded in the aesthetic of realism, are well suited to explore the preternatural.

All this to say, I am looking forward to seeing more of Satoshi’s Kon’s films, though I struggle with anime to some extent. Perfect Blue was an enlivening title within the sea of films on offer from streaming services, which tend to be brain numbing.

(Screenshots taken for post)