Perfect Blue: Animé Film Review

The Psychological Thriller/horror from Director Satoshi Kon

Dec 1, 2008

A unique landmark in Japanese animation, Perfect Blue is the mind-bending feature that proved animé could do reality as well as, if not better than, live-action.

For a genre that’s flooded with as many super-powered, hyper-active superheroes, heroines and anti-heroes as there are bullets in a John Woo shooter, the plot of Perfect Blue could leave even veterans of the animé genre scratching their heads.

Mima Kirigoe (voiced in the original Japanese by Junko Iwao) is a member of ‘Cham!’, a pop-idol group. Mima is not an undercover agent, or an alien, or demon, or otherwise possessed of any superhuman abilities.

Mima does, however, have ambitions to pursue a career in acting, which upsets the pop-group’s fanbase and in particular an obsessed man by the name of Me-Mania. When she later discovers a website purporting to be written by her, documenting her days in intimate detail, Mima’s paranoia that she is being stalked by a deranged, discontent fan begins.

Her mental state deteriorates further when she accepts the role of a rape victim in her new production, and is traumatized by the experience. To make matters worse, people around her begin to die and Mima doesn’t know if she is in imminent danger from her alter-ego, or if what remains of her sanity can even tell the difference between them.

Perfect Blue Director Satoshi Kon

Satoshi Kon began as a writer for animé, soon turning his hand to helming the projects. He was recommended to direct Perfect Blue by Katsuhiro Otomo, the writer/director of Akira, who had previously illustrated the work of Yoshikazu Takeuchi – who, incidentally, wrote the novel of Perfect Blue on which the film is loosely based (with the screenplay ably adapted by Sadayuki Murai).

Satoshi Kon has gone on to make several animé features, not all so well lauded, but nevertheless continuing to explore more realistic themes than the majority of the genre.

Perfect Blue Production and Summary

When released in the West, it was questioned as to why Perfect Blue needed to be animated, seeing as there’s nothing in it’s formula to take advantage of the limitless possibilities that come with the medium. It was, in fact, originally intended to be filmed in live-action for video, but the Kobe earthquake in 1994 damaged the production studio, after which the project continued with a more limited budget and so moved to animé.

And a good thing too, in this opinion. There are vast reserves of talent in animé, but more often than not those aforementioned limitless possibilities often come at the expense of adult storytelling, with obvious exceptions – re: the likes of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Wings of Honneamise, Princess Mononoke, and many high-quality others.

Animé needed a film like Perfect Blue, to showcase a genre of the industry that has been predominantly explored in live-action. The result is a film that stands tall amongst the legions of lesser animé productions and side-by-side with the best of them. The characters are believeable and the exploration of the subject matter by Kon is mature, intense, and effectively keeps the viewer on edge until the very end. It’s also beautifully animated.

A live-action version was made in 2002, Perfect Blue: Yume Nara Samete, which, despite being more faithful to the literature, was not so well received as it’s original counterpart.

This statement from horror-veteran Roger Corman comes attached to the Western DVD release of Perfect Blue, to nicely summarize: “A startling and powerful film. If Alfred Hitchcock partnered with Walt Disney they’d make a picture like this.”

The copyright of the article Perfect Blue: Animé Film Review in Horror Films is owned by Michael Pantazi. Permission to republish Perfect Blue: Animé Film Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.