ima Kirigoe has had limited success as a pop idol. Singing cheery,
vacuous bubblegum pop in a three-girl band called Cham, she's made a few
fans but never had a breakthrough hit. Her agent Tadokoro thinks she'll do
better as a serious actress, and he books her into a minor role on a gory TV
serial about an insane murderer and his police pursuers.
Mima smiles dutifully and enthuses to the media about her new role, even
when Cham hits the top 100 for the first time without her. Even when she's
talked into starring in a graphic, exploitative rape scene. But someone
else isn't happy with her image change. She receives an intimidating fax
and a letter bomb. A disturbed-looking man repeatedly appears among the
crew of her TV show, watching her and grinning. A confusing fan note leads
her to a Web site that includes diary entries detailing her likes, her
dislikes, and the small events of her day. They're accurate--frighteningly
so, since she didn't write them.
Soon the Web diary starts to complain about how she hates her new TV
role and needs help. A real serial killer stalks people associated with the
show. Most frightening of all, Mima is haunted by the image of herself as a
cutesy, pristine pop idol. The image mocks her and claims she has sullied
herself, and it--the "real" Mima--is going to take over in her stead. The
Internet Mima, the phantasm pop idol Mima, the Mima TV character, and Mima
the helpless, confused actress all begin to blur together as reality breaks
down.
Mima starts to disintegrate emotionally. Soon she's reading her own fake
website diary to find out what she did during the day. But one aspect of
reality is clear enough--people around her really are dying, and she seems
to be the cause.
Blood, sex and social critique
Perfect Blue's serious graphic content and challenging nonlinear
storyline place it on a high shelf alongside Mamuro Oshii's Ghost in
the Shell and Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira.
Though it doesn't meet the animation standards of either, its images do recall them both; the
character design is far less cartoony than most anime. Director Satoshi Kon
is an Otomo protege, and Otomo's influence shows clearly in the
unflattering, almost caricatured images of squint-eyed, sallow Japanese.
The film's razor-sharp pacing and eerie dreamlike surrealities also recall
Otomo, and they combine to form a powerhouse movie, a chilling and
unconventional thriller so compelling that it's easy to forget the robotic
animation and stiff characters that prevail in the earlier segments.
Mima is a complex and confusing heroine with little sense of identity,
though it's never quite clear whether personal weakness, supernatural
forces or societal flaws have contrived to bring her down. Kon, working
from a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, clearly challenges the conventions of
an entertainment scene that battens eagerly onto cute girl performers but
rejects them as shallow and disposable when they get old enough to move on.
The realistic but ultimately hollow masks of mass media and computer
identities are a second focus, and part of what makes this as much an
intricate social satire as it is a gory, sex-spattered slasher flick.
But ultimately, Perfect Blue's success lies in the twisted,
self-referential storyline that intercuts reality with fantasy so fluidly
that viewers inevitably take on Mima's shattered point of view, unable to
distinguish the truth until the stunning conclusion. Alfred Hitchcock's
name is too often waved around when praising thrillers, slashers, and
modern-day penny dreadfuls, but in the case of this identity-bending homage
to his style, it's pretty safe to say he'd be proud.
