Perfect Blue (1997) is the Perfect Anime Thriller!
What movie comes to your mind when someone asks you for your favorite anime film? Some people immediately think of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away or perhaps Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, which was instrumental in popularizing anime in the west. But not too many people think of the great and late Satoshi Kon’s directorial debut, Perfect Blue. And that is a crime. Despite major financial and critical success, anime film are still often underappreciated, with many seeing them as a kid-friendly medium. But Perfect Blue is the perfect example of an anime that never pulls its punches, even for a mature audience.
Mima Kirigoe is a former member of the female J-Pop idol group CHAM! Despite her love of singing and performing, she decides to transition to acting. During her last performance, she notices a disheveled and unkempt-looking man leering at her. When she returns home, she finds a piece of fan mail that claims it was “always watching Mima’s room.” She confides this with her manager, Rumi, but she merely brushes it off as harmless. Mima secures a small role on the TV series Double Bind, but her agent manages to expand her role with the producers. However, this includes a rape scene. Despite not wanting to do it, Mima goes through with it. As filming the show goes on, many members of the crew turn up dead. Especially those with ties to Mima, from the screenwriter who wrote the rape scene, to a photographer who shot racy photos of her, to even her agent.
While the J-Pop idol life provides the chance of super stardom and wealth, there’s a dark side that hides in plain sight. It’s no surprise that many former idols are often stalked and harassed by fans. And sometimes, that harassment breaks not only legal, but psychological boundaries. Perfect Blue manages to subtly capture the snowball effect of stalking behavior. During Mima’s last concert, we see her stalker, Me-Mania, standing front and center with his hand outstretched to focus only on her. The camera even makes sure to use a tunnel vision effect to capture his singular focus. But this isn’t the first time the camera is used to view Mima through her stalker’s eyes. When we see Mima at a local market, we see her buy specific items, from the exact milk brand, to a specific type of fish food. And all of this information is uploaded to the ominously titled website “Mima’s Room.”
But this isn’t where the stalking behavior ends. In fact, it’s only the beginning. While on set, a fan letter for Mima explodes when her agent opens it. This, coupled with a stressful filming schedule, further deteriorates Mima’s mental health. She slowly begins spiraling into psychosis, even going as far as hallucinating her idol persona. Initially, Satoshi Kon uses her idol persona to represent her inner thoughts, feelings, and regrets. And it isn’t until she delves deeper into the dark side of the acting industry (such as doing the infamous rape scene to be considered a serious actress) is when this idol persona begins becoming increasingly hostile towards the real Mima. This persona also is a representation for Mima’s youthful innocence, since J-Pop idols are required to have a pristine public image. We see this pop idol persona chastise the real Mima for agreeing to the scene, calling her a “dirty and tarnished” woman.
Another representation of her innocence is her pet fish. In fact, the fish are a recurring motif throughout the film. Mima’s apartment wall is decorated with a banner covered in Ichthyes, or “Christian fish,” which were used by Christians to identify each other during the Roman Persecution. When she returns to her apartment after shooting the rape scene, she finds all her pet fish seemingly dead. This is where she breaks down completely, sobbing hysterically over doing the scene while trashing her apartment, showing just how traumatized she was by it. But the fish are not actually dead. Right before the scene ends, we are given a brief shot showing the fish alive and well. This shows the metaphorical death of her perceived innocence as she steps away from her pop idol image and into the acting spotlight.
To accompany the absolutely tense atmosphere, Masahiro Ikumi composes a chilling score that heightens every scene’s emotional intensity. Both the real Mima and her idol hallucination are given their own individual themes. Mima’s theme incorporates bassoon and the occasional thump of a drum, whilst a soft piano mixed with synth music plays in the background. The overall sound is unsettling yet eerily calming at times, conveying her psyche’s fragile state; almost like a woman on the edge of being broken, questioning herself and her identity. Meanwhile, idol Mima’s theme is far creepier, combining disturbing vocalizations resembling a woman being strangled, desperately trying to cry out while accompanied by eerie humming that gradually gets louder, reminiscent of the Joker’s theme from The Dark Knight. If there’s one musical track that gets underneath my skin, it’s this one.
The only film score to ever reach this level of eeriness is Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem of a Dream. Believe it or not, Aronofsky was said to have bought the remake rights to Perfect Blue. But instead of going through with a remake, he incorporated elements from Perfect Blue into his 2010 movie Black Swan. He makes several references to several key scenes (such as Mima’s bath scene) and borrows the themes of identity, madness, and the blend of fiction and reality. And both films do a brutally brilliant job of making the audience question their own perception of reality. This led some people to consider Black Swan a soft reboot of Perfect Blue. But many (including myself) see it as a love letter to a classic and somewhat underappreciated anime thriller.
Perfect Blue is not only one of the most intense films I’ve ever watched, but in my opinion, is the best anime thriller I’ve ever seen. It remains one of the few movies to greatly exceed my expectations walking in and its themes on obsessive fan behavior, stalking, and psychological trauma are just as prevalent today. It’s hard to believe that this was Satoshi Kon’s very first movie he ever made and he held nothing back. We truly lost a gift in the motion picture arts when he passed away. If you ever thought that anime or animated films can never match the profoundness and impact of live action cinema, then I implore you to watch Perfect Blue. It’s a film that truly needs to be experienced at least once in a lifetime!
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