is a 1997 Japanese animated psychological horror film directed by Satoshi Kon. It is loosely based on the novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, with a screenplay by Sadayuki Murai. Featuring the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shiho Niiyama, Masaaki Okura, Shinpachi Tsuji and Emiko Furukawa, the plot follows a member of a Japanese idol group who retires from music to pursue an acting career. As she becomes a victim of stalking by her obsessive fan, gruesome murders take place, and she begins losing her grip on reality. The film deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, a commonly found theme in Kon's other works, such as Millennium Actress (2001), Paranoia Agent (2004), and Paprika (2006).
The film garnered critical acclaim and is now regarded as a masterpiece of animation and one of the best anime films of all time.
Plot
Mima Kirigoe decides to leave the J-pop idol group CHAM! to become a full-time actress. Many of her fans are dismayed by her change from a clean-cut image, particularly an obsessive fan, Me-Mania, who begins stalking her. Following directions from a fan letter, Mima discovers a website called "Mima's Room" comprising public diary entries written from her perspective, recording her daily life and private thoughts in great detail. She confides in her manager, former pop idol Rumi Hidaka, about the site, but Rumi advises her to ignore it.
Mima lands a minor role in the television detective drama Double Bind as Yoko Takakura; however, her agent, Tadokoro, lobbies the producers of Double Bind and succeeds in securing Mima a larger part, though her new role requires her to film a rape scene at a strip club. Despite Rumi's objections, Mima accepts the role, but filming the scene proves distressing, prompting Rumi to leave the set in tears, and Tadokoro shows regret. Mima begins to fall into a delirious state during the rape scene. When Mima returns home and learns that her fish have suddenly passed, she goes into a rage, destroying her apartment, saying she "of course" didn't want to film the scene but felt she had no choice to secure her role as an actress. Between the ongoing stresses of filming Double Bind, her lingering regret over leaving CHAM!, and the paranoia she experiences from being stalked, Mima is distressed about her double life and begins to suffer from psychosis. She especially struggles to distinguish real life from her acting pursuits, and is repeatedly visited by an apparition of her former idol self, who claims to be "the real Mima."
A string of murders is committed, all against people who have been involved in Mima's acting career in some respect. Mima finds evidence in her closet suggesting her to be the prime suspect. Her increasing mental instability makes her doubt her own memories and innocence, as she vaguely recalls brutally murdering photographer Murano after he implored her to allow him to take naked photos of her. Mima manages to finish shooting Double Bind, the final scene of which reveals that her character killed and assumed the identity of her sister due to trauma-induced dissociative identity disorder. After the filming staff have left the studio, Me-Mania, acting on e-mailed instructions from "the real Mima" to "eliminate the impostor," corners Mima and attempts to rape and kill her, but Mima bludgeons him with a hammer and escapes. Rumi finds Mima beaten and disheveled, prompting her to take Mima to her home. Later, Me-Mania is murdered by "the real Mima" for failing to kill Mima.
Mima awakens, believing Rumi has taken her back to her apartment. She notices the fish are alive and well. Mima discovers that Rumi's bedroom is a replica of her own and realizes that Rumi is the one behind "Mima's Room," the serial murders, and the doppelgänger who manipulated Me-Mania: Displeased by Mima's retirement from the idol industry, Rumi developed an alternate personality of the "real Mima," now seeking to destroy and replace her in order to redeem her image. As Rumi pursues Mima through the city, Mima pulls Rumi's wig off resulting in Rumi unintentionally impaling herself on a glass shard during the struggle. Rumi stumbles into the street and the path of an oncoming truck; hallucinating the headlights as stage lights, she smiles and poses instead of moving out of the way, but Mima manages to save her from being run over at the last moment.
Sometime later, Mima, now established as an actress, visits Rumi in a mental institution. Rumi's doctor says Rumi still believes she is a pop idol most of the time. Mima says she has learned a lot from her experiences with Rumi. As Mima leaves the hospital, she overhears two nurses, who recognize her but conclude that she must be a look-alike, as the real Mima Kirigoe would have no reason to visit a mental institution. As Mima enters her car, she smiles at herself in the rear-view mirror before declaring, "No, I'm the real thing."
Cast
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Character !! Japanese !! English
|-
! colspan=3 style="text-align:left" | Main characters
|-
| || Junko Iwao || Ruby Marlowe
|-
| || Rica Matsumoto || Wendee Lee
|-
| || || Bob Marx
|-
! colspan=3 style="text-align:left" | Television drama personnel
|-
| || Yōsuke Akimoto || –
|-
| || Yoku Shioya || –
|-
| || Hideyuki Hori || Sparky Thornton
|-
| || Emi Shinohara || –
|-
| || Masashi Ebara || –
|-
| || Kiyoyuki Yanada || –
|-
| Assistant Director || Kyousei Tsukui || –
|-
! colspan=3 style="text-align:left" | CHAM personnel
|-
| || || Gil Starberry
|-
| || Tōru Furusawa || –
|-
| || || –
|-
| || Shiho Niiyama || –
|-
! colspan=3 style="text-align:left" |
|-
| || Kōichi Tōchika || –
|-
| || Sōichirō Hoshi || –
|-
| || Kishō Taniyama || –
|-
! colspan=3 style="text-align:left" | Other characters
|-
| || Akio Suyama || –
|-
| || Shin-ichiro Miki || –
|-
| || Osamu Hosoi || –
|-
| || || –
|-
| || Emi Motoi || –
|-
| || || –
|-
| || || –
|-
| || || –
|-
|}
The following actors in the English adaptation are listed in the credits without specification to their respective roles: James Lyon, Frank Buck, David Lucas, Elliot Reynolds, Kermit Beachwood, Sam Strong, Carol Stanzione, Ty Webb, Billy Regan, Dari Mackenzie, George C. Cole, Syd Fontana, Sven Nosgard, Bob Marx, Devon Michaels, Robert Wicks and Mattie Rando.
Analysis
In an analysis of Perfect Blue and Kon's other works, professor Susan Napier states that "Perfect Blue announces its preoccupation with perception, identity, voyeurism, and performance – especially in relation to the female – right from its opening sequence. The perception of reality cannot be trusted, with the visual set up only to not be reality, especially as the psychodrama heights towards the climax." Napier also sees themes related to pop idols and their performances as impacting the gaze and the issue of their roles. Mima's madness results from her own subjectivity and attacks on her identity. The ties to Alfred Hitchcock's work are broken with the murder of her male controllers. Scholars and critics have therefore interpreted the film as exploring the fragmentation of identity and the instability of perception in modern media culture.
Production
This film was Satoshi Kon's first directorial effort.
Masao Maruyama, a producer at Madhouse at the time, appreciated Kon's work on the OVA JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and contacted him to ask if he would be interested in directing in the fall of 1994. The original author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, allegedly first planned a live-action film based on his novel. However, due to funding difficulties, it was downgraded to direct-to-video and then direct-to-video animation. When Kon received the initial offer, it was for an OVA project, so he made Perfect Blue as a video animation. Then, it was decided to be released as a movie in a hurry just before its completion. This work was originally made as a video animation for a narrow market, so it was expected to disappear as soon as a few people talked about it. The fact that such a work was treated as a film, invited to many film festivals around the world, and released as a package in many countries was unexpected for those involved. There is no play-within-a-play in the original story, nor is there a motif of blurring the boundary between dream and reality. He said, "This album is like a city that was suddenly created with a high degree of modernity without any evolutionary process". This acclaim brought the distributor invitations from more than 50 film festivals, including Germany, Sweden, Australia, and South Korea. His film Requiem for a Dream pays homage to Perfect Blue in some of its angles and shots. and had its general release in Japan on February 28, 1998.
The film was also released on UMD by Anchor Bay Entertainment on December 6, 2005. It featured the film in widescreen, leaving the film kept within black bars on the PSP's 16:9 screen. This release also contains no special features and only the English audio track. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD in Region B by Anime Limited in 2013. In the U.S., Perfect Blue aired on the Encore cable television network and was featured by the Sci Fi Channel on December 10, 2007, as part of its Ani-Monday block. In Australia, Perfect Blue aired on the SBS Television Network on April 12, 2008, and previously sometime in mid 2007 in a similar timeslot.
The film had a theatrical re-release in the United States by GKIDS on September 6 and 10, 2018, with both English dubbed and subtitled screenings. GKIDS and Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray Disc in North America on March 26, 2019. The film received a wide theatrical release in Finland in 2025. GKIDS screened a 4K restoration of the film in US theaters on October 3, 2025.
Reception and legacy
The film was well received critically in the festival circuit, winning awards at the 1997 Fantasia Festival in Montréal, and Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal.
Critical response in the United States upon its theatrical release was also positive. , the film had an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 59 reviews, with an average score of 7.4/10. The consensus stated, "Perfect Blue is overstylized, but its core mystery is always compelling, as are the visual theatrics." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 based on 17 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Time included the film on its Top 5 Anime film list, Total Film ranked Perfect Blue twenty-fifth on their list of greatest animated films, and /Film named it the scariest animated film ever. It also made the list for Entertainment Weeklys best movies never seen from 1991 to 2011. In 2022, IndieWire named Perfect Blue the twelfth best movie of the 1990s.
Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote that while the film "ultimately disappoints with its just-middling tension and underdeveloped scenario, it still holds attention by trying something different for the genre". Writing for Anime News Network, reviewer Tim Henderson described the film as "a dark, sophisticated psychological thriller" with its effect of "over-obsession funneled through early Internet culture" and produces a "reminder of how much celebrity fandom has evolved in only a decade". Reviewing the 2019 GKIDS Blu-ray release, Neil Lumbard of Blu-ray.com heralded Perfect Blue as "one of the greatest anime films of all time" and "a must-see masterpiece that helped to pave the way for more complex anime films to follow," while Chris Beveridge of The Fandom Post noted "this is not a film one can watch often overall, nor should you, but when you settle into it you put everything else away, turn down the lights, and savor an excellent piece of filmmaking."
American performer Madonna incorporated clips from Perfect Blue into a remix of her song "What It Feels Like for a Girl" as a video interlude during her Drowned World Tour in 2001.
American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky acknowledged the similarities in his 2010 film Black Swan, but denied that Black Swan was inspired by Perfect Blue; his previous film Requiem for a Dream features a remake of the bathtub scene from Perfect Blue. A re-issued blog entry mentioned Aronofsky's film Requiem for a Dream as being among Kon's list of films he viewed for 2010. In addition, Kon blogged about his meeting with Aronofsky in 2001.
Other media
Seven Seas Entertainment obtained the English-language publication rights for the 1991 novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis and the 1995 anthology (re-released in 2002 under the current title) Perfect Blue: Awaken from a Dream in April 2017. They released the translated novels in December 2017 and April 2018, respectively.
See also
- List of films featuring fictional films
Notes
References
; Book references
External links
- Official Geneon Entertainment website
- Official Madhouse Animation website