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Perfect Blue
Japan 1998
Reviewed by Jonathan Romney
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Mima, one third of the girl vocal group Cham, shocks her fans by leaving to pursue an acting career. But her role in television soap Double Bind proves disappointing, and she begins to miss her popstar past. On a fan's website, she is shocked to read what is supposedly her own diary. Mima is plagued by hallucinations of her former pop self, and is stalked by obsessive fan Uchida, aka 'Mimaniac', who sees the new Mima as an impostor. As a soap actress, Mima acquires a raunchy new image that further alienates her old fans.
Meanwhile, people involved with her new career are murdered. Increasingly cracking up and haunted by her former self, Mima begins to fear she is herself responsible for the killings. Uchida is killed, but as the series ends and Mima is acclaimed as an actress, she has a further showdown with her vengeful former self - which proves all along to have been her confidante Rumi, her manager Tadokoro's business associate. Visiting the deluded Rumi in hospital, Mima can at last accept her own identity.
Review
Perfect Blue could almost be the Kylie Minogue story in reverse. Its heroine Mima abandons pop for a career in a television soap, not only alienating the male fans of her squeaky-clean, white-knickered past, but causing her former self to return as a vengeful succubus. The film's most telling images of fan fantasy revolve around Mimaniac, a dead-eyed ghoul cupping his hand to make it seem as if Mima is dancing in his palm.
In narrative terms, Satoshi Kon's anime doesn't wholly make sense. The phantom Mima seems to be at once the ex-singer's own psychic projection and someone else. But Perfect Blue has much to say about fame as an addiction for star and audience - a mutual dependency heightened these days by the internet. To know herself, Mima has to read her own diary as compiled by a psychotic fan. In essence, Perfect Blue is a traditional doppelgänger nightmare. Mima's artificial pop self - one of three near-identical fluffy Lolitas that comprise Cham - revolts by taking on a life of its own, and all Mima can do is guiltily suffer its taunts, while trying to exorcise it in her new soap role. It's no accident that Mima's television character is dressed as a soft-porn version of the Cham look in her rape scene.
Satoshi and screenwriter Sadayuki Murai develop a complex structure for Mima's psychosis, interleaving layers of the real with Mima's dreams and the appropriately named show Double Bind. In one scene from the series, it seems that Mima's character Yoko is suffering from multiple-personality disorder, and is convinced that she's really Mima - a baffling moment soon revealed as only a provisional representation of Mima's predicament. Elsewhere, the carpet is pulled from under our feet several times in quick succession. A traumatic scene proves to be a dream as Mima wakes, but that reality is collapsed in turn as Mima wakes yet again in a replay of the same scene - a brilliant use of the hallucinatory repetitiveness of commercial animation.
The reality-dream divide is memorably worked out in the images. Satoshi - a manga artist who worked on Roujin Z - goes for a flat, flimsy look, often reducing background figures to faceless cut-outs, but dropping in jolts of visual complexity, quoting pop and manga images as manufactured product. At one point, an excessively baroque flash of manga art - a generic big-eyed space girl - invades the screen, looking much more three-dimensional than the film's real world. The execution becomes a complex metaphor for Mima's reality, in which the everyday becomes a colour-drained place of exile from the pop universe. This dilemma is resolved in a bizarre conclusion, as Mima simply exchanges one kind of stardom for another: a career in soaps hardly seems the best way to get a purchase on reality. Even so, Perfect Blue is a delirious, culturally astute invention, and you can't help thinking it would make instructive viewing for former-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.
Credits
- Producers
- Hitomi Nakagaki
- Yoshihisa Ishihara
- Yutaka Toga
- Masao Maruyama
- Hiroaki Inoue
- Screenplay
- Sadayuki Murai
- Based on the novel by
- Yoshikazu Takeuchi
- Based on the character design by
- Hisashi Eguchi
- Director of Photography
- Hisao Shirai
- Editor
- Harutoshi Ogata
- Art Director
- Nobutaka Ike
- Music
- Masahiro Ikumi
- ©Rex Entertainment Co Ltd.
- Production Companies
- Rex Entertainment Co Ltd. in association with Kotobuki Seihan Printing Co., Ltd/Asahi
- Broadcasting Corporation/Fangs Co., Ltd.
- Executive Producers
- Koshiro Kanda
- Yuichi Tsurmi
- Planning
- Koichi Okamoto
- Yoshikazu Takeuchi
- General Manager
- Takeshi Washitani
- Production Co-ordinators
- Toshinori Narita
- Sachiko Suzuki
- Kenjiro Hirai
- Production Manager
- Mitsusuke Hayakawa
- Project Advisers
- Katsuhiro Otomo
- Toshio Funakawa
- Atsushi Naito
- Assistant Director
- Ko Matsuo
- CGI Production
- Iwao Yamaki
- Tsuneo Maeda
- Masafumi Otsune
- CGI Production Associates
- Imagica D-Shop
- Animation Stuff Room
- Satelite
- Marcus
- RIS Works
- Maki Productions
- Character Designers
- Hideki Hamazu
- Satoshi Kon
- Animation Director
- Hideki Hamazu
- Animation Studios
- Mad House
- Oniro
- Key Animation
- Hiroyuki Morita
- Masahiro Kurito
- Shigeru Fujita
- Koichi Arai
- Kumiko Kawana
- Hideki Futamura
- Masaharu Tada
- Katsuichi Nakayama
- Takeshi Honda
- Michiyo Suzuki
- Hidenori Matsubara
- Mamoru Kurosawa
- Shinji Hashimoto
- Makoto Yamada
- Kunio Takahide
- Nobumasa Shinkawa
- Hitoshi Haga
- Hirotsugu Hamasaki
- Shinya Takahashi
- Morifumi Naka
- Mitsuo Iso
- Hikaru Takanashi
- Yoshihiro Kitano
- Takaaki Yamashita
- Inbetweeners
- Kumi Ishii
- Koji Kumasaki
- Masataka Kawai
- Sakiko Watanabe
- Kiyoshi Kosaka
- Ayuchi Baba
- Masaki Kawai
- Ai Suenaga
- DR Movie
- Ryu Gyung-A
- Kim Moon-Hee
- Kim Geum-Soo
- Moon Young-Im
- Lee Jee-Eun
- Park Soon-Ryun
- Kim Gyung-Ja
- Kim Young Sik
- Kyung Kang Animation
- Moon Ok-Yun
- Kim Moon-Hee
- Do Oh-Hee
- Eun-Joo Joo
- Colour Stylist
- Satoshi Hashimoto
- Final
- Harue Ono
- Kana Nakayama
- Tomoko Yamamoto
- Kuriko Kadomoto
- Chikaku Kamata
- Akiko Hayashi
- DR Movie
- Na Mi-Ae
- Park Yong-Gyung
- Lee Soon-Young
- Kim Hee-Sa
- Gang Eun-Kyung
- Sin Kyong-Hwa
- Kyung Kang Animation
- Cho Yong-Shim
- Kim Hyang-Ja
- Chae Jeong-Im
- Kwak Mi-Duk
- Animators
- Studio Cosmos
- Tetsuo Daito
- Motoaki Ikegemi
- Katsunori Maehara
- Yoichi Kuroda
- Hiroshi Noguchi
- Shinji Ikegami
- Naohisa Haijima
- Takashi Shimada
- Toshikazu Hisano
- Kuichi Furusawa
- Soji Yazawa
- Kanae Hirano
- Kazumi Miyata
- Masafumi Awakara
- Tomohiro Nishiyama
- Norizaku Yamaguchi
- Yuki Katsuta
- Kumiko Dei
- Animation Check
- Akiko Oshima
- Toru Umoeka
- Makoto Koga
- Kayo Sakazume
- Background
- Shinichi Uehara
- Kaoru Inoda
- Hisashi Ikeda
- Rei Kono
- Masayoshi Banno
- Hiroshi Ota
- Park Young-Il
- Kim Chol-Gyu
- Hiroshi Washizaki
- Junichi Taniguchi
- Kazusuke Yoshihara
- Sachiko Kato
- Nizo Yamamoto
- Yuji Ikeda
- Team's Art
- Air-brush Painters
- Shoko Sanada
- Visual Workshop
- Music Producer
- Tetsu Saito
- A&R:
- Masaaki Hori
- Soundtrack
- "Season" by Masato Kotake, Pipeline Project, performed by M-Voice; "Sonyuka Ai no Tenshi (Angel of Love)" by Kiko Imai, Masahiro Ikumi, performed by Misa, Emiko Furakawa, Mie Shimizu; "Hitoridemo Heiki (I'm OK on My Own)" by Sumiyo Mutsumi, Makoto Mitsui, arranged by Masahiro Ikumi, performed by Emiko Furakawa, Mie Shimizu; "Omoide ni Dakarete Imawa (Now, Being Held by Memories)" by This Time, arranged by Masahiro Ikumi, performed by Misa
- Choreography
- Izumi
- Sound Design
- Masafumi Mima
- Recording Engineer
- Fujio Yamada
- Sound Production Manager
- Takeshi Takadera
- Sound Engineers
- Takenori Hayashi
- Toshinobu Kubota
- Sound Effects
- Shizuo Kurahashi
- Sound Efects Recordist
- Keiji Shibazaki
- Loop Group Co-ordinator
- Manabu Shinoda
- English language version
- Directors
- Quint Lancaster
- Lia Sargent
- Producers
- Yutaka Maseba
- Haruyo Kanesaku
- ADR Script
- Lia Sargent
- ©1999. Manga Entertainment Ltd
- Production Companies
- ZRO Limit Productions in association with
- Animaze
- Executive Producers
- Laurence Guiness
- Marvin Gleicher
- Translation
- Rika Takahashi
- ZRO Limit Productions
- Production Co-ordinator
- Chris Bottone
- Co-ordinators
- Kei Onishi
- Kenji Nakamura
- Osamu Maseba
- Distribution Associate
- Gaku Kaneko
- Digital Tracking
- Michael McCarty
- Dialogue Editing
- Les Claypool III
- Voice Cast
- Japanese version
- Junko Iwao
- Mima
- Rika Matsumoto
- Rumi
- Tsuji Shinpachi
- Takodoro
- Masaaki Okura
- Uchida
- Yosuke Akimoto
- Tejima
- Akira Shioya
- Shibuya
- Hideyuki Hori
- Sakuragi
- Emi Shinohara
- Eri
- Masashi Ehara
- Murano
- Kiyonobu Harita
- director
- Toru Hurusawa
- Yada
- Shiho Niiyama
- Rei
- Emiko Furukawa
- Yukiko
- Shocker Ono
- M.C.
- Shocker Ono
- Loft Plus
- One Brothers
- audience
- Makoto Kitano
- Kaori Minami
- special appearance
- Aya Hara
- Shinichiro Miki
- Hitoshi Yamanoi
- Megumi Tano
- Takashi Nagasaki
- Akio Toyama
- Osamu Hosoi
- Koichi Tochika
- Emi Motoi
- Soichiro Hoshi
- Noriaki Taniyama
- Voice Cast
- English Language Version Ruby Marlowe
- Wendee Lee
- Gil Starberry
- Lia Sargent
- Steve Bulen
- James Lyon
- Frank Buck
- David Lucas
- Jimmy Theodore
- Elliott Reynolds
- Sparky Thornton
- Bambi Darro
- Melissa Williamson
- Dylan Tully
- Kermit Beachwood
- Sam Stong
- Carol Stanzione
- Ty Webb
- Billy Regan
- Dari Mackenzie
- George C. Cole
- Syd Fontana
- Sven Nosgard
- Robert Marx
- Devon Michaels
- Robert Wicks
- Mattie Rando
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Manga Entertainment
- 7,334 feet
- 81 minutes 29 seconds
- Dolby
- In colour