Perfect Blue

Original Title: パーフェクト ブルー
Romanized: Perfect Blue
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Mimarin Kirigoe is just another pop idol singer until she decides to leave her group, CHAM, and pursue an acting career. Starting from the bottom with a bit part in the TV murder mystery Double Bind, Mima begins to struggle with the division between her old stage persona and her new one. As Mima battles within herself, her reality begins to break down, and real bodies start piling up.

Quick Review

Rating: 4.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2005-11-13

Perfect Blue is something like a Hollywood thriller set in modern Japan, re-cast as subtle emotional suspense, and filmed through an anime lens. The camerawork and style owe heavily to live action, and there is a pervasive sense of down-to-earth realism in everything from the detailed backgrounds to the characters and their jobs, yet Satoshi Kon's masterful directing wraps all this in an understated anime flair that adds an additional level of richness to what is already a solid psychodrama. Add in an outstanding, varied score that ranges from J-pop to eerie wailing and a dramatically skilled Japanese cast (the English writing hampers the dub significantly) that put force behind the emotional force both subdued and raw, and you get a tense, engrossing, and entirely satisfying film.

A fundamentally well-built, emotionally powerful movie and all-around enjoyable psychological thriller, recommended to anyone who appreciates either more subtle anime or low-key live action suspense movies.

US DVD Review

Manga's DVD (a very early one) has the right idea, but is also a bit disappointing. The video transfer is sharp and mostly very smooth, but also a little harsh-looking, and there are significant compression artifacts in areas of dark, flat color. The audio is nice; there's a Dolby 5.1 Japanese track (not particularly well separated, but that's not Manga's fault), an English stereo track, and an English 5.1 track; all of them are plenty clear. The slick, website-esque menus provide access to lots of special features: an image gallery, CHAM's main song sung all the way through in both Japanese and English (you even get to see the Japanese actresses singing it, though we only get stills from the movie with the English), and interviews with several of the English actors and the Japanese Mima, plus an interview with Satoshi Kon.

The most major flaw is the omission of any credits for the Japanese cast (particularly odd since they include an interview with one of them). Also, though this may have just been my disc, the menus have several glitches--skipping, freezing, or going to the wrong section, and the audio/subtitle selection wouldn't stick--I had to set it while the movie was playing. Finally, there's some minor computer content on the disc (a few medium-resolution images, a handful of sound clips, and some Windows screen savers), but it doesn't work very well, either. While there is a Mac version (it would be ironic if there weren't), it's about as old as Mima's computer and as such totally non-functional (it also uses some weird characters in the filenames).

Content Guide

Though never gratuitous, it contains some realistic violence, nudity, and a simulated rape scene (it takes place within a show being filmed). The emotional charge and adult themes make this entirely unsuitable for younger viewers, and although even the edited version is rated R, I doubt much was cut as the unrated version would probably be an R as well.

Violence: 4 - The violence is realistically gory and emotionally vicious, and while the rape is simulated even within the story, it is quite powerful.

Nudity: 4 - A fair amount of nudity, some detailed and frontal (possibly less in the "R" version).

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - There is no sex, but the stage rape is unnervingly realistic and there are a variety of very mature themes.

Language: 1/2 - No particularly strong language in the subtitles, but some profanity in the dub.

Notes and Trivia

Perfect Blue is based on a suspense novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, and Katsuhiro Otomo (of Akira fame) had a hand in the production as a special advisor.

There was an R-rated version (now hard to find as it was only released on dubbed VHS) and an Unrated Director's Cut. While I have only seen the latter, I'm guessing that very little was cut for the R version as there's nothing unusually objectionable to remove and the listed runtime is the same.

Now for some unusually important notes. First off, Manga made a mistake about the plot on the back of the DVD: they call CHAM a chart-topping group, when in fact they are a minor, struggling group, and didn't even break the top 100 (at 87) until well after Mima left.

Second, an important note on the translation in the dub: although the subtitles are very accurate, there is a glaring mistake in the dialogue in the dub, but don't read it until you've seen the movie. If you have, the mistake is in the scene near the end where a scene from the TV show is played through echoing Mima's perception of reality, and then replayed the way it was actually shot for the TV drama. The second time through, Mima (as the character in the drama) identifies herself as "Mima Kirigoe," her real name--this is a mistake. She was supposed to (and does, in Japanese) identify herself as "Rika Takakura", the name of the sister character in Double Bind (the one whose personality Mima's character was supposed to have taken on).

Finally, a random bit of trivia for the technologically oriented: Mima's new computer looks to be a Performa 5200 (about right for the period and popular in Japan). The use and appearance of sites on the Internet is also totally believable, as anyone reading this online probably knows. Most impressive, as far as I'm concerned, is the fact that the computer's functioning is true to reality. In all the Hollywood movies I've seen, I don't think I've even once seen a computer running a real OS that functions the way it should, but when Rumi starts up the computer and shows Mima how to launch Netscape, I can vouch for the complete authenticity of everything (well, except that version 3.0 of Netscape probably would have crashed at least four times during the course of the movie). Mac fanatics might also notice that in a scene from the TV drama near the end there's another Mac (probably a 7100) running in the background.

Availability

Available in the US from Manga Video as an unedited Director's Cut on hybrid DVD. Was originally available on a director's cut subtitled or dubbed VHS, and the edited theatrical version on dubbed VHS only.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store