Perfect Blue

This will be my last “review” for a while since I don't have the time anymore. I’ll still be around posting dad jokes but will heavily decline in watching movies and maybe activity so I wanted to write this for one of my very personal favorites. I hope you like it lol. The first real instant of my own “Pop Mima” came weeks after seeing 2001 for the first time. Where that movie is wonderful, that tiny tiny whisper of ideas evolved into its person with its own opinion. This is where Mima starts with her real self walking in grocery stores getting milk by herself while the perfectly synchronized and dressed Cham Mima is everywhere in people's minds. Her life is perfect yet she wants to grow into better things. Her world won't allow it and her world forms into “The Stalker '' in one of my favorite shots of him holding his hand out while Mima dances on it. He and society wanting to keep this illusion forever in their hand. Resisting That in parallel I and Mima quit our old lives for something new with her taking down the Cham poster overlooking her but still we are a TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR As she waddles towards a new life and identity she is confronted by her only line  “Excuse me, who are you?” I always find this question interesting since You and I are split apart. Both of us act differently than in reality, right? Friends? Family? A Boss? All of the above? That same feeling of having different voices starts to fester in me and Mima with this question. As she thinks this the doubt in herself explodes with a letter saying  “This is a warning the next one will be REAL” I mentioned that Mima resisted being a Pop idol anymore but the main one pushing her to still be one was Rumi. Who did something similar and failed for not keeping the image and illusion which ended up with her becoming Mima's agent. Now Mima is beginning to see the stalker more and more as she moves away from Cham where there already at #83 in the top 100 without her. This bubbling tension finally shows signs of her deterioration with Pop Mima appearing to resist her to do the rape scene as she wants to change in all of the wrong ways by being in the hand of someone else now. This feeling of manipulation has been on me throughout my life. Trying to break the mold of being normal and improving myself is hard. While I wasn't ever sexually exploited I feel so used by other people and mainly the world around me being pushed to become and be something I’m not. It feels like I'm fading and rotting away slowly as the world watches just like Mima. Coming back into her room she starts melting down with everything piling on her admitting she didn't want to do it but wanted to please the people who did “so much for me”. While she's melting down in the bathtub screaming I just contemplate these ideas sitting in the shower as the water just pours on me with another weird parallel. Since the world never really did care and yet it changes us What then comes out of the shadows of Mima's mind into the light is her paranoia and illusions that the stalker sees her as the real Mima, the one on his wall, TV, and mind.  she wakes up and  wakes up and  wakes up  and  wakes up  to then wake up in her bed again as her reality starts to crumble and she shatters it in her hand. It's only after getting kidnapped and almost raped again she kills the main eye in society with a hammer. Then waking up in her bed again with the fish all alive, the cham poster up as well….. While the one thing facing her is herself with her reaping what she sowed as she is chased by her voice in her head being stabbed while running away when finally forced to confront herself. She removes the mask of Rumi and herself. Where Rumi tries to have the one thing to keep her illusion and sanity which stabs her in the gut As she stumbles to the road, refusing to remove the mask, and stares at us before the lights come on for the last time… -Closing thoughts- The ending has always been confusing. It took 3 watches to get it because she's everything I want to be in the end. After the events, she has taken control of her fantasy and paranoia. She is her own person now and isn't running from herself anymore because, in the end, she is real. This movie has only gotten more relevant with time as the internet continues to grow forever, now it's a breeding ground for 100s of identities. Like me I am Jacookie here but I am someone else Even what you're reading isn't me just an edited watered-down version of me. That's what I believe Satoshi Kon was trying to show us that we split ourselves up and let the world around us choose who we are. He knows that you and I are multiple identities wrapped together so really “Who are you?”