Perfect Blue

This film holds the title for the most mind-bending in my opinion. The effect this movie has the first time I watched it was truly incredible, I was questioning everything and I felt this strange combination of fear and intrigue. This and so much more mixed with Satoshi Kon’s hand-drawn scenes and beautiful movement of the “camera” give dimension and depth to the film. Every scene is amazing, the detail in the backgrounds is always meticulously executed and fantastic to look at. The way a scene is taken to the next is so clever, using the movement of a character or dialogue carrying to the focus. It’s just another piece of the intricate puzzle of this movie. This film depicts a very interesting and specific point in time. As the internet and online streaming grows more popular, record sales plummet, forcing Mima to leave her pop idol life behind. But yet it is also the troublesome preservation of her own self-image that has her quit and the influence of her agent. Rumi and Tadokoro serve as sort of the devil and angel on each side of Mima’s shoulder, yet they both do not have her best interests at heart. Tadokoro forces her into explicit and degrading roles, denying the innocent part of her while Rumi desperately tries to bring her back to her pop star career, which denies her imperfections. In a world of superficiality, a surprisingly genuine girl tries to find out where she fits in. A scene that really stands out to me is when Mima returns home after doing the sexual assault scene to find her tetra fish dead. While this of course would illicit emotion, she begins sobbing and tearing up her room, completely un-proportional what happened. I think this does a great job of showing how one little thing can unleash the dam of emotions held up until then. In the comfort of her home and solitude, there’s no one to hide from, and her emotional outbreak has no effect on anyone else. All this and more sets up the events of this film, her complete lack of recognition of herself makes her merely see someone in her old outfit and think it’s herself, or rather a previous version. Her reality is no longer distinguishable from her hallucinations, and her acting roles added on becomes just another point of confusion. I don’t believe this movie was created to make perfect sense, given both the delusion of Mima and the fact that it is simply a fictional story it doesn’t bother me that it isn’t incredibly coherent. Yet they explained things in a satisfactory way and gave a powerful emotional journey along the way. It goes to show that where there’s one crazy, there’s another feeding into them, and where there’s someone feeding into delusion, there’s more than one victim of it.  Plot - 9Characters - 10Pacing - 10Themes - 10Animation or Cinematography - 10Emotional Impact - 10Uniqueness - 10Dialogue - 8Overall Enjoyment - 10Overall Quality - 9Total Score: 96% This film holds the title for the most mind-bending in my opinion. The effect this movie has the first time I watched it was truly incredible, I was questioning everything and I felt this strange combination of fear and intrigue. This and so much more mixed with Satoshi Kon’s hand-drawn scenes and beautiful movement of the “camera” give dimension and depth to the film. Every scene is amazing, the detail in the backgrounds is always meticulously executed and fantastic to look at. The way a scene is taken to the next is so clever, using the movement of a character or dialogue carrying to the focus. It’s just another piece of the intricate puzzle of this movie. This film depicts a very interesting and specific point in time. As the internet and online streaming grows more popular, record sales plummet, forcing Mima to leave her pop idol life behind. But yet it is also the troublesome preservation of her own self-image that has her quit and the influence of her agent. Rumi and Tadokoro serve as sort of the devil and angel on each side of Mima’s shoulder, yet they both do not have her best interests at heart. Tadokoro forces her into explicit and degrading roles, denying the innocent part of her while Rumi desperately tries to bring her back to her pop star career, which denies her imperfections. In a world of superficiality, a surprisingly genuine girl tries to find out where she fits in. A scene that really stands out to me is when Mima returns home after doing the sexual assault scene to find her tetra fish dead. While this of course would illicit emotion, she begins sobbing and tearing up her room, completely un-proportional what happened. I think this does a great job of showing how one little thing can unleash the dam of emotions held up until then. In the comfort of her home and solitude, there’s no one to hide from, and her emotional outbreak has no effect on anyone else. All this and more sets up the events of this film, her complete lack of recognition of herself makes her merely see someone in her old outfit and think it’s herself, or rather a previous version. Her reality is no longer distinguishable from her hallucinations, and her acting roles added on becomes just another point of confusion. I don’t believe this movie was created to make perfect sense, given both the delusion of Mima and the fact that it is simply a fictional story it doesn’t bother me that it isn’t incredibly coherent. Yet they explained things in a satisfactory way and gave a powerful emotional journey along the way. It goes to show that where there’s one crazy, there’s another feeding into them, and where there’s someone feeding into delusion, there’s more than one victim of it.  Plot - 9 Characters - 10 Pacing - 10 Themes - 10 Animation or Cinematography - 10 Emotional Impact - 10 Uniqueness - 10 Dialogue - 8 Overall Enjoyment - 10 Overall Quality - 9 Total Score: 96%