| Watch the movie, discuss here. The time limit isn't set in stone right now, but it might be a week, so get discussing before then, if you want to be on the safe side. |
| I feel like I just got off a roller coaster. A little bit shocked, a little bit nauseated, a little bit overwhelmed, but in the end, I really want to do it all over again. Perfect Blue is something like sensory overload condensed into anime form. I'll try to write an intelligent post about this movie, but keep in mind that my head is still spinning, so everything I say might not be particularly logical. The most obvious point about Perfect Blue is its treatment of reality. "There is no way illusions can come to life," says Eri-san, but we are constantly bombarded with contradictions to this statement. Scenes transition rapidly and fluidly between real life, the T.V. drama, and Mima's "hallucinations." Often, it is impossible to tell them apart, and Mima herself seems to lose her grip on reality. That said, Perfect Blue doesn't say a whole lot about the topic of Reality. It's mostly used for entertainment value - it keeps you struggling to understand what is going on, draws you deep into the emotional side of the story, and prevents the plot from stagnating. But it doesn't bring anything to the table, philosophically speaking. Far more intriguing is the way the concept of Identity is treated. It's more than just Mima's conflict between her Pop-idol persona and her Actress persona (although that's certainly important, too). Perfect Blue seems to represent identity as an experience of the present that exists because of the past. That is to say, our idea of personal identity is something of an illusion created from our memories. Mima tries desperately to recreate herself as a new person, but is torn by the discontinuity between her present self and past self. Add to this the extreme expectations of the people around her, and you have a recipe for severe neurosis. Another interesting aspect of Perfect Blue is it's critique of modern "otaku," especially considering the kind of people who would be watching this movie. Of course, the movie doesn't treat modern culture as a whole with very much enthusiasm, but the subculture of pop-idol worship comes off as particularly deranged. On the whole, an excellent movie. I'm going to rewatch it soon to try and pick up on anything I've missed. |
| I'm going to keep this pretty short. When I watched this film for the first time, that whole Brittney Spears super dramafest thing was going on, so forgive me because that's what I associate this with. For me, this was basically what could happen to a celebrity if they didn't keep their wits about them. People get so wrapped up in trying to keep the world happy, that they forget their own morals and beliefs in the process, much like what happens with Mima. She gets sent down a path she didn't want, and she begins to hate herself in part for it. Ever since I watched this, I looked at celebrities in a different light, realizing that all the rumors and crap we spread about them really does affect them, at least the young actors. At least that's my feeling from it. |
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| hahah, for some reason I've never associated the term pop-idol or seiyuu with "celebrity". I know it's only a matter of semantics, but for some reason I feel kind of disgusted calling Hirano Aya or Goto Yuko a celebrity. Guess that just goes to show how corrupted my mind has become. :-P I took a somewhat different view of Mima's image-change, though. Overall, I think it's a positive change, especially because she chose to do it. Of course, going through with the rape scene was definitely not something she should have done - you can tell that it traumatized her, and went against her "own morals and beliefs," as you say. That's not the same as saying that the entire process of becoming an actress was a bad choice, I merely think that she should have gone about it differently. The major reasons behind her breakdown were Rumi-sans' and the creepy stalkers' attempts to keep her from making her own decisions. Without those two, Mima would have been able to make the transition without much difficulty. And you can tell that she is happy (or at least content) with her decision from the final line "No, I'm real." |
naikou said: The most obvious point about Perfect Blue is its treatment of reality. "There is no way illusions can come to life," says Eri-san, but we are constantly bombarded with contradictions to this statement. Scenes transition rapidly and fluidly between real life, the T.V. drama, and Mima's "hallucinations." Often, it is impossible to tell them apart, and Mima herself seems to lose her grip on reality. That said, Perfect Blue doesn't say a whole lot about the topic of Reality. It's mostly used for entertainment value - it keeps you struggling to understand what is going on, draws you deep into the emotional side of the story, and prevents the plot from stagnating. But it doesn't bring anything to the table, philosophically speaking. I thought this was an excellent idea... the way it was presented is one of Kon's defining features; the rift between the real and unreal are torn apart and so wonderfully woven together. For whatever reason, Mima was having hallucinations: her upsetting career change had her questioning her past and future success, her fans' thoughts of her, her breaking of personal principles for the betterment of her acting career, her stalker and growing paranoia, all of these would contribute to an unbelievable amount of stress that would easily damage the unprepared. Though it really was being used largely for entertainment; the scenes from her TV drama that would be added from time to time had no real significance but to throw you off-track and keep you thinking. naikou said: Perfect Blue seems to represent identity as an experience of the present that exists because of the past. That is to say, our idea of personal identity is something of an illusion created from our memories. Mima tries desperately to recreate herself as a new person, but is torn by the discontinuity between her present self and past self. Perhaps the whole movie was simply a telling of this idea? The movie begins with Mima as a well-known pop idol, and the movie itself was really her transition from a pop idol to a popular actress, as she had only received a relatively minor role until nearing the end of the movie. And how would Rumi fit into this theme? She was obviously the one who had truly lost herself because of these events, and while the movie never makes it really clear, she was probably the true killer and was, at least at some times, the pop idol Mima persona. Perfect Blue was actually a novel that Kon adapted into movie form, presumably changing the script around a bit to fit his style of presentation, so it's probably not a blow at otaku. And I would argue your point about Hirano not being a celebrity... : p |
qtipbrit92 said: I thought this was an excellent idea... the way it was presented is one of Kon's defining features; the rift between the real and unreal are torn apart and so wonderfully woven together. Yeah, I loved the idea too. From an artistic point of view, it's an extremely valuable addition to the movie, and adds a certain flare that makes it very memorable. Essentially... yeah, there's no argument between us. ^^ qtipbrit92 said: Perfect Blue was actually a novel that Kon adapted into movie form, presumably changing the script around a bit to fit his style of presentation, so it's probably not a blow at otaku. I did some digging around, and it looks like Satoshi Kon (director of Perfect Blue), subscribes to an artistic movement called "Superflat". Wiki says it better than I could... wiki said: Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. It is also the name of a 2001 art exhibition, curated by Murakami, that toured West Hollywood, Minneapolis and Seattle. The term is used by Murakami to refer to various flattened forms in Japanese graphic art, animation, pop culture and fine arts, as well as the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture." A self-proclaimed art movement, it was a successful piece of niche marketing, a branded art phenomenon designed for Western audiences. Now, granted, this movie was produced before the movement originated, so it's hard to classify the movie itself as Superflat, but I think it's good enough to show that Kon himself tends to be critical of Otakudom. So the potential is there, although I'll admit that it's not a particularly central message of the movie, if it exists at all. Speaking of the movie's release date, it was interesting to see the emerging internet and it's influence. Mima's room seems like a proto-blog of sorts. I'm pretty sure that kind of thing didn't exist 10 years ago, anyway. |
| I thought Perfect Blue was an interseting representation of the mental stresses and strains on the famous that are thrust upon them at an early age. It poses an interesting question of do these people really know who they are or are they who we make them? It also shows an extreme side of obsession in the fact that the obssesed actually wants to become the object of their desire, but you get the feeling that this occurs on a lesser level with most fans having the notion of knowing something about someone they really don't know from Adam. To be honest I don't know if this movie is critical of Otakudom or the society/buisness that nutures and encourages it as a source of income. |
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_edge_ said: To be honest I don't know if this movie is critical of Otakudom or the society/buisness that nutures and encourages it as a source of income. It thought it was highly critical of both. Really, the film speaks for itself, but its defining message was how easy it is to lose a sense of one's "self" whenever transferring to a new environment. The protagonist constantly seems lost between what she herself wants, what her agency wants, and what her fans expect of her squeaky clean girl band image. And in addition, we see that she isn't the only one suffering from the madness. It has already consumed her vile "number one fan" as well as her older, female manager. Great, great film. Not just for anime, but overall. |
gatotsu911 said: It's been quite some time since I watched this film, so my memories of it are a little hazy. It was very good - probably the best Satoshi Kon work I've seen - but I recall being massively disappointed by the ending. After the great bulk of the film had ingeniously worked on toying with viewers' sense of perception and blurring the boundaries between what was considered "real" and "fantasy", the ending was - wait for it - not ambiguous ENOUGH. It gave the plot too much resolution. If Kon really wanted to pull a sucker-punch on the audience, he should've left us hanging - perhaps with only the implication that the manager was the real perpetrator behind it all, or the suggestion that at least some of the murders may have been committed by Mima. Instead we get a resolution that's simply too tidy and seems to contrast with the rest of the film. It's like pre-MPAA Hollywood - if you got too dark in the body of your film, you had to throw in an arbitrary happy ending. That said, I should watch it again at some point and see if I can glean some of the greater subtleties present in the work. Kon could have taken the ending in that direction, but then he would run the opposite risk; making the film too inscrutable, without any clear message. That's a problem that has plagued many psychological films, usually in the live action genre; they get so caught up in confusing the viewer, and "making them think", that they become too difficult to decipher, and ultimately lose a lot of their effect. Who knows? Maybe there was a way to make a different, equally good/even better ending with your aesthetic in mind. Personally, I think the clean, tidy conclusion he used worked very well, too. |
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