The 1997 release of Satoshi Kon’s argued and upheld magnum opus sparked a unique conversation between writers and creatives alike: how should artists use a medium to the best of their ability? Theatre, screenplays, animation — all transformed under the influence of “Perfect Blue” and its brilliant nature of hiding an intruder in plain sight.
Mima Kirigoe is a young girl in a J-Pop group influenced by her manager, Rumi Hidaka, to give up her pop-star image for a life in acting. After announcing her departure from her group, Mima received a letter in the mail with a link directing her to a website titled “Mima’s Room,” an online diary written through Mima’s point of view by an unknown fan. While working on set for her first role in a detective drama, Mima receives another letter with an explosive enclosed, injuring the agent who opened it. Mima begins to suspect an unconventional bodyguard from one of her previous shows, going under the name “Me-mania.”
As the movie progresses and Mima begins to take on more touchy and provocative scenes to further her acting career, she also slips deeper and deeper into psychosis. Throughout this haze, she is followed by an apparition of herself from before she left her pop group, continuously criticizing Mima’s current decisions and reminding her of her dwindling reputation. As Mima is going through this, members of the team on set begin to be killed one-by-one. Mima seemingly hallucinates killing her photographer, waking up afterwards and believing it was all a dream, only to find the blood stained clothes in her closet.
Kon uses visual animation to his advantage, making Mima and her apparition virtually indistinguishable from each other. In a sequence, Mima goes through each of her days at work and wakes up from each, separating reality from dream and raising the question of what is real and what is hallucination. Because Mima and her apparition both bear the same look, Kon wants the audience to assume the apparition is simply just a hallucination brought on by Mima’s anxieties related to her psychosis and public image, when in reality, Kon is hiding an intruder in plain sight.
Mima has a fish tank filled with tetra fish, which she feeds every day after work to “keep them happy.” After Mima performs a traumatizing scene at work, she comes home to see her fish are dead. It is only then that she reveals she never wanted to do the scene in the first place, breaking down in her room. However, later in the movie, her fish are seemingly alive again, with no remnants of their death. This is Kon’s first clue to the audience as to what might be happening. In another light, Kon is showing us the fans in Mima’s hands, their simple task of being kept happy and their death in her palms after performing a scene that would undoubtedly change her reputation and public image for the worse.
Throughout the movie, Kon uses the dialogue in the detective drama’s script as a parallel to what is happening in Mima’s life. While performing the final scene in which her character is revealed to have dissociative identity disorder, Mima says the line “Me? I’m Mima Kirigoe. I’m a pop model… no, an actress.” Then, she slips back into reality as these lines from the script are said, “Dissociative identity disorder. In other words, ‘multiple personality syndrome.’ All those crimes took place when she was some other persona. So where’s the persona of the original Yoko? Yoko Takakura, the original persona, is nothing more than a character in a drama for her.” Kon points everything into the same direction: Mima suffers from dissociative identity disorder and has been killing her set members while under a different persona. Well, in the nature of Satoshi Kon, this is untrue.
After Mima is attacked by her stalker in an empty set and manages to escape, she awakes to her manager, Rumi, by her side in her own home. However, Rumi’s room is an exact replica of Mima’s. Mima confronts Rumi about this, and turns around to see herself in her old performance costume. It is only when she really looks deep that her own face morphs into Rumi’s, and the realization that the killings and stalking and even the website Mima’s Room was all behind the facade of her apparition– Rumi Hidaka.
Kon does not outwardly say this, but rather introduces you to this idea that Rumi in her alternative persona is indistinguishable to the audience and to Mima from Mima herself. Even her room is an exact replica, making scenes completely unrecognizable from the perspective of Rumi and Mima. However, Kon gave us one thing to remember in this moment: the tank of dead fish. In scenes where Mima is herself, her tank is empty or there are remnants of dead fish. In Rumi’s replica room, the fish are alive– giving the audience one distinguishing factor. The “fake” Mima’s audience is dead, while the “real” Mima’s– in reality her manager, Rumi– fish are revived and alive, contrasting Mima’s two public views from before and after she manipulates and changes her reputation.
This tactic from Kon begs a rewatch: only then can you see the factors in behavior, disposition and dialogue that separate Mima from Rumi, as they are virtually the same in presentation. This itself is a reflection of what Rumi herself believes, that she is to her core the real Mima Kirigoe and the other is just an imposter. Kon represents the mindset of Rumi down to how she sees herself and takes that vision and puts it all over “Perfect Blue” so we are subject to that belief as well. Only by looking at the small details can we break from this hallucination, something Rumi herself is unable to do.
Kon finishes the movie with a visitation scene between Mima and Rumi at the mental hospital that Rumi was admitted to. After Mima realized Rumi had been the imposter and stalker all along, Rumi took after Mima with the intention to kill. After chasing her into the road, Mima sacrified herself to save Rumi and shortly after we are brought to the visitation scene. Mima asks how Rumi is doing, and a doctor confirms that she still believes she is the real Mima. Mima gives credit to Rumi for changing her view on life, and it is shown by onlookers and fans around that Mima is now an accredited actress. The movie ends with a look in the rearview mirror and one simple line: “No, I’m real!”
“Perfect Blue” grasps so many factors in animation and uses all of them to their fullest capabilities to show and portray the mind of someone who truly believes and sees themself as a completely different person. The movie and animation is a landmark of its time that showcases a beautiful image of loneliness, public reputation and complete mental disorder. The lines are so intensely blurred on what is real and what is not that Kon makes the possibility of everything being real completely lost and unrealistic to viewers, hiding not only an intruder in plain sight, but the truth alongside it.