careerrapebased on novel or bookparanoiastalkercelebritysingerstalkingfamefemale protagonistpsychological thrillermental illnessmadnesssplit personalityadult animation
Rising pop star Mima quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima's reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.
Rising pop star Mima quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima's reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.
ended up with the same feeling as after la la land, which is, this is probably someone's favourite film but its definitely not a film for me.
I don't have any outright complains or grievances with this. i didn't like the animation style at all, but in general I'm not a fan of anime-style drawings. and as for a movie about rape and patriarchy and such topics, it was too sexualized and male gaze-y for my tastes, but such is the 90s and such is horror. so it didn't really take away much for me.
not as confusing and weird as i was warned by other reviews, but that's a good thing! very easy to connect with and sympathize with. but still, just not for me.
<b>part of:
</b><i><a href="https://boxd.it/BVUTk">challenge: HORRORx52 [2025]</a></i><blockquote>3. the most popular horror film you haven't seen that's <i>not</i> on your watchlist</blockquote><i><a href="https://boxd.it/8HjM">letterboxd top 250 films </a>
<a href="https://boxd.it/2VQVG">top 250 horror films</a>
<a href="https://boxd.it/nVqt6">top 250 most fans </a>
<a href="https://boxd.it/1jMxg">top 100 animation</a></i>
2025-10-14 18:24
Damn I didn't expect the twist. I thought this movie was going to be a snooze because how obvious the stalker is but no. Now I'm not sure if he is actually the hannin too. I mean, he was dead at the end, along with the manager, why the manager died?
Now to the technical side, the scenes where mima wakes up and not remember if she was alive or did anything or did the killing, how do those work? Like did rumi poisoned her or something so she is unconscious? Or maybe Mima is just so pressured she often dissociate?
Was this the story about rumi all along? I don't think so, that wouldn't make sense. Wait, I could just be
How is just wearing a wig disguised rumi to look exactly like idol mima?
Man, all this time I thought the mc Mima was schizophrenic and has a bipolar syndrome or something and the plot was about her split identities.
How do you explain the pizza man clothes with blood in MIma's shelf?
Which events are actually true and which are not? Shit
Wait, rumi's room is exactly the same as mima's.
Whatever the message is, this movie is a good thriller.
Perfect Blue EXPLAINED, please don’t read ahead unless you want SPOILERS
Mima Kirigoe, member of a J-pop idol group named "CHAM!", decides to leave the group to become a full-time actress. She gets stalked by an obsessive fan named Me-Mania, who is upset by her change from a clean-cut image. Following directions from a fan letter, Mima discovers a website called "Mima's Room" containing public diary entries written from her perspective, and which has her daily life and thoughts recorded in great detail. During her acting career, she is joined by manager and former pop-idol Rumi Hidaka, and her agent Tadokoro. Mima confides in Rumi about "Mima's Room", but is advised to ignore it.
Mima's first job is a minor role in a television detective drama called Double Bind, however, Tadokoro lobbies the producers of Double Bind, and succeeds in securing Mima a larger part that involves a rape scene. Despite Rumi's objections, Mima accepts the role, although this leaves her severely affected. On her way home, she sees her reflection dressed in her former idol outfit. She would claim she's "the real Mima". Between the ongoing stresses of filming Double Bind, her lingering regret over leaving CHAM!, her paranoia of being stalked, and her increasing obsession with "Mima's Room", Mima begins to suffer from psychosis: in particular, struggling to distinguish real life from her work in show business, and having repeated apparently unreal sightings of her former self.
Several people who had been involved in her acting are murdered. Mima finds evidence which makes her appear to be the prime suspect, and her mental instability makes her doubt her own memories and innocence, as she recalls brutally murdering photographer Murano. Mima manages to finish shooting Double Bind, the final scene of which reveals that her character killed and assumed the identity of her sister due to trauma-induced dissociative identity disorder. After the rest of the filming staff have left the studio, Me-Mania attempts to rape and kill her, acting on emailed instructions from "the real Mima" to "eliminate the impostor", but Mima knocks him unconscious with a hammer.
Mima is found backstage by Rumi and taken back to Rumi's home, where she wakes up in a room modelled on Mima's own room, only to discover that Rumi was the culprit behind "Mima's Room", the serial murders, and the folie à deux that manipulated and scapegoated Me-Mania. Rumi previously developed a second personality who believed herself to be the "real Mima", using information from Mima's confiding in her as the basis for "Mima's Room". Rumi's "Mima" personality chases Mima through the city to murder her. Mima incapacitates Rumi in self-defense and saves her from being killed by an oncoming truck.
Some time later, Mima is now a well-known actress and visits Rumi, who has been living in a mental facility for some time. The doctor in charge says that Rumi still believes she is a pop idol most of the time. Mima says she's learned a lot from her experience thanks to Rumi. As Mima leaves the hospital, she overhears two nurses talking about her, a famous actress, before they think she is a Mima lookalike, as the real Mima Kirigoe would supposedly have no reason to visit a mental institution. As Mima enters her car, she smiles at herself in the rear-view mirror before declaring, "No, I'm the real thing."