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Perfect Blue (Japanese: パーフェクトブルー, Hepburn: Pāfekuto Burū) is a 1997 Japanese anime psychological thriller film directed by Satoshi Kon. It is loosely based on the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis (パーフェクトブルー：完全変態, Pāfekuto Burū: Kanzen Hentai) by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, with a screenplay by Sadayuki Murai. Featuring the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shiho Niiyama, Masaaki Okura, Shinpachi Tsuji and Emiko Furukawa, the plot follows a member of a Japanese idol group who retires from music to pursue an acting career. As she becomes a victim of stalking by her obsessive fan, gruesome murders take place, and she begins losing her grip on reality. The film deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, a commonly found theme in Kon's other works, such as Millennium Actress (2001) and Paprika (2006). Plot Mima Kirigoe, member of a J-pop idol group named "CHAM!", decides to leave the group to become a full-time actress. Many of her fans get frustrated and disappointed by her change from a clean-cut image, particularly an obsessive fan known as Mamoru Uchida or Me-Mania, who starts to stalk her. Following directions from a fan letter, Mima discovers a website called "Mima's Room" containing public diary entries written from her perspective, which has her daily life and thoughts recorded in great detail. During her former idol and 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 mentally distressed. On her way home, she sees her reflection dressed in her former idol outfit. The reflection claims 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 acting life, and having repeated apparently unreal sightings of her former self, "the real Mima". Several people who had been involved in her acting are murdered. Mima finds evidence in her closet which suggests her to be the prime suspect, and her mental instability makes her doubt her own memories and innocence, as she recalls brutally murdering perverted 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, acting on e-mailed instructions from "the real Mima" to "eliminate the impostor", attempts to rape and kill her, but Mima kills him with a blow to the temple from 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 an alternate personality who believed herself to be the "real Mima", using information from Mima's confiding in her as the basis for "Mima's Room". She also reveals her motives: she is displeased by Mima retiring from the idol industry and hence, seeks to destroy and replace her in order to 'redeem' her image. At her wits' end, Rumi's "Mima" personality chases Mima through the city to murder her. Mima accidentally incapacitates Rumi with a mirror shard during a struggle. After freeing herself, Rumi hallucinates the lights of an oncoming truck as stage lights and steps out into the road to pose in front of the approaching vehicle, but Mima manages to save her from being run over at the last moment. With that, Mima's hallucinations seem to be over. Some time later, Mima is now a well-known actress and visits Rumi in a mental institution. Rumi's doctor says that she still believes she is a pop idol most of the time. Mima says she's learned a lot from her experiences thanks to Rumi. As Mima leaves the hospital, she overhears two nurses mention her. They think she is a 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 Mima Kirigoe." Cast The following actors in the English adaptation are listed in the credits without specification to their respective roles: James Lyon, Frank Buck, David Lucas, Elliot Reynolds, Kermit Beachwood, Sam Strong, Carol Stanzione, Ty Webb, Billy Regan, Dari Mackenzie, George C. Cole, Syd Fontana, Sven Nosgard, Bob Marx, Devon Michaels, Robert Wicks and Mattie Rando. Production This film was Satoshi Kon's first directorial effort. It all started when Masao Maruyama, a producer at Madhouse at the time, who had appreciated Kon's work on the OVA JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, contacted him to ask if he would be interested in directing in the fall of 1994. The original author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, allegedly first planned a live-action film based on his novel. However, due to funding difficulties, it was downgraded to direct-to-video and then direct-to-video animation. When Kon received the initial offer, it was for an OVA project, so he made Perfect Blue as a video animation. Then, it was decided to be released as a movie in a hurry just before its completion. This work was originally made as a video animation for a narrow market, so it was expected to disappear as soon as a few people talked about it. The fact that such a work was treated as a film, invited to many film festivals around the world, and released as a package in many countries was unexpected for those involved. Psychological horror was not a mainstream genre in Japanese animation, and there was no precedent for it at the time, so it would normally have been rejected. So no one thought it would be a hit since it was just adopted by chance. That's why Kon was able to get the job. By the time Kon was offered the job, the title Perfect Blue and the content, a story about a B-class idol and a perverted fan had already been set. He hadn't read the original novel and only read the script for the film, which was said to be close to the original, and the script was never used in the actual film. There is no play-within-a-play in the original story, nor is there a motif of blurring the boundary between dream and reality. The first plot was a simple splatter/psycho-horror story about an idol girl that is attacked by a perverted fan who cannot tolerate her image change, and there were also many depictions of bleeding, so it was not suitable for Kon .... Discover the Emiko Inoue Susan Napier popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Emiko Inoue Susan Napier books.