Pop singer Mima Kirigow looks forward to a bright new career when she quits her chart-topping trio to become an actress. When she lands a role in a sexually charged murder mystery, Mima’s life begins to fall apart. Reality and hallucinations merge into a terrifying netherworld where innocence is lost and dreams become nightmares. Quickly descending into a dangerous state of paranoid delusions, Mima discovers Internet sites describing every intimate detail of her life. Helpless and afraid, she watches as her associates are threatened and killed by a mysterious stalker. In the tradition of great suspense masters, director Satoshi Kon brings Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s thrilling suspense novel to the screen, in a tour de force that brings animation to a bold new level. —Anchor Bay
Satoshi Kon is a film director from Kushiro, Hokkaidō, Japan. Kon attended Musashino College of the Arts and intended to become a painter. After college, he worked with Katsuhiro Otomo on the manga World Apartment Horror. Kon entered the anime industry by working as set designer for Roujin Z (1991), for which Otomo was the screenwriter and mechanical designer. Kon’s early work was strongly influenced by Otomo due to Kon’s experience with him. Afterwards, Kon made his screenwriting debut with Magnetic Rose, a section of the anthology film Memories.
In 1997, Satoshi Kon released his directorial debut film Perfect Blue, which was turned into a feature film from an original video animation in the middle of production. His next film, Millennium Actress, was released in 2001 to several film festivals and won numerous awards. Having created two films that blend dreams and reality, Kon decided to work on a more linear and traditional… read more
Perfect Blue has been called a clash between De Palma and Argento but I'd be inclined to go further than that. The film's story and thematic elements relating to identity or life as a performance are very evocative of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which was released several years later infact. There are so many levels of depth to dissect with this one, it makes for multiple viewings if only for the smaller details.
Pretty much the blueprint for all of Kon's later work. All of his thematic obsessions such as femininity, simulacra, identity, the interplay of reality and fiction, media culture and its "fans", etc, are all already here. Visually wonderful despite the occasionally evident low budget, with some of the best use of color I've seen in an anime. And the grislier parts still make me shudder, more so than most live-action.
Dark rumination on fame and identity and mental illness. Satoshi Kon was a master of surreal and inventive animation.
The news that groundbreaking anime director Satoshi Kon has passed away at the age of 47 was initially met with skepticism, but many are
Para se livrar da imagem de ser um efêmero ídolo da musica pop, a protagonista Mima Kirigow se vira para a carreira de atriz em filmes que exigiam algo substancial dela, mostrando o seu amadurecimento… read review
Revu donc et avec un plaisir agréable, même si c’est légèrement moins bon que ce que j’en avais gardé comme souvenir. On sent que c’est le premier long-métrage de Kon, mais il explore déjà les thèmes… read review
