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Perfect Blue
By Charles Cassady Jr.,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Popular anime is mature/violent, despite sunny art style.
A Lot or a Little?
What you will—and won't—find in this movie.
Where to Watch
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Perfect Blue
Community Reviews
Based on 8 parent reviews
Graphic Sexual Violence in Top Notch Psychological Horror
Its a masterpiece but not suitable for kids
What's the Story?
In a plot-twisting chiller no less grisly for being rendered as a Japanese cartoon, winsome young singer-dancer Mima leaves the bouncy band Cham to strike out on her own as an actress. This career switch displeases some of Tokyo's more Mima-crazed fans. Mima's manager shows her a new thing called the World Wide Web (Mima's total Internet cluelessness is pretty funny; remember the movie is from the mid-1990s), with an instant homepage for Mima's blog entries. While Mima struggles through her first film role, a thankless bit in a cop thriller, she starts receiving dangerous threats, and entries on the blog site turn extremely personal and uncomfortable -- and Mima can't remember writing them. People get murdered around her, and bewildered Mima wonders if she is really herself at all, or her character in the movie, or an abandoned career path, in danger of termination.
Is It Any Good?
This is one of the better-known (in the West) adult Japanese animated features; don't be fooled by the stylistic resemblance to Laputa or Steamboy, though -- this is altogether nastier stuff. No talking-animal sidekicks, no cute robots -- although the filmmakers slyly use the brightly colored "shojo" cartoon imagery and "J-pop" tunes in a few masterfully weird suspense scenes, such as when Mima is threatened by a hallucinatory (?) alternative version of herself as a prancing, fairylike sprite.
The tricky plot challenges viewers to think what is real and what is imaginary or artifice, rather like A Nightmare on Elm Street, though not all of the storyline seems entirely explicable by the conclusion. It's not unlike many "slasher"-type movies done in Italy in the 1960s and '70s, now with cult followings, that prioritized delirious cinematography, gore, girls, and surreal atmosphere (and badly dubbed dialogue) ahead of logic. Those weren't for kids, and, though it goes lighter on the sex/drugs, neither is this.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the twists in the storyline. Did you see the surprises coming?
Does Mima remind you of any real-life troubled pop-starlets/actresses in the headlines?
Do you think this is more effective as a cartoon than it would have been in live-action?
Movie Details
- In theaters: February 28, 1998
- On DVD or streaming: May 2, 2000
- Cast: Junko Iwao , Rica Matsumoto , Shinpachi Tsuji
- Director: Satoshi Kon
- Studio: Manga Video
- Genre: Anime
- Run time: 80 minutes
- MPAA rating: R
- MPAA explanation: animated sequences of violence and nudity and for brief language
- Last updated: August 2, 2023
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