Okay, I often don’t review anime, and I can’t say that Perfect Blue is speculative fiction. However, this is one film that is just so very interesting that I have to write about it.

Perfect Blue was directed by Satoshi Kon, who passed away in 2010, and left behind many great animated films. I haven’t seen them all, but I remember seeing Paprika many years ago and still not getting it.

I believe that these are the films I need to see right now. The ones that are very confusing, and have no sense of closure. I think we as audiences have adapted to a certain method of storytelling, and if any movie can get away with going against it, that is good. Unless every film ends up like this.

Perfect Blue is about a Japanese pop star named Mima, and she has decided to transition into being an actress. Like most pop stars that try this, she overcompensates and shows up in some “dark” films.

This is where the film gets really confusing. Mima then begins to appear on a show which is about a murderer with a dual personality, which actually describes her to a T. If this is what is happening, in all honesty, I can’t really tell what is real and what isn’t in this film. The storyline of the film is structured in such a way that it is really difficult to tell, honestly.

This film bears a strong resemblance to another film known as Black Swan, which I haven’t reviewed, but it is about a ballerina who is losing her grip on reality. This film came out before that in 1997, and I guessed this because it shows a world just being introduced to the the Internet. So yeah, it is a little dated, but there is something about this film that just works.