THREE Perfect Blue

Anime often gets looked down on I/S being animated excuses for violence and sexual gratu­

ity with plots that frequently seem targeted at the teenage audience. There is a great deal of truth in that but such a view also overlooks films like Perfect Blue where the animated medium is used to tell a complex and nuanced sto�y .... And the plot of someone caught in the middle of a circle of dreadful events whilst also questioning their own sanity is a classic staple of more accepted cine­

matic genres. This is a good film to show the nay sayers to demonstrate that anime is capable of quite sophisticated tales. It also rewards with strong characterization for tbe most part and pro­

vides some musing on tbe price offame. tbe demands offa1ls and the often u/lScyupulous 1Iature of people quite prepared to exploit tbe unseasoned Mima. - "banksie "

Tbe colollr ofitlusion is perftct blue. - Pt·rftct Blue Tagline. Japancse version

An i nternationally acclaimed and culturally astute psycho-thriller,

Perfect Blue

marked Satoshi Kon's debut as a director through ^a fusion of spellbinding animation techn iques and harrow­

ingly mature themes . The film has i ndeed played a key part in conv incing even the most skep­

tical audiences that animation cannot be unproblematically relegated to the status of i n fantile entertainment and that anime, specifically, is capable of proving every bit as sophisticated as any respectable cinematic form . I n the case of Kawaj iri's

Ninja Scroll,

as we have seen , th is goal was reached by means o f an utterly unsent imental exposure of the evils coursing a specific historical era . Kon's movie, for its part , achieves the same objective through a sustained explo­

ration of the darkest facets of individual psyches and of the i mpact thereon o f a p roverbially perfidious sphere o f cultural production and consumption .

Kon's

Perfect Blue

was originally i ntended to be a 90-m i n u te l ive-action d i rect-to-video p roject. However, as the p roduction h istory presented i n the movie's official site explains,

Prod uction was delayed during early 1 9 9 5 due to the Kobe earthquakel and the decision to animate the fi l m was made. However, Perftct BIlle dealt with a subj ect never before addressed by anime and i t was agreed to employ the best names cu rrently working i n the industry. A new system of production would be adopted that did not fal l p rey to the constraints of traditiollal animation. It was fel t that anime had not adopted the eclectic nature of m anga and was i n danger of confining itself to the same characters and sub­

ject matter. Perftct Blue offered a real opportunity to break the mold and create someth ing different [Per­

ftct Blue: Production Notes J .

Kon h i mself had p resumed that the project's rather h umble origins i n the OVA i ndus­

try would make i t ill-suited to theatrical release , and had certa i n ly never anticipated its sen­

sationally positive reception not only on home turf but p ractically all over the globe . Asked

37

3 8 A N I M E h :TERSECTIO:"JS

by Tom Mies (on behalf of the online journal

Midnight £.ye)

, " What's you r reaction to the success and the unexpectedly long life of

Perftct Blue?"

the directo r riposted :

I can only say it was a surprise . Because in the beginn ing this project was i ntended for video. As its creator I was actually a bit hesitant about Perftct Blue getting shown in theaters. Bur it was, and as a result the film was invited to a number of film festivals and seen by m any different audiences. I also got to visit m any cou ntries, so I was happy with it after al l . The fil m was much more appreciated by those audiences I 'd imagined, so I was quite perplexed at the same time.

Altho ugh

Perftct Blue

is loosely based on the novel of the same title by Yos h i kazu Takeuch i , the thematic twists and philosophical perspectives that are ultimately most pivotal to its cumulative identity as a work of art have sprung entirely from the director's own i mag­

ination. Kon has indeed stressed that the story presented in the film is quite different from the novel on nu merous counts: "The idea of a film within a fi l m , and the idea o f a blu rred border between the real world and imagination , those were my ideas and they weren't in the novel" (Kon 2 0 0 1 ) . A l ive-action movie more faithful to the parent text, titled

Perftct Blue:

Yume Nara Samete

and directed by Toshiki Sato , was produced in 2002.

The fi l m's p rotagonist, M i m a Kirigoe, is the centerpiece o f a trio o f Lol i ta-l ike pop singers called Cham who decides to quit the group i n order to p u rsue fame as an actress . Her agent , Ru m i , is far from supportive of this career move , believing that M i rna's i mage as the i ncarnation o f squeaky-clea n , Snow-White innocence will be irretrievably impai red by her shift to act i ng - especially since her first major part is i n a lurid TV soap about a serial killer entitled

Double Bind.

The agent's misgivings are soon corroborated by actual events: the show requi res Mirna to adopt a decidedly sul try persona that is starkly at odds with the white­

knickered proj ection idol ized by her erstwhile fans. Her compliant submission to raunchy photo shoots fu rther alienates the once loyal crowds.

Junko Iwao's personal engagement with the task of lending Mima's character a voice for the original Japanese version o f the movie parallels the protagon ist's experience . To this effect , the actress has observed :

When I got the storyboard and the script, to tell you the truth, I had some m ixed feeli ngs abollt it. I had made up my m i nd ^{t o} accept the role at the time of the aud ition, but I was a l ittle concerned about the violent scenes. Because I did n't have any experience acting violent scenes in the past . . . . I t h i n k I feel exactly the same as Mima feels in this story. This was a challenging role for me as an actress and I wanted to over­

come as many obstacles as I could, j ust as Mima does in the story. I 've played cutesy roles in the past , but I feel that Mima and I are alike . . . . The directors and creators of this p roject have extremely h igh standards and expectations. If my delivery was less than 100%, they were on to m e right away .. . . The d ifficult scenes for me were when M i m a shouted loudly or when she was out of breath from chas i ng "vi rtual Minla" [ Iwao] . Mima's rel i nquishing o f her old sel f is sealed by her involvement as the victim in a par­

ticularly graphic rape scene, made additionally disturbing by her performance in a garb mod­

elled on Mima's Cham costume w ith an extra soft-porn twist. (This sequence will be retu rned to later in this chapter.) Alternately disappointed and confused by her novel role, the p rotag­

onist begins to lose her hold on real ity. Shocked to discover what claims to be her own diary on a popular website dubbed " M ima's Room," anguished by the realization that the contents o f the log are impeccably accurate , tortured by phantasmatic halluci nations of her former self garbed i n Cham gear, and stalked by the psychotic fa n Uchida (a . k . a . " Mimaniac," also ren ­ dered a s " Me-Mania" ) ' who regards the new Mima a s an impostor, t h e young woman is grad­

ually engulfed in a paral lel u n ive rse wherein fact and fiction seaml essly - and o ften vengefully - coalesce . Most memorable, in this respect , is the sequence i n which the heroine

Three - Perfect Blue ^{3 9}

wakes up afrer an i ntensely traumatic nightmare a n d barely has time to draw a sigh of rel ief at the realization that the experience was purely oneiric before the very same occurrence starts replaying in her ostensibly conscious life . A deft visualization of Mirna's psychological predica­

ment , the sequence also fu nctions sel f-reflexively as a subtle critique of the numbing repeti­

tiveness of much com mercial ani me.

Ruby Marlow, the English voice act ress for Mirna, has expressively assessed the heroine's intrinsic duality:

Tech nically, w e k e p t the two obvious M i m a characters separate . There was t h e "real" M i m a and the "vi r­

tual" Mima . . . the M i m a that was al most l i ke ^a phantom , still dressed i n her performance olllfir . We did one o f them all the way t h rough , and then we went back and did the other, so we kept them separate and showed certain character tr^aits of each : the v i rtual Mima was lighter and brighter all the time, although she h ad an agenda. The real Mima was broken down within that character into several different ones . . . evcn though I didn't rea lly know el'fI" exactly what h e r real ity was ^.. . t o me i t was all reali t y - i t had t o be IMarlow] .

The tech n ical strategy emb raced by Kon and h is team has undeniably paid off, insofar as the two Mi mas' distinct personalities are palpably appreciable throughout the fi l m . Marlow's own willingness to approach each and every si tuation in which the heroine is ca ught as potentially real has contributed significantly to the final product's affective quality, commun icating a gen ­ uine impression of both uncertainty a n d ingenuou sness which might have b e e n only partially articulated had the actress made up her mind a priori as to what counted as real ity and what as i l lusion.

On the technical plane, Mi ma's displacement is most effectively and succinctly conveyed by frames that deftly capitalize on intrepid layering techn iques, wh ile concurrently throwing into relief the hand-drawn component and graphic conventions o f traditional anime. An espe­

cially striking exam ple is supplied by the extreme close-up depicting Mirna as she stares with mixed horror, disbelief and grief at the i nexpl icably dead Tetra fish l i mply suspended i n her m i n i -aquariu m . Ko n's sleek choreography conj ures up an eerie space i n which the heroine and the obj ect of her stunned gaze appear to interact and even coalesce . No less i mpressive is the scene, set i n a subway carriage , in which a desolate "real" Mirna catches her reflection in a window and sees not her current self but a taunti n gly cheerful Mirna in her pop- idol incar­

nation . This economical image communicates the you n g woman's psychological and sensory dislocation more radically than extensive dialogue ever would.

Kon utilizes reflections in myriad glass su rfaces th rougho ut the fi l m so as to t ransm i t i n a visually consistent fash ion t h e doubling, splitti ng, polarizing a n d dissociative m echanisms affiicting the main characters' psyches . Furthermore ,

Perfect Blue

featu res a p lethora o f glass surfaces of specifically tech nological derivation alongside those p rovided by basic architecture and interior design. These are introduced as a means of suggesting that virtually all the expe­

riences dramatized in the film are synthetical ly mediated and cannot, therefo re , be taken as transparent wi ndows onto a character's real ity - whatever this migh t b e . Kon has commented on this motif in an interview for the

Perfect Blue

official website :

Most of the fi l m is set indoors . M i m a's room , Uch ida the fan's roo m , even film stu d i o . The other M i m a also makes h e r fi rst appearancc from t h e PC i n M i rna's room. To the I thought l o n g a n d hard abo llt how the other M i m a should besr make her appearance, and i t was Murai [ the fil m's scriptwriter]

who came up with the idea of the I nternet : the homepage Minds Room. In this way, we decided to make all of the rooms evoke the same thing. There arc rhree "screens" i n the room where M irna l ives: a TV, a PC and a tropi^{c a}l fish tank with the same 3-by-4 d imensions as a monitor. We also shot M i nds room as

4 0 AN I M E I NTERSECTIONS

i f i t was being v iewed on a TV screen . Th is is because we wanted to give a d i luted sense of real ity, as if all of the events were taki ng place within a TV screen of some ki nd. Later, when the scriptwriter Shiburani comes i nto the parking lot, the entrance is framed as if it were a TV screen, with the same 3:4 dimensions [Kon 1998 1 .

I n h is own assessment o f t h e protagon ist's predicament, the English voice actor for M ima­

niac, Bob Marks, suggests that his character favors Mima out of the th ree Cham girls n o t merely because of h e r pivotal role in t h e group but also, more i mportantly, because o f the latent sense of powerlessness she transm i ts : "She seemed to be the voice of the Cham girls, o r the m a i n focus, altho ugh she was portrayed a s a very gentle , actually more vulnerable char­

acter and not as aggress ive as the other girls and I guess somehow more

accessible.

So I guess to this character [Mimaniacl she was probably more appealing" (Marks) . M i m a is i ndubitably depicted as a rather naive and cautious person, unequipped with the headstrong ambitious­

ness stereotypically associated with rising stars or the vivacious conviviality that usually dis­

tinguishes the pop idol figure . Nor does she exh ibit the vaguest trace of the sci-fi glamour that accrues to other classic anime idols: most notably, Lin Minmei from

Superdimensional Fortress Macross

(and its American version known as

Robotech,

1 9 8 2 ) , Miho Utsuse from

Key the Metal Idol

(1994) and Sharon Apple from

Macross Plus - The MOllie

(1994) .

I m mersed i n an environment that promotes self-aggrandizement as the norm , yet u n able or unwilling to play the game on her own terms, Mima has no alternative but to succumb to the dubious agendas o f an overzealous talent agency manager and a suffocatingly m aternal business agent . In a sense, even the decision to quit the music wo rld for the screen is never overtly posited as the p rotagon ist's own personal choice . The young woman's puppet-like standing is economically captured by the scene in which the two characters eager to shape her future career argue about her chances o f success in the television i ndustry i n M i m a's very pres­

ence , as though she were no more sentient - let alone the h ub o f the debate - than a piece of office furniture .

Matters are fu rther, a n d gruesomely, com plicated b y the m u rder o f key members o f Mima's new business and, worse still , b y her suspicion that s h e m ay b e responsible for their perpetration. O nce M i maniac himself has been murdered, the true culprit turns out to be Rum i , the sufferer of a complex case of Multiple Personality Syndrome. Mima is eventual ly acclaimed as a talented performer, comes to terms with her adult role, and magnanimously goes on visiting her deluded ex-agent after the latter has been indefinitely hospitalized. How­

ever, this relatively "neat" ending does not totally erase

Perfect Blue's

status as an arresting visual experience that leaves many issues open to interpretation even as it h ints at partial explanations .

One possible i nterpretation h inges on the thesis that the fi l m dramatizes a concatena­

tion of events as seen from the perspectives of th ree varyingly d isturbed characters : Mima, Rum i and M imaniac . Rumi would finally appear to have orchestrated the p l o t i n accordance with her own maniacal perceptions of reality and identity, while Rum i and M i man iac are pawns that easily lend themselves to man ipulation as a result of their respective experiences of emo­

tional and cultural dislocation. Another interpretation , here adopted as something of a work­

i ng model , p roposes that the delusional web woven by the movie consists primarily of a series of parallels and convergences centered on Mima, Rum i and their both personal and profes­

sional relationship. In this reading, Miman iac operates essentially as an i ntermediate and cat­

alyzing agency, and the TV soap as a metafi l m ic commentary on the main plot.

Three � Perfcct Blue 4 1

Correlations between Mirna's and Rumi's identities and experiences abou n d throughout.

Both are ex-idol singers and both have difficulties coming to terms with the younger woman's new role : in M irna's case , due to her perception of the transition from pop idol to actress as a potential descent from a state of purity to a "tarnished" self-image (which could be read as her reaction to the rift between the p re-adult and adult domains) ; in Rum i's case, due to her subliminal conviction that the demise of Mirna as adolescent pop singer amounts to a fading of her own identity - of what she stood for i n the days of her popularity and of what vestiges of those ti mes she has thus far managed to salvage thro ugh v icari ous identification with her charge .

Furthermore , i t should be noted that it is after the execution of the rape scene that the film increasingly foregrounds Mirna's decline i nto madness, especially as i mages of her previ­

ous self attired i n the o utfit she wore at her last Cham concert haunt her and defiantly claim to be the "real" Mirna . Those hallucinations emanate from Rumi's psyche no less than from Mirna's own , i nsofar as the virginally immaculate persona they seek to enshrine corresponds to the agent's own yearn ing to p reserve a vanishing past and a correspondingly evaporating grasp of selfhood. This psychological cross-hatch ing is rei n forced by the sequence in which the character of the photographer is murdered and Mirna appears to be com mitting the crime.

I n fact, as it later becomes patent , it is effectively Rum i that is performing the act wh ile delu­

sionally believing that she is M i rn a .

I n both instances, t h e outcome is a radical mental unanchoring conducive to paranoia and schizoid self-persecution as far as Mirna is concerned, and to the fabrication of an intri­

cate slasher yarn replete with tech nological props, masquerades and more than moderate a dose of sheer bloodlust i n Rumi's case. The rape scene sealing Mirna's shift from pop idol to soap actress functions as a dieget ic pivot, bringing the two characters together thro ugh a v ivid depiction of sorrowful pathos . Rum i's tears at the end of the shooting intimate that the pain she feels is arguably more wrenching than any feel i ng experienced by Mirna herself. After all , the older woman has more to lose than the rising starlet does .

The rape sequence as we see i t i n its on-set construction is by no means a p ru rient con­

cession to the dubious p redilections of anime viewers keen on erotic titillation . In fact, i t func­

tions as an ironically deconstructive exposure of the ci nematic process and of both the p leasures and the tribulations it entails. The

Animefu

review of

Perfect Blue,

i n this respect , p raises the film for its "sublime undermining of the rape scene for the TV show - with the actors caught in uncomfortable poses between camera angle changes . Quite cleverly removing the eroticism of the scene and having a quiet little j ab at sex scenes in general in visual m edia" ("banksie" ) . I t should also b e noted, however, that even though the sequence is so self-consciously orchestrated, from a formal and techn ical perspective, as to stand out as somethi n g o f a play with i n a play, it nonetheless remains deeply disturbing at the affective leve l . (The play within a play i n

Hamlet

p rovides an apt antecedent, i n this rega rd .) This is a logical coroll ary o f the uncomp romising realism with which Kon has chosen to choreograph M i rn a's enticing act , the mounting l ustfulness of the strip club clients, the victim's feverish struggle to disengage her­

self from the thicket o f lewd hands reaching out towards her defenseless body, and her even­

tual collapse at the edge of the strip stage l ike a discarded doll . According to H. Byn u m ,

tual collapse at the edge of the strip stage l ike a discarded doll . According to H. Byn u m ,

In document Dani Cavallaro - Anime Intersections: Tradition and Innovation in Theme and Technique (Page 44-61)