BONUS EPISODE: "Perfect Blue"
Added 2023-08-30 00:49:02 +0000 UTCWe may be on vacation but the bonus episodes are not! And we've got a killer episode today, Satoshi Kon's influential "Perfect Blue," about a J-pop star turned actress losing her mind! Will Todd finally like an anime you made him watch?
Comments
Glad you two put this episode out. Perfect Blue had been on my watchlist for a while, so I decided I should finally get around to watching it before listening to this. As you two said, it's a pretty good movie but an abruptly positive ending. A couple of points you brought up: the reason I thought Rumi had such trouble watching Mima in the r**e scene is that she idealized idol Mima, and a part of idol culture in Japan that keeps getting brought up especially by "idol Mima" is "purity," so her participation in that scene just shatters that. IIRC, she doesn't leave until after the cut where the other actor apologizes and Mima says it's fine. Also, from the brief glimpse of the fish in the replica room, I thought they were fake fish sitting in the tank and was one of the clues it wasn't her place.
Bryan C
2023-09-19 19:10:16 +0000 UTCAn excellent episode. I’m glad Todd liked this movie.
Elizabeth
2023-09-01 02:33:49 +0000 UTCWow, thanks for this. I knew Perfect Blue as the work that put Kon on the radar, but it was also really different from the rest of his output. This explains a lot, I agree with your assessment as well.
Joe G
2023-08-31 17:39:09 +0000 UTCMy full reaction to the movie is probably WAY too long for a comment section. Perfect Blue is one those **1/2 with affection movies. It was originally supposed to be a live-action movie, and Kon was kind of the last creative force involved instead of the first (This is his one big work where he's not in on the script). What it feels like is a decent, obviously Hitchcock-inspired novel adaptation that got elevated by Kon's narrative ideas, but there are parts where it feels like a thin paintjob over the flaws. The ending is the main part of that. On top of the main villain reveal being one of those plot twists where it feels like they put it on the least expected character to be shocking, it sends the unintended message that the people who don't abide by modern standards of beauty are the real evil ones. Yeah, there's this broken system with slimy people who do their best to keep their slime hidden in the back of the fridge, but the REAL evil is the "ugly" people who want to be the REAL people. This isn't what the movie means at all. OBVIOUSLY. But the people who "ruin" the main character's "perfect" image are kind of sleazy, yes, but they're doing a job in this "society," it's society's fault. The ugly people are simply jealous, completely broken psychos. Also, the "sarcastic" happy endings feels like one of those Hitchcock resolutions that teleports everything to best ending, and lets the film critics fill in what the director meant by that. But Kon was obviously a great talent who would take off when given more creative control, and he proved that with... everything else he did.
Joe Straatmann
2023-08-30 11:34:21 +0000 UTC
