After reading 331096 (yeah 6 digits) I was utterly blown away by how much it alienated me. It was truly terrifying. It was a mixture of gore and psychological horror perfectly blending together to create quite a hard-hitting story in only 10 pages. Compared to other works of Amagappa Shoujogun, especially their Mountain of Amputee are focused on supernatural or physical horror. Not psychological. However, after finishing Atataki, I was yearning for something more. I wanted to find out the extent to which anime and manga could make me feel this way.
Compared to other mediums. Anime never felt serious enough to be considered psychological for me. Yes, there are shows like AOT with huge backstories and meaningful tragedies. But nothing ever gave me chills. This right here is where Perfect Blue shines the most. The movie felt real. The characters felt like real human beings. I sometimes miss this in anime. The medium is heavily influenced by highly saturated and over the top character tropes and archetypes. Because of this, you don’t often see ‘normal’ people in them. This is why I love the art style of this show so much too. Reminiscent of Serial Experiments Lain, another show with a gorgeous art style, this show has this simple yet detailed aesthetic. You can understand a lot of the story just by looking at the background. I really appreciate the amount of thought that went into the little things. The little nuances.
For most of the run time. I was sitting at the edge of my seat with my mouth agape. My surprise was fueled by one, the incredible story. And two the cuts. How can I ever not mention the cuts? From the very beginning of the show, the transitions were simply awe-inspiring. Ever since I saw its first major transition. The one where Mima the idol snapped her head to the side on stage and we’re inside of a grocery store with Mima the actress. I literally wound back and re-watched that scene three times at how awesome it was. But guess what? It was only the beginning. The movie is littered with extremely well-done cuts like that. If the cuts were purely aesthetic and without meaning I wouldn’t be fussing over them this much either. They played a huge role in how we understood the story. In the later part of the movie, these cuts were the hallmark of Mima’s degrading psyche. They intertwined with the plot itself. Making them more of a narrative element than a visual one.
After finishing the movie. I spent a good amount of time just pacing around my room. The ending left me in such a place that I just couldn’t stop thinking. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a piece of media that pushed my mind into as big of a clusterfuck as this. It also reminded me a lot about another psychological thriller I love. Christopher Nolan’s Memento. Man, that was a good movie. Took me two watched to get it down properly. I didn’t even wait a single second after my first viewing to get right back in. I went into that movie during lunch and came out at dinner after two whole watch throughs. And it did not disappoint. I feel Perfect Blue is very similar in that regard. Both of these movies were primarily powered by their focal points. Memento with our amnesic protag and here our mentally degrading protag. Both showed the viewer what the main character saw. Not what really happened. And I gotta say. I can’t help but praise this perspective choice. It was like we were literally in the shoes of our character. It didn’t matter if things really happened or not. What mattered was how our main character changed through the way she perceived the world. Which we get to see from the front row.
Honestly, I really loved Perfect Blue. In a way, it made me feel how it was like for someone suffering from issues like the characters we saw. Because they felt like real human beings. Unlike flushed out characters in other shows, I felt I could connect with the characters here on a level far more than those on most traditional shows. All in all. This is one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve ever seen, no doubt about it. From it’s aesthetic to it’s characters. The movies is beautiful stylistically and plot-wise.