Perfect Blue

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ssxpro

Completely Average High School Student
I know its an anime film that's been talked about a lot on these forums already, but there didn't seem to be an obvious thread in this section of the site, so here's a quick recommendation for this film.

I recently bought Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue in a boxset. I have so far only watched the latter, which I actually had lower expectations for, but thought the movie was excellent when I got round to seeing it.

Some of the scenes people have listed in the general anime chat forum (in the "most disturbing scenes thread) were indeed a bit much, but they were no worse than many of today's live action films, so I didn't feel that it was in anyway giving anime a bad name or falling back into a reputation of ultra-violence and porn.

As has been mentioned in many places, the music was very effectively used and carefully builds the tension throughout the movie. Its perhaps one of my favourite features of the movie and helped to link together each scene nicely (particularly useful since its often hard to tell when the main character is truly experiencing reality).

I don't want to go into too much detail, so as to avoid spoilers, but for anyone who hasn't yet given this movie a try (and is over 18), I'd recommend it. I'm looking forward to seeing Millennium Actress too and might post some comments if this topic isn't shouted down.
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I've seen it around and heard about it, but haven't got around to seeing it. Cheers for the recommendation, I might have to go treat myself later :D
 
Yeah I think its great. First saw it years ago when it was on sci-fi an I liked it so much I went an got the dvd after watching it. Happy I did :)
 
I've seen it and its a grea film, but despite the heroin being a really popular singer, she cant sing =P lol
 
Actually she wasn't that popular but she had a cult fan following.

Great film, one of my favourites live action or otherwise. It's one of the few films that I thought the violence and nudity actually helped express the situation rather than just being there for the sake of it like a lot of other films.
 
WTFDaveMustaine said:
Actually she wasn't that popular but she had a cult fan following.
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Yeah, they hadn't had a single in the top 100 IIRC.

I really liked Perfect Blue, I remember being quite impressed that such a mature plot could be compressed into a short film and still feel complete. Admittedly, I do think it suffers somewhat from the time limitation - characters other than Mima aren't particularly well developed - but other than that, I don't see any problems with it.
It was the first of the Satashi Kon works that I picked up, and since then I've watched all of the rest of them. The others have less violence, but still retain the "dark" feel to them, to a greater or lesser extent, and have the "ugly" character designs that you get in Perfect Blue.
I hope you enjoy Millenium Actress, personally I'd be hard pressed to chose between them.

EDIT: ssxpro: Wow, someone else who goes to Bath Uni. 8)
 
Perfect Blue is one of my top ten favourites and like quite a few others round here it was the film that got me hooked on Kon's stuff - even though it's almost a decade old now it's still a fantastic looking and sophisticated film.

While there are some very disturbing scenes in there (it has an 18 cert for a good reason!) the said scenes are in context with the story. Some of the film's themes and ideas have cropped up in his other stuff too, particularly some of the more off-the-wall moments of Paranoia Agent.
 
Satoshi Kon's stuff is great. But actually Perfect Blue i think is the one i neglected the most. I got it yonks ago on tape, back in 2001 i think. I watched it, it was ok, but didn't really stun me. However more recently i got Tokyo Godfathers (Damn ye all for no English dub!) which was great, and then Millennium Actress, which is brilliant.

I also recently watched Paranoia Agent on Fansubs (i was going to get the dvds, but i am not spending money on a cut dvd 3) and its really great, totally twists my head around that does!

Great Director. Up there in my top 3 people in anime, including Yoshitisho ABe and Miyazaki.
 
Warmaster said:
(i was going to get the dvds, but i am not spending money on a cut dvd 3)
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Get it quickly. The first batch doesn't seem to be cut, the next batch might not be so lucky though.
 
WTFDaveMustaine said:
Warmaster said:
(i was going to get the dvds, but i am not spending money on a cut dvd 3)
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Get it quickly. The first batch doesn't seem to be cut, the next batch might not be so lucky though.
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Unfortunately i just spent a fortune finishing off the Ghibli collection and buying all 4 dvds of Serial Experiments Lain. The lack of cash ist a problem! :roll:
 
Ramadahl said:
ssxpro: Wow, someone else who goes to Bath Uni. 8)
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Woah, hey! Didn't spot your location 'till just then! Don't worry if you don't want to give away anything on the internet - that's understandable - but which department are you with? I'm over in maths trying to be a geek.
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Sex rehab dicussion
 
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Add to that Millennium actress now - also an excellent film, perhaps even better than Perfect Blue. I felt it had a bigger emotional punch towards the end of the film, it was very enjoyable. Also, its a film you can watch with almost anybody where as with Perfect Blue you'd probably have to restrict the audience quite a bit.
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Dragon of Heaven said:
After seeing Perfect Blue and loving it I had high hopes for Millennium Actress, its ok not great.
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It's a totally different film dealing with very different situations. Not everybody is going to enjoy a good love story. Millennium Actress however is one of my top films, as is Perfect Blue.
 
I love both but for different reasons. MI was epic and emotional, while PB just messes with your head. It's quite strange to see both in that box set since they are so different.

I've yet to see Kon do a film that does not impress me - I really need to get hold of Tokyo Godfathers and complete my collection!
 
WTFDaveMustaine said:
It's a totally different film dealing with very different situations. Not everybody is going to enjoy a good love story. Millennium Actress however is one of my top films, as is Perfect Blue.
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I like love stories just as much as the next person, it’s like with the ghibli films, they're all totally different stories but people are still going to compare them because they’re made by the same people.
 
Well although the subjects of the film are completely different there are very similar techniques used with the bending of reality. That's what's comparable about the films.

I've seen somebody try to compare Grave of the Fireflies and Spirited Away but other than the fact they are Ghibli films there's no real basis for comparason.
 
I found Chiyoko to be a far more interesting protagonist than Mima, and I thought that the docudrama, play within a play aspect of MA was what made me like it more than PB - that and, despite how intense and amazing PB is, I don't like psycho-thriller/horror texts as much as epic love stories.

But to compare the two considering their generic conventions wouldn't be fair as they're worlds apart - if anything it just shows what a multi-faceted director Satoshi Kon is.
 
He is that. Tokyo Godfathers is different from his other work as it is very staight forward unlike his usual style of directing. It's still a fantastic movie though, with a very high rewatch value.

Something i've noticed about his movies. It seems like a trademark of his to have one of the main characters facing the camera and speaking during the final shots of the movies. He's done this with Mima in Perfect Blue, Chiyoko in Millennium Actress and Miyuki in Tokyo Godfathers. I haven't seen the last episode of Paranoia Agent yet so I don't know if it's the same on that. Just something I noticed. :p
 
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