A rising star, fame, and paranoia.
What They Say:
Rising pop star Mima has quit singing to pursue a career as an actress and model, but her fans aren’t ready to see her go… Encouraged by her managers, Mima takes on a recurring role on a popular TV show, when suddenly her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima’s reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia. As her stalker closes in, in-person and online, the threat he poses is more real than even Mima knows, in this iconic psychological thriller that has frequently been hailed as one of the most important animated films of all time.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this film brings us the original Japanese language in 5.1 using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec while the English dub gets the Dolby Digital treatment while also being a 5.1 mix. I can only assume that this was either just a bad encoding idea or there aren’t the materials from 2000 available to produce it in lossless form. The Japanese mix is really solid all around and I rather enjoyed just how subtly crafted much of it is. While it does have a fair number of big bang for your buck sequences, it’s the much softer and subtler moments that really shine here as we get immersed into the story being told, the paranoia, and the tension as it builds. This is a great mix and really helped build up the overall mood of the film. The bigger scenes definitely make out really well but the music in the softer scenes and the little bits of incidental sound as needed in areas was pretty striking at times as it recreates the theatrical experience as it can. And for historical sake, the original Japanese mono mix is included.
Video:
Originally released in 1998, the transfer for this film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. Animated by Madhouse, the film does a wonderful job of capturing this world well, with the stage performances, the behind the scenes elements, and just the general sense of the world that we see our lead walk through as she lives a normal life and then becomes the object of a sociopaths fascination. The film side of anime is always able to take it up several notches and under Satoshi Kon’s guidance, this one is just very striking and uses some great opportunities that animation allows for scene transitions and the like. Combined with the movie magic aspect of the film, colors and vibrancy are all wonderfully presented to create the right mood and atmosphere. The colors are rich and solid, cross coloration is non-existent and the whole thing just made me very happy to watch.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard-sized Blu-ray case with a really great visual of Mima laying there where you can imagine so many different things that may be going through her mind. The shades of blue and black used definitely is highly evocative and it works wonderfully when contrasted with the simple logo of the film and the blue stripe along the top where it goes for a softer baby blue version. The back cover goes for a traditional GKIDS design with two good-sized strips for visuals from the film and a solid summary of the premise. The extras are clearly listed as are all the technical features of the release so you know exactly what you’re getting. No show related inserts are included in this release but we get a great two-panel spread of Mima on the reverse side.
Menu:
The menu design for this release is a good static piece that plays to Mima’s apartment nicely. The central piece is the visual of her which is done with a great illustration style that gives it an extra richness and ethereal feeling about it as she’s center stage and staring at you. Behind her are the stars filling the sky blended with roses that mingles through her hair. But the bottom is where it ties it together as we get the top of her fish tank and see some of the Neons inside. It’s here that we get the navigation as well with everything moving smoothly for selections and access times. Just above it is the logo for the film that gives it just enough weight and helps to bring everything together in a solidly stacked way. .
Extras:
The extras are interesting right off the bat as we get the original version of the film in standard definition, giving us the ability to see how it was originally presented. A lot of the basics are also here in the English credits, various trailers from different regions, and a lot more. On the Japanese side, we get an interesting lecture from Satoshi Kon that’s just engaging to watch as he talks about the process and more. It comes in at about forty minutes and provides for a lot of detail. We also get to see a recording session for “Angel of Your Heart” done in both Japanese and English which is definitely fun to watch. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese side shows the singers performing while the English side didn’t have anything like that done originally, so it’s just a static playback image.
The rest are varying length interviews where we get two from the Japanese side with Kon for one of them and Junko Iwao as Mima talking about her experience on the project. On the English side, we get Ruby Marlowe, Wendee Lee, and Bob Marx talking about their experiences.
As the debut feature film as a director, Satoshi Kon captured the minds of a lot of anime fans with Perfect Blue but also film fans in general with how it was put together. Kon had other works in his filmography prior to this but as his debut feature, it’s what set him on a path that had people following his work for years afterward to see anything and everything that he’d be involved with. I can still remember fondly the problematic and almost terrible DVD release I had from back in 2000 where I was watching it on a codefree Pioneer deck with S-Video and a 1.33:1 TV since widescreen sets were just starting to become affordable. But even through all of the problems with the way I saw it, I saw a film that just utterly fascinated me.
Which made it thrilling a couple of years ago when GKIDS picked up the rights to the film, promising a Blu-ray release and cleaned up materials, and also gave it a theatrical relase. That I was able to take my daughter – who was born just months before I had seen that terrible DVD years ago – and see it on the big screen with her made it all the more engaging. The kind of sharing of film magical across decades and generations has been critical to me and is a reason why I try to share as many “older” works as I can when I can instead of just the latest and greatest. Understanding where we came from shows where we’re going. And a talent like Satoshi Kon showed anime filmmakers that you could achieve great things within the medium still and is a huge influence on some of the best and brightest out there today.
At the core of Perfect Blue is the idol singer Mima. As part of the mid-range success story that is the musical trio CHAM!, she’s decided that after working with the group for the last couple of years that it’s time to move on and let her other talents, particularly her acting, take center stage. This comes at the urging of one of her managers who has his own thing going and all but it’s fairly standard stuff at this point. It’s an event that definitely changes the dynamic within the friendships she’s made with the group but the real change is how it triggers a number of her fans. While the most upset of them are just that, upset, there are always those that take it further. And it’s what begins to turn Mima’s life from one of a potential success story into a horror story.
With Mima moving into acting, what begins to push the most problematic of her adoring fans is that she’s no longer the squeaky-clean Mima of CHAM! but rather someone who is now involved in a project called Double Bind where her character is raped in a club. This is a hard sequence for Mima in general as she wants to prove her talent and the whole thing is just layers of complicated, but for the fan who only sees things for her as being bright and light, it pushes them over the edge to where they want to be able to free them from the part – but largely because they’re unable to see it as a part and just a piece of Mima’s life. The depths of her stalker are covered well enough in the film so you get the basics for why he does what he does, but the film spends most of its time dealing with Mima and how her descent into madness goes, particularly as other people end up dead and every shadow is now closer to ending her own life.
There’s a really strong psychological thriller going on here that unfolds wonderfully as you’re immersed in her world and realize just how well structured it is so that you can’t be sure what to trust, what’s real, and what she’s hallucinating at this point. Particularly with some of the projects and pieces of her life, such as Mima’s Room and the like. Kon’s able to bring Sadayuki Murai’s screenplay to life beautifully here, which is adapting the novel of the same name by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, so they had a lot to draw on. Each aspect of her life and those around her are given enough detail to feel well-realized so that as the pieces fall away, it’s not a hollow event that leaves you wondering why she’s breaking more and more. You understand why exactly and become more on edge as the darkness inches closer to her.
In Summary:
Perfect Blue was lost to domestic anime fans for far too long as we had mediocre at best long out of print copies as our only real thing. GKIDS was able to breathe new life into it with a gorgeous print, a great audio presentation, and a slew of extras overall. While I wish the dub had gotten the lossless treatment, the package overall delivers on so much good stuff that it becomes something that’s bothersome but not a dealbreaker, at least for me. This is not a film one can watch often overall, nor should you, but when you settle into it you put everything else away, turn down the lights, and savor an excellent piece of filmmaking.
Features:
Japanese 5.1 Language, English 5.1 Language English Subtitles, Lectures By Satoshi Kon Featurette, Into The Blue Featurette with New Interviews, Angel Of Your Heart Recording Sessions, Angel Of Your Heart Full English Version, Theatrical Trailers And TV Spots, and Cast And Crew Interviews
Content Grade: A
Audio Grade: A
Video Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B+
Released By: GKIDS Films / Shout! Factory
Release Date: March 26th, 2019
MSRP: $26.99
Running Time: 82 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.