Perfect Blue: Losing Our Reality

Perfect Blue is an anime film directed by Satoshi Kon. The film follows the story of a young girl Mima who is a pop idol and in the opening scene itself she announces that she is leaving behind her career as a pop star in order to pursue acting, this is obviously not taken well by some of her die-hard fans. Now, when we look into Perfect Blue, the story was truly ahead of its time, its characters are realistic, and the story of Mima resonates to what happens in the entertainment industries.

Kpop idols are faced with this situation almost way too often, when these idols debut, they are automatically put on the pedestal and no matter how insignificant their mistakes maybe they are treated as traitors by their own fans or so-called fans you could say. Similarly, Mima too is treated as a traitor by her fans after her announcement, but this is not the only thing that she deals with. She struggles with her inner self, from moving on from her old self soon enough, her old self starts to take the form of a physical entity. 

Mima starts to lose grip of her reality, she becomes unable to control anything that happens to her worse enough she is also followed by a creepy stalker so for Mima the fine line between reality and imagination blends making her unable to comprehend anything. She is perceived in a way that she doesn't want to be because for everyone else she is just seen as a source of entertainment whether it's as a pop star or as an actress. There is no room for her to showcase her true self and this is what her job requires her to do, to put in a facade for everyone else. This contributes to Mima's inability to grasp reality thus leading her to descend into madness.

Perhaps this movie is quite similar to Black Swan in the case of losing a grasp on reality and not being able to let go of our old selves, so if you liked watching Black Swan (a movie that I also highly recommend) then you will surely love Perfect blue as well. Both the movies delve deeply into the Psychology allowing us to immerse into their worlds.