Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon’s first feature was commissioned in late 1994 as a straight to video OVA on a budget of 90 million yen; the decision to release it in cinemas came only as the work was finishing. The economy of the animation is a budget decision taken beforehand, not a style. Kon had not read Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s novel. He was handed an existing script, a plain gory horror piece, and agreed to direct on condition that he could change everything but three things: a second rank idol heroine, an obsessive fan, and horror. Neither the play within a play nor the blurring of dream and reality is in the novel; Kon and screenwriter Sadayuki Murai put both there. Kon drew every storyboard himself, altering dialogue and framing as he went. It was seen abroad before Japan: it screened at Fantasia in Montreal in August 1997, a second showing was hastily added, and European sales closed before the Japanese opening. Darren Aronofsky considered buying remake rights and later dropped it; the bathtub shot in Requiem for a Dream comes from here. A good fit if you take the film never marking which scenes are the television shoot and which are Mima’s life as the rule of the game. Not for a viewer expecting the assault and stalking scenes to be covered up.