Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue explores the thematic theme of confusion between reality and fantasy, the subjective nature of perception and memory as well as the identity of the female protagonist.The film’s brilliant use of animation and unreality creates a unique viewing experience,forcing us,as viewers, to question not only the protagonist’s perceptions but our own as we follow the protagonist into a surreal world of madness and illusion.

For this presentation,we would like to examine the themes Kon, the director addresses in Perfect Blue as well as the formal and narrative techniques he employs to express them.

Firstly we will explain how fantasy and reality are depicted in the film through Kon’ s film techniques

One of the key themes of the film is, a brilliant depiction of Mima’s internal psychological condition and exposes the theme of the quest of identity in a fragmented story in which dream and reality are intertwined as a way to show Mima’s split personality.

In fact ,from the moment Mima , the 21 year old pop idol abandons her music career to become an actress on a television psychodrama, she starts being haunted by an antagonistic shadow version of her former pop-star persona.

The Director Satoshi Kon uses many techniques to show Mima’s constant battle with herself,her quest to find who she is. One of them being the use of “reflections”.In fact,in Perfect Blue,reflections are seen throughout the film.The first time we see Mima’s face is through a reflection in the subway door and the first time we see Mima’s other personality is also in a similar subway door. The first time we see her reflection,her madness has not completely taken over yet,(as we can notice on the first image, it is “her”normal self,without costume,not the pop idol image). while the second image shows her reflection in her pop idol outfit.

It is through the reflections that it is made clear of Mima’s madness taking over her.These reflections can also be interpreted as a materialized conscience,symbolizing the “mirror of her soul”.It is through these mirrors that we can see what is going on inside her mind,her sense of confusion.As the film progresses, Mima’s reflection starts to appear some more and as viewers,we slowly become confused or who is the real mima.

Because we,the audience only experiences events through Mima’s p.o.v , we are completely unable to distinguish fact from fantasy. Often, Kon depicts what seem to be real actions only to later reveal that they were actually hallucinations, dreams, or paranoid projections. so, the subjective nature of perception is scrutinized. Because perception is inherently subjective, we can never be certain that the reality we perceive is an illusion or reality.

Kon successfully intertwines reality and fantasy through the skillful use of several cinematic techniques. Most obviously, Kon employs jump cuts throughout the entire film; “We’d cut fast from one thing to another as if it were a fight scene, even if there wasn’t any action involved – [it] helped emphasize Mima’s sense of confusion” (Satoshi Kon, Tom Mes, Midnight Eye interview-> refer to the website). As the plot spirals deeper into paranoia and confusion, the scenes get shorter and shorter while the cuts become more sudden. This not only illustrates Mima’s internal confusion, but literally confuses

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