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Video Vulture by John Tebbutt · Perfect Blue (1999): Just take a moment to remember Toy Story 2, The Iron Giant, Tarzan, South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, and the English-language release of Princess Mononoke. You’d be crazy to deny that 1999 was a terrific year for animated features. Perfect Blue, now available on video, is a worthy addition to this remarkable list. Don’t show it to the kids though – this is a profoundly disturbing and upsetting film. The naturalist animation style used in Perfect Blue almost makes it seem like a live-action movie. I suspect that we will see a lot more Japanese films like this in the future – animation studios take up a lot less space than film sets, and space can be pretty hard to come by in Japan. The story (based on a crime novel) centres around Mima, a youthful celebrity who wants to change her image. As a singer in carefully manufactured pop girl-band, Cham, she has legions of fans, but is aware that pop idols quickly vanish into obscurity. Despite the wishes of almost everybody around her (including her fans, her agent, critics and the filmmaking community) she quits Cham (at the height of their popularity) and takes up acting. Accepting a role as an emotionally scarred rape victim in a crime thriller gives Mima the image change she needs, but completely alienates her from the few remaining people she perceived as friends. This new life, alternating between the artificial horror of the film set, and the real loneliness of her now-solitary existence in her tiny apartment, causes a lot of harm to her emotional well-being. As if this weren’t enough, several new problems arise: 1) She’s being stalked by the World’s Creepiest Fan. 2) Somebody sends her a letterbomb. 3) Private details of Mima’s life, including innermost thoughts and secrets that nobody else knows about, begin appearing on the Internet. 4) The people responsible for Mima’s new image are being savagely murdered. 5) Mima herself begins hallucinating (she sees her former pop-idol self gliding through the air, mocking her for her "shameful" career decision). This last image is Perfect Blue’s only use of fantastic imagery, and the fact that it’s clearly unreal (as Mima knows too well) causes us to feel even more concern for her sanity. (In the film’s climax, Mima is chased through the streets by her glamorous doppelganger, but a reflection in a store window shows us who the killer really is.) The violence in the film is never gratuitous, and is all the more upsetting for it. We are told that the man who opened Mima’s letterbomb survived with only minor injuries, but that doesn’t negate the horror of such a random, malicious act, or the sight of the victim clutching his eyes as blood pours from his face. Similarly, the horrifying stabbing scene is filmed like an Italian giallo film, where the audience feels the shock and agony of the victim. With its "Ginger Spice meets a serial killer" storyline, Perfect Blue offers a new anxiety-plagued perspective on the lives of flash-in-the-pan pop idols. Watch this tape, and then lie in bed for hours, completely unable to sleep.

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