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Nightmare Fuel / Perfect Blue

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"I'm the REAL Mima."

Describe Perfect Blue's Nightmare Fuel page here.

Oh Holy Mother of GOD. Where to begin?

(BEWARE: UNMARKED SPOILERS BELOW)


  • "Virtua Mima". If this song does not make you want to crawl under your bed and stay there for a while, nothing will.
  • If the movie itself had to be edited to receive the R-rating in America, you know this trope is in play. Here is the link of the comparisons. (Warning! NSFW!)
  • The grotesque appearance of Mima's stalker, Me-Mania, and just Me-Mania in general. Hell, Rumi's appearance is even flinch-worthy.
  • The creepy Slasher Smile that quite a few characters sport in the movie.
  • The fax Mima receives after her last performance as a member of CHAM.
    TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR
  • The letter bomb that Tadokoro has the misfortune of opening.
    • The threatening letter sent along with the bomb.
  • The website that details everything that Mima does during each day. At first, Mima laughs in amusement at how well wheoever wrote it seems to know her. Then it goes on to describe her day in perfect detail, including the grocery store she went to, the food she bought there, the exact brands that she likes...
  • Somewhere after all this Paranoia Fuel above, she looks out her window and the camera zooms out and you get a CG of the city and the train going by, as she senses that she isn't alone, and then the screen fades to black. It's an awesome combination of They Look Just Like Everyone Else! and Nothing Is Scarier.
  • Mima's rape scene.
    • Somehow the fact that it is for a drama and supposed to be fake makes it worse. They get away into the scene and Mima is pinned down and screaming in character. Then they yell cut and she just stops and opens her eyes, breaking character. Then she has to lie there while they move the cameras. The repeated breaks make it seem like it just goes on forever. And with how the line between drama and reality gets blurred later on, this scene becomes even more distressing in retrospect, especially when it almost happens for real.
    • Her body language right before the cameras start rolling changing to putting her acting mask on is a bit unsettling.
    • Mima, coming home at the end of a particularly traumatic day after filming the rape scene, finds her beloved pet fish dead, and loses control for a moment, trashing her apartment.
  • The scenes where Mima chases a vision of herself in the pink girly ballerina outfit.
  • The scenes where she is being photographed naked by the borderline-rapist pornographer Murano.
    • The scene where she supposedly stabs Murano in the eye and then his crotch before chasing the man throughout his house and then repeatedly stabbing him to death with a vicious look on her face as he screams in terrible agony.
    • It's kind of minor, but the sheer lack of concern her former bandmates show about Mima meeting the leery photographer. It makes the invasive nature of the media seem 'normal', and that's a message that still resonates.
  • How Mima starts to hallucinate and sees Me-Mania's horribly ugly face everywhere.
    • Or was he 'really' stalking her?
      • Also with the fact that we'll never really know if it was stalking or her hallucinating.
    • If they were hallucinations this opens up more on whether or not it was really Mima at the end and whether or not she'll go through a similar thing later.
  • The scene where Me-Mania accosts Mima and attempts to rape her with a crazed grin on his face.
  • "I guess I went to Harajuku today..." Ho-ly loss of identity, Batman!
  • The precise moment when Mima realizes that Rumi's made an exact replica of her room. *shudder* Can we say reverse-Eve Harrington?
  • In a major twist, the true villain in the movie turns out to be Mima's middle-aged female manager Rumi, who was a former pop idol who didn't last and now thinks she's the real Mima. The climax of the film where Rumi chases Mima in the illusory form of Mima's giggling, pop-idol alter-ego while trying to kill her is genuinely disturbing.
    • Just to review, Rumi at one point chases Mima down a street in front of a series of storefront windows. In the foreground chasing Mima is Rumi in the idealized form of Mima's pop-star alter ego, laughing and skipping down the street without a care in the world. In the background, every time Rumi passes in front of a window, you see her real form reflected: a middle-aged woman clutching an ice-pick/umbrella, gasping and snarling while in a dead sprint.
      • The worst part is that this appears to be a folie à deux or shared hallucination; Rumi thinks she's Super-Innocent-Magical-Avenging-Angel Mima, and Mima also sees Rumi as Super-Innocent-Magical-Avenging-Angel Mima — once Rumi appears in the costume and wig, Mima can't unsee the Other Mima in Rumi's place even though she knows who it really is. For once, the viewer is shown the truth, while the characters can't see it.
    • Mima getting stabbed with an umbrella.
  • The guy in the parking lot who heard fragments of one of Mima's songs, then discovered a radio on the elevator's floor, when the doors opened. And a few minutes later the doors opened again to reveal him dead, covered in his own blood, and his eyes gouged out. He was the man who wrote Mima into a rape scene; "justified" would be absolutely the wrong word to use here, but there's a fairly obvious reason why Rumi (or was it Me-Mania?) killed him.
  • In the anime's denouement, Rumi is permanently delusional and institutionalized. It's quite unsettling. And her hair now looks just like Mima's.
  • Mima holds a teacup in her hands in one scene and squeezes so hard that she breaks it. She's out of touch with reality at this point and while Rumi reacts with horror Mima simply looks at the blood with a blank look and says "This blood... Rumi, is it real?"
    • The depiction of Mima losing touch with reality.
    • Mima's slow descent into madness is done so well that the audience has great difficulty in figuring out what's going on. Towards the end of the film, the amount of jumpcuts go up and Mima starts losing time — an unfortunate real life symptom of DID — and the repeats of her waking up in her apartment makes it feel like either days or weeks could have passed.
      Mima: It's been a while, Rumi.
      Rumi: What are you talking about, Mima? I was just here yesterday.
  • The corridor Mima walks down where she accidentally bumps into Eri, who sees her off with some rather ominous words. As Mima is about to continue walking, she spots a familiar person slowly approaching her from down the corridor... who appears to be Me-Mania. Mima then quickly looks for Eri from the other end of the corridor, only to see that she has vanished. She then turns around... and immediately comes face to face with her stalker who quickly grabs her head, which is then accompanied with the sound of a boot from a car slamming loudly.

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