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"Excuse me. Who are you?"

Perfect Blue is a 1997 anime psychological horror thriller film, and the directorial debut of anime legend Satoshi Kon. Technically, it's based on Yoshikazu Takeuchi's 1991 novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, but very loosely.

Mima Kirigoe (voiced by Junko Iwao) is a mildly-popular Idol Singer who decides to leave her group to pursue a serious career as an actress. She manages to land a small role on a sexually-charged murder mystery series, but starts to struggle with the increasingly-intense demands of her part.

After her character is involved in a rape scene, Mima discovers an internet blog supposedly written by herself, or rather, the "innocent" persona she used as an Idol Singer. Mima has no memory of writing such a thing, but the entries are far too accurate and personal to be a hoax. Is it a Stalker with a Crush? Has Mima developed a Split Personality? Or is something far more sinister afoot?

Perfect Blue was originally released in the West in 1999 by Manga Entertainment. Around the film's 20th anniversary, Shout Factory and GKIDS released a remastered edition of the film in March 2019.

For Western viewers interested in stories similar to Perfect Blue, see Black Swan and Perfume. Kon would also go on to produce other work investigating the boundary between the real and the imaginary such as Paprika, Paranoia Agent and Millennium Actress.


Perfect Blue provides examples of:

  • Acting in the Dark: In-universe, what the director of Double Bind does to his actors, making the parallels between the real Mima and the character she plays in the show even creepier as both start to suspect that they have been killing people and then blocking out the memories.
  • Adaptation Deviation: The original novel had a far more straightforward story of an idol being hunted down by a deranged stalker, with the only real twist being that the stalker is Made of Iron and manages to survive injuries that should be fatal several times over, as an allegory of how pervasive unhealthy obsessions can get. The movie has a far more complex plot that involves Gaslighting and psychological horror, and the unnamed stalker is changed into being a pawn of the idol's best friend instead.
  • Adaptation Title Change: Downplayed. The movie keeps the novel's name but omits the subtitle "Complete Metamorphosis".
  • Adaptational Villainy: In the original novel, Rumi was a genuine friend of Mima's and just as much of a victim of the stalker as Mima herself. In the movie, she's the one pulling his strings.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Mima's fans call her "Mima-rin," with "-rin" being an honorific in Japanese used to describe someone cute or endearing. Not so endearing when Me-Mania decides that the Mima who's left CHAM!, taken up a role in a detective drama, and posed nude for a photoshoot must be an impostor, and therefore he must kill her to protect "his" Mima-rin.
  • Animated Adaptation: Adapted from a novel. Sort of.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Or, at least, apologetic actor. During Mima's rape scene in the drama show, during a pause in the action, one of the actors who was leaning over her quietly apologizes to Mima for the actions during the scene. Thankfully, for both Mima and the unnamed actor, it's all a fake, and she's able to accept the apology since the scene was simply a part of the job (although that doesn't mean she has to like having to shoot it).
  • Arc Words:
    • "Excuse me. Who are you?" This is Mima's first line on Double Bind, the acting job that sends her down this rabbit hole of insanity, and it gradually becomes very relevant as the theme of Loss of Identity sinks in. Who are you, Mima?
    • "The real Mima" and variants thereof come up a lot—specifically, who and what everyone perceives the "real" Mima to be, and if Mima is even sure herself. It turns out Rumi believes that she is the real Mima.
  • Artistic License – Film Production: Pretty much averted. The series Mima is in is established to use multiple takes, and is generally presented as a collaborative work involving many people. Notably between takes of a Rape as Drama scene, the actor playing the rapist apologizes to Mima as they are both clearly uncomfortable with the material.
  • Asshole Victim: Pretty much everybody who gets murdered, though the sheer brutality of their murders far outstrips any of the ways they'd wronged Mima. The one exception to this would be the one justifiable homicide committed in self-defense against a would-be rapist and murderer.
  • Attempted Rape: Near the end of the film, the stalker Me-Mania attempts to rape and kill Mima, but she is able to escape his clutches and flee mostly unscathed.
  • Author Appeal: In-universe - it's suggested that the seedier aspects of Double Bind are done largely so Shibuya, the screenwriter, can indulge his own perverted fantasies.
  • Ax-Crazy: Me-Mania, Mima at one point and Rumi.
  • Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: The movie starts with Mima living in a tidy and well-decorated room. As her Sanity Slippage progresses, it gets dirtier and dirtier and darker and darker.
  • Bait the Dog:
    • Me-Mania after his Establishing Character Moment stops some thugs from rabble-rousing at Mima's last concert, and she even smiles at him. Then after the "real Mima" asks him to get rid of her "impostor," he zealously obliges.
    • Likewise, Rumi seems to be protecting Mima's best interests and attempts to support her transition from a bubbly pop star to an actress, by not getting exploited. Then Rumi starts killing people and wants the real Mima to be her last victim.
  • Balcony Escape: Idol Mima confronts the main Mima in her room and tries to kill her. Regular Mima escapes out the window and tries to climb to an adjacent balcony, but Idol Mima catches her and they fall to the ground, though they both survive.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Played with—In the uncut version of the film, Mima poses nude and her pubic hair is shown, but there is still no sign of her actual genitalia.
  • Be Careful What You Say: Mima's managers tell the Double Bind producers that they want Mima to have a bigger role and more than one line. This inspires Shibuya, the screenwriter, to first write a rape scene with Mima's character, then expand the role into a young woman with dissociative personality disorder as well as the murderer behind the cases investigated in the series, since he hit a wall trying to come up with who the murderer was.
  • Big Bad Friend: Rumi. The climax reveals that she is behind everything that has happened, especially getting Me-Mania involved. Although she was Mima’s friend and manager, she always wanted to be like Mima. Over the course of the movie, she began slipping into psychosis where she genuinely believed she was the real Mima. When Me-Mania failed to kill Mima, she took it upon herself to take Mima back to Rumi’s place, which bore an exact resemblance to Mima’s room, where she planned to kill Mima without any interference.
  • Bland-Name Product: A "Niken" camera appears early on, but a "Nikon F4" camera shows up later. The Niken is actually an in-universe example, and only appears on the set of Double Bind; the Nikon is the photographer's own camera.
  • Breakout Character: In-Universe. Yoko Takakura, Mima's character on Double Bind is given more lines and a vastly expanded role, to the point of being the twist villain of the show. This is brought about due to her persistent agents, Mima independently raising her profile through adult modeling, and genuinely being a talented actress.
  • Break the Cutie: Mima's sanity slowly erodes over the course of the movie as her identity is assaulted.
  • Bowdlerize: The movie had to alter certain violent and sexual scenes in order to obtain the R-rating for its American release.
  • Celebrity Is Overrated: Either as an Idol Singer or as a starting actress. Lampshaded by Mima when in a conversation to her mother she explains that the pop idol image is "suffocating".
  • Central Theme: Identity. Specifically, the difference between how we identify ourselves, and how others choose to identify us...and what happens when you lose your identity, be it the one you see for yourself, or the one that others have assigned to you.
  • Character Development: Mima for most of the film doesn't own a car. She either takes the subway, rides a bike, or takes rides from her managers. The last part symbolizes how she's letting them change her image, sometimes against her wishes. Come the end of the film, she's learned to drive. As she puts the car into Drive, she adjusts the mirror in a really nice ride, affirming she is the real Mima.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Mima's reflection first shows up on her computer screen.
  • Color Motif: Ironically enough, red and pink are featured prominently throughout the movie.
    • Red is the most important color for a few good reasons.
      • Red is consistently associated with Mima's loosening grip on reality and appears prominently in connection with insanity and murder: a huge swath of red is shown behind Mima in the scene where she discovers the fake blog, the floor of the elevator in which Shibuya dies is bright red, the photographer's killer shows up in a red deliveryman's uniform, and finally Rumi appears in a blood-red version of Mima's idol outfit and chases her through several locations which make prominent use of red.
      • Red is also the color that signals danger, which is fitting since Rumi wears red when trying to kill Mima. An early warning of Rumi's true intentions is that when Rumi drives Mima home, the background is red.
    • Pink appears prominently as part of Mima's pop idol image. Pink represents Mima's past since she's trying to move on from her pop idol career, something that constantly haunts her throughout the film.
    • The "perfect blue" doesn't even appear until the Happy Ending in which Mima returns to her car under a sunny day.
  • Contractual Purity: In-universe example, which has some horrible consequences. Mima's fans don't like it when she leaves the idol world to get mature acting roles, and start harassing her.
  • Cuckoo Nest: A particularly confusing example, in which Mima's character Yoko on Double Bind is apparently deluded into thinking that the horrifying things that happened to her were just a TV show that she played on. What really throws the viewer for a loop is that they don't make clear that this is a scene from Double Bind until after the scene is over, leading the viewer to briefly mistake the plot of the show for the plot of Perfect Blue.
  • Damsel out of Distress: Mima when facing Me-Mania and Rumi. Although she's terrified and fleeing for her life, she does manage to escape both times and prove herself more resourceful and resilient than her character on Double Bind.
  • Dark Reprise: A far-off, muffled version of "Angel of Love" is heard in the parking garage when Shibuya, the screenwriter for Double Bind is murdered.
  • Deconstruction: Of Idol Singer (via the stalker angle and the scenes depicting the ins and outs of the business and its consequences) and of Fanservice, as almost every significant instance of it has decidedly ugly undertones.
  • Defiled Forever: After filming the rape scene, Mima imagines her former self in the mirror taunting her about being a "filthy woman" who can never return to the innocence of the pop-idol life.
  • Delusions of Beauty: Near the climax of the film, Rumi (who is middle-aged and overweight) falls into a delusion that she is Mima, who is young and beautiful Idol Singer.
  • Detective Drama: Mima's first post-singer role is as a rape victim in one of these.
  • Determinator: Mima has always been this; she wanted to be an idol since she was little, and now that she's succeeded she wants to get out of her comfort zone and become an actress. Even in the middle of Sanity Slippage she is giving her best performance, which everyone recognizes.
  • Devil in Plain Sight: Me-Mania makes himself visible to Mima at CHAM's last performance, and several times thereafter. Rumi more than anyone. She's so in plain sight that nobody, not even the audience, suspects her.
  • The Dragon: Me-Mania, to Rumi, although he's convinced he's doing the "real" Mima's will.
  • Dream Within a Dream: Used multiple times (as well as showing us conversations or scenes that seem like they're really happening, only for a director to yell "cut!" — the main character was just filming a scene in the television show she's in) to ramp up the suspense and paranoia that the main character feels.
  • Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: As Mima loses her grip on reality, she does this more and more often.
  • Dying Dream: Sometime after a near-death encounter with a truck, Mima speculates that this trope is in play as she doubts that she's really alive.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: In the end, when visiting Rumi in the mental hospital, Mima's not only a famous actress now but also seems to be quite well-adjusted.
  • Ends with a Smile: The movie concludes with songstress-turned-actress Mima Kirigoe leaving a sanitarium. One nurse wonders if she has seen the real Mima, but another nurse claims that it must be a lookalike. Once Mima is in her car, she regards the audience in her rearview mirror, smiles cheerily, and states, "Nope, it's the real me." This signals that despite the mindscrew and torment she'd endured, Mima still has her positive outlook.
  • Establishing Character Moment:
    • Me-Mania watches the CHAM performance with his hand outstretched and one eye closed, simulating the illusion that Mima is dancing in the palm of his hand. This sets the tone for his character throughout the film.
    • Likewise, while Mima is performing there are cuts to her shopping in the grocery store in normal clothes, which shows that she's concerned about balancing her public image with who she actually is.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Even though it's all fake, neither of Mima's managers are happy about her actually filming the rape scene. Rumi smokes a Cigarette of Anxiety and runs off in tears, foreshadowing her eventual breakdown. Tadokoro pushes for it for pragmatic reasons — he cites that the scripts are behind schedule and they can't mess up Mima's acting break — but during the filming itself, he's cringing and visibly horrified. As an apology, he treats her to dinner and drives her home. The actor playing the rapist apologizes verbally to her between takes as well.
    • It's revealed that Mima didn't want to do the rape scene, but she didn't want to say anything for fear of disappointing everyone.
    • Despite everything that has happened, Mima can't bear to see Rumi getting run over by a truck and saving her life.
    • The truck drivers in the climax stop after they nearly run over Rumi and Mima and quickly call for an ambulance.
  • Extreme Doormat: Mima, at least for a good chunk of the movie. Since she's a newbie to the world of professional acting, she doesn't yet have the clout to object to scenes she feels uncomfortable filming, such as the rape scene in Double Bind.
  • Eye Scream: A man gets stabbed in the eye by a supposed pizza delivery guy. Another man is murdered, and later on, his body is shown with the eye sockets all bloody and the eyes missing. There's basically a sample of this in every murder — in a film about perception and reality, eyes and seeing make for an obvious motif.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • Happens every single time there is nudity in the movie. There are the rape scenes, the scenes where Mima is getting photographed naked, etc.
    • Rumi, a middle aged, slightly overweight woman, in a skimpy, ill-fitting pop singer costume. It's not as appealing as she thinks, unless you're as delusional as she is.
  • Final Girl: The end of the movie sees Mima, an entertainer with no combat training whatsoever, having to struggle against a murderer who's been brutally killing people throughout the film. She also has to face his handler, who's also out for blood. In true final girl fashion, she manages to defy the odds and make it through both incidents by the skin of her teeth.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The fan letter briefly shown at the beginning of the film is actually an angry letter, complaining about the declining quality of Mima’s performances, and saying that Tadokoro "will not be forgiven" for what he's doing to her.
    • Speaking of letters, Rumi's reaction to the exploding "fan" letter and the fact that Tadokoro got injured by it is strangely blasé.
    • The name of the website "Mima's Room," and how Mima knows she didn't write it, although the details are pinpoint accurate. The climax starts in a replica of Mima's actual room, right down to the fish.
    • Likewise, Mima doesn't even know how to use a computer; Rumi has to teach her. Mima types into her new one slowly to look up the Mima's Room site. It's hinted Rumi was writing all of the entries since she is tech-savvy, has heard Mima's thoughts and musings aloud, and says she asked Me-Mania to kill the "impostor" Mima.
    • The running visual of glass breaking. Guess what nearly kills Rumi.
    • Tadokoro mentions that Rumi used to be a pop idol.
    • Rumi starts crying and leaves the studio during the filming of the rape scene.
  • Freak Out: Mima, coming home at the end of a particularly traumatic day after filming a rape scene, finds her beloved pet fish dead and loses control for a moment, trashing her apartment. She (as well as Rumi) has numerous moments where she freaks out throughout the rest of the movie.
  • "Friends" Rent Control: Averted, and somewhat justified. Although Mima's apartment is lavishly furnished, there isn't much space and she has to squeeze through to get around. The justification is that Japanese cities focus on conserving space and Tadokoro mentions offhand that CHAM hasn't been doing as well as he would have liked.
  • Gaslighting: A small example. After both of them have started to go crazy, Rumi manipulates objects in Mima's room to make her think Idol Mima has been around. For example, she borrows Mima's new clothes, wears them while murdering people, and then hides the bloodstained clothes in Mima's room, causing her to think she was responsible for the murders.
  • Glamour Failure: When Rumi is chasing after Mima, we see the fake Mima elegantly prancing after Mima while the reflection on the store windows in the background shows Rumi running and looking quite grotesque and noticeably out of breath.
  • A Glass in the Hand: Mima does this with a teacup at one point.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Rumi, as a result of her delusion coming crashing down and failing to kill Mima, is subsequently seen permanently delusional and institutionalized at a mental hospital.
  • Gonk: Arguably a few characters due to the art style, but most definitely Me-Mania (see Nightmare Face below) and even Rumi to an extent.
  • Groin Attack: One of the murder victims is repeatedly stabbed in the crotch with a screwdriver.
  • Harassing Phone Call: After Mima converts to acting from her pop-idol career, she receives at least one threatening message and phone call (each from her stalker Me-Mania).
  • He Really Can Act: In-Universe, everyone is surprised by how good Mima's performance on Double Bind is — even those that had doubts about having a former pop idol on the show wind up praising her. The fact that Mima herself is gradually losing her mind probably doesn't hurt.
  • Hero Stage Show: The movie begins with a short excerpt of a hero stage show, blatantly inspired by Super Sentai (our protagonist is to perform on the same stage immediately after); some kids watching remark that the special effects aren't nearly as impressive live as they are on TV.
  • Horrible Hollywood: A big theme of the movie is the way the entertainment industry treats people as products, especially young women, pushing them into exploitative positions, with or without their consent. The TV industry puts Mima through hell, and a lot of her comments imply that her life as a pop idol wasn't great for her mental health, either. Interestingly, it's not just the higher-ups calling the shots that make it this way — the film goes out of its way to show how even the stars' so-called fans can make the experience awful. Yeah, studios may push their idols into Contractual Purity and create Fanservicey scenes that exploit actresses — but who creates a backlash when the idols fail to uphold that standard, and who consumes the content with those exploitative scenes again?
    Oddly, the director didn't intend any particular criticism of the industry. He wanted to tell a story about a young woman going through an identity crisis and coming out the other side with more agency and maturity, but since his main character was a former idol he just stumbled into talking about the downside of that world.
    Satoshi Kon: If the audience gets the impression from watching the film that the idol system in Japan is like that, I'm embarrassed. Of course, I did research before making the film and I visited a number of these idol events, but I didn't see the kind of example that is used in the film.
  • I Am Not Spock: Inverted in-universe. When Me-Mania pins Mima to the ground and says he's protecting "his Mima-rin," Mima says that she is Mima-rin.
  • Identity Breakdown: Mima's already struggling with the intense demands that come with her new role and how it fits with her previous image as an idol. Then she begins to lose her sense of self and her grasp on reality after she stumbles across a hate message online ridiculing her new persona change that is supposedly posted by her. "Who are you?" and "I'm the real Mima" become Arc Words over the course of the film as Mima becomes more and more unsure of herself and she naturally freaks out several times in the film because of this.
  • Idol Singer:
    • Mima, Yukiko, and Rei, make up the idol group CHAM.
    • Rumi was one when she was younger.
  • I Just Want to Be You: Rumi is like this toward Mima by the end. She has taken on her behavior and mannerisms, designed her room in an eerily similar fashion, and dresses up like the person she wants to be in the climax.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Mima tries this with Rumi at several points in the climax. It doesn't work.
  • Improvised Weapon: At various points in the film a screwdriver, an umbrella, and a hammer are used as weapons.
  • In Name Only: The movie contains some elements of the original book but is a very loose adaptation. Even the main antagonist of the movie turns out to be the person who was nothing but a supportive friend in the book.
  • Internet Mimic: Rumi posing as Mima, with the help of Me-Mania, who also thinks he's in contact with the real Mima.
  • Jerkass: The punks at the beginning of the film making a scene at CHAM's final performance with Mima.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Mima's other self in her reflection points out that Mima didn't want to do the rape scene, and asks her why she made a compromise for a job she didn't enjoy. The real Mima's response is to toss a pillow at her, showing that she has no retort.
  • Jump Cut: Faster and faster as Mima loses her grip on reality.
  • Kill and Replace: Rumi, believing that Mima is unworthy of being Mima for wanting to do more risqué movies and retire from her idol work, wants to kill Mima so she can "become the real Mima," as in, the one who is still an idol. It doesn't help that she used to be an idol herself and still yearns for her glory days.
  • Kill the Cutie: The goal of both Me-Mania and Rumi.
  • Leitmotif: Mima, Me-Mania, and the Other Mima all have themes in the score.
  • Loony Fan: Me-Mania and Rumi are obsessed stalkers of Mima.
  • Loss of Identity: This is the central theme of the film. For most of the story, Mima is caught between the horns of a dilemma — on one hand is the idol life she's trying to escape, with the fixed persona demanded by Contractual Purity; on the other is the world of acting, where one's identity is uncertain by nature. Not only does she have to conquer her fears and doubts about this new, more fluid self (as a psychiatrist points out), but certain people are very interested in forcing her back into the chains of her old self — or stealing her old identity from her since she no longer wants it. The climax of the film boils down to her rejection of Me-Mania's and Rumi/Idol-Mima's assertion that abandoning her old image makes her a fraud.
  • Loving a Shadow: Me-Mania for Mima, wanting to protect "his" Mima-rin from the "impostor" that is acting.
  • Madonna-Whore Complex: Me-Mania, Rumi, and society as a whole seem to have this issue. Once Mima does some sex scenes in a film, she is Defiled Forever to them, and the whore Mima must be destroyed to protect the virginal idol Mima. This is likely why Me-Mania tries to rape Mima.
  • Male Gaze: Ties into the Loss of Identity themes above. Mima has no control over her image or how other people see her, and Tadokoro is cynically guiding her career in directions he thinks will appeal to a male audience — as a contractually-pure Idol Singer or a sexually self-aware actress.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Me-Mania turns out to be working for Rumi.
  • The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: The CHAM-costumed version of Mima that harasses and berates her.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: When Mima's Double Bind character is manhandled and raped by a member of a rowdy crowd, the actor playing said rapist quietly stammers, "I'm so sorry," between takes. He also apologizes to the director for messing up the first take.
  • Meaningful Name: Mima's name contains the kanji for "fog" and "paralysis," relating to her losing herself in the roles she plays and her helplessness to return to what she was before.
  • Mind Screw: Until the climax, which partially serves as a Mind Screwdriver.
  • The Mirror Shows Your True Self:
    • In the final confrontation between Mima and her alter ego, both Mima and the audience see the alter ego as the phantom Idol Singer Mima that has been haunting Mima. Only the mirror reflection shows the truth — that it's really Rumi dressed up as Mima.
    • Inverted in the mental hospital. Mima (and the audience) see Rumi in real life, and her reflection in the window is Idol Singer Mima, demonstrating that Mima has moved past the movie's events while Rumi is still stuck in her delusion.
  • Model Scam: Happens to Mima's character in Double Bind.
  • Ms. Fanservice: In-Universe, Mima is propelled into this following the end of her singing career and moving on to acting. Of course, she's very reluctant to do it, but she can't say it out loud, because she'd look ungrateful to the director and everyone else on the set if she said no. With this, it quickly turns to Fan Disservice with the rape scene and photoshoot later on.
  • Mukokuseki: One shot of a highly-stylized drawing of an anime girl with enormous eyes and pink hair on the sliding-glass front door of a store in one scene is intended to mock this trope as said door immediately slides aside to reveal three minor characters who look nothing like her at all.
  • Mundanger: In the middle of all the violent drama and Mind Screw moments is a surprisingly realistic tale of people taking issue with a grown woman deciding to change her career and public image, and resorting to violence when she ignores their chaste expectations. Mima's mother calls her to express worry about changing careers in such a fashion, and Mima herself becomes worried when her stalker, Me-Mania, appears wherever she goes.
  • Napoleon Delusion: Non-Napoleon example. Rumi, Mima's manager, increasingly comes to believe that she is Mima.
  • Never Found the Body: Seems to be the case with Me-Mania at first, then subverted pretty hard.
  • Nice Girl: Mima is a really sweet person who doesn't want to let down the people that got her to where she is.
  • Nightmare Face:
    • Me-Mania's face is visibly deformed.
    • There is a more subtle case with Rumi, whose eyes are just a little too far apart from each other.
  • No Name Given: Me-Mania's real name is never spoken in the film, and you'll have a hard time finding it unless you own the soundtrack, in which the Leitmotif associated with him is called "Uchida's Theme".
  • No, You: When Mima begs Rumi, who has broken down into a blown psychosis, to "wake up" and come to her senses, Rumi merely replies "You're the one who needs to wake up!"
  • Non-Indicative Name: The title "Perfect Blue" is never mentioned or explained.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: While not as extreme as many examples, Mima's persona in CHAM! seems very deliberately girlish and childlike. Her attempts to overcome this trope are what set the plot in motion.
  • Not Himself: Both Mima and Rumi.
  • Oh, Crap!: Mima gets one at the film's climax when she starts Spotting the Thread and realizes she's not actually in her own apartment. What follows is an ever-increasing series of Oh Craps.
  • One-Woman Wail: Used in the song 'Virtua Mima'.
  • Or Was It a Dream?: A repeated narrative device in the movie.
  • Otaku: In this case, there's an otaku for Mima.
  • Parasol of Pain: Umbrellas are not meant to be used that way, Rumi.
  • Parking Garage: Shibuya, the screenwriter of Double Bind is murdered in the elevator of a spooky parking garage.
  • Personal Horror: Along with a healthy dose of Psychological Horror and Surreal Horror. Yay, loss of identity and emotional insecurity!
  • Please, Don't Leave Me: At the beginning of the movie, when Mima announces that this is her final performance with CHAM!, her fans in the crowd can be heard pleading, "Please don't leave us, Mima-rin!"
  • Police Are Useless:
    • Justified because they are never called. Mima mentions several times that the cops should be notified about the letter bomb and the murdered scriptwriter, but Tadokoro overrides her. He says that if they make a big deal about the attacks, it will derail their campaign to turn her into an actress. Considering Rumi kills him in the climax, he should have listened to Mima.
    • In the show Double Bind, the cops are typical TV psychologists that profile the killer and thus fail to find them before they murder several people. Obviously, it's meant to be a Take That! towards those kinds of cop shows.
  • Proscenium Reveal: In one scene, a talent scout asks Mima if she wants to be a model. It is then revealed that this was just footage from Double Bind.
  • Psychological Horror: A particularly horrifying one, at that.
  • Psycho Supporter: Me-Mania and Rumi.
  • Punny Name: "Me-Mania" is "Mimania" is "Mima mania".
  • Reality Subtext: An In-Universe example, when they finish shooting Double Bind, everyone congratulates Mima on her performance as a mentally disturbed woman with a split personality. She may have been that good because she herself is having an identity crisis.
  • Red Right Hand: Rumi looks pretty normal, except for the fact that her eyes are just a little too far apart...
  • Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Mima's willing to take nude photos or participate in sexually graphic scenes because it's just "part of the job," but she does not enjoy it, nor does she enjoy the way the public's perception of her shifts because of this.
  • Room Full of Crazy:
    • Me-Mania's room is full of pictures of Mima.
    • Rumi's room looks like an exact copy of Mima's room.
  • Sanity Slippage: Due to a combination of the stress she suffers from filming Double Bind, her paranoia about being stalked, and lingering doubts about living the idol life behind her, Mima's grasp on reality and own identity starts slipping.
  • Save the Villain: Mima dives in front of a truck to save Rumi at the end.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In Mima's first acting role, two characters in the scene discuss a serial killer who removes his victims' skin because he wants to be a woman. That plot sounds a little familiar.
    • Tadokoro also mentions "Jodie whatshername" in a later conversation about Mima's career. He was specifically referring to The Accused, in which Foster plays a rape victim.
  • Shower of Angst: Mima takes a bath in the middle of the movie after all the shit she goes through.
  • Sleazy Photoshoot: As a way to promote her solo career, Mima is set up for a shoot with a photographer who, as her former bandmates note in a private conversation, has a reputation for getting girls out of their clothes. Sure enough, the shoot starts innocently enough, but the photographer plays on Mima's naivete and gradually talks her into increasingly racy photos; by the time it's over, she's completely nude and the photos that are shown border on softcore porn. Already distressed from a rape scene she'd filmed days beforehand, the experience wounds her even more, especially when the photos end up in a magazine and lead to public anger over the damage to her image. In a flashback to the sequence, the photographer is visibly getting off despite having both hands on the camera.
  • Slut-Shaming: Mima gets this from the public and Reflection Mima after she makes career moves that give her a less-than-squeaky-clean image, such as filming a rape scene and doing a nude photoshoot.
  • Show Within a Show:
    • Extreme type 4 example, such that at times it's unclear whether what you're watching is happening to Mima or her TV character (or maybe both).
    • The police detective series Double Bind is a very straightforward type 1 example. It's the acting debut of Mima Kirigoe, who plays a rape victim.
  • Soft Glass:
    • Averted: Rumi gets a serious cut from leaning through a broken window.
    • Played straight when that window (one in a storefront, no less) was completely shattered in the first place by being hit by an umbrella.
    • Also averted when the photographer is murdered.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance:
    • How the hell can they play something as upbeat as "Season" over the end credits of a movie this horrific? Well, that's because the ending is actually very positive. It may not fit the film overall, but it fits the ending quite well.
    • The light, happy bubblegum J-pop tune "Ai no Tenshi" (lit. "Angel of Love") underscores the gruesome carnage throughout the movie. It's even heard when Double Bind's writer, Shibuya, gets killed.
  • Split Personality:
    • Rumi, at least.
    • Another disorder related to schizophrenia, called Folie à deux. The subjective nature of a person's image and how it may differ from that actual person, possibly even taking on a life of its own, is one of the major points of the film.
  • Spotting the Thread: Mima realizes that she's not in her own apartment when she notices that none of the fish in the tank are dead and the CHAM poster is still on the wall.
  • Stalker Shrine:
    • Me-Mania's room, which is covered wall-to-wall in posters of Mima.
    • Rumi's room is an exact replica of Mima's room.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Me-Mania is obsessed with Mima.
  • Stepford Smiler: Both Mima (Depressed) and Rumi (Unstable).
  • Stylistic Suck:
    • Double Bind features abundant sex and violence and borrows rather heavily from other well-known psychological thrillers.
    • CHAM's "Ai no Tenshi", which recurs throughout the movie, is filled with musical and lyrical cliches from mid-nineties J-pop.
  • Surprisingly Happy Ending: After all the horror, the last scene shows a fully recovered Mima, now a successful actress.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the climax, Mima is physically healthier than Rumi and thus can keep outpacing her when the latter is chasing her, due to Rumi being out of shape. Even so, Mima is staggering due to the stab wound in her shoulder, some nasty falls, and the earlier fight with Me-Mania.
  • Tears of Fear: Mima during the rape scene, during her Freak Out moment after returning to her apartment, and as she's running for her life from Rumi.
  • This Is Reality: Tadokoro tells Rumi that while Mima makes the final decision, acting requires making compromises for certain parts. If Mima pushes back too many times or they do, she'll get the label of a diva. It's for this reason that Mima keeps agreeing to do things like the rape scene and nude photoshoot, despite being uncomfortable with them.
  • Through the Eyes of Madness:
    • Satoshi Kon loves this one. It's hard to say what in the film is real — we're seeing it through Mima's perspective, and she doesn't have a damn clue herself.
    • Near the end, as Rumi is staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck, from her perspective she sees them as a pair of spotlights shining down on her as idol-Mima. She spreads her arms wide to embrace them while a crowd of fans cheers in the background.
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Mima does this while having a bath, underwater.
  • Unbuilt Trope: It is a deconstruction of an idol anime... except it came out in 1997, way before other idol anime without such deconstruction would come.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Due to her Sanity Slippage, Mima starts suffering from increasingly vivid delusions, though they are obvious to the audience at first, they become subtle and at a couple of points, they come in the form of Daydream Surprises and bouts of Missing Time.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Me-Mania for Rumi.
  • The Voiceless: Me-Mania for most of the movie.
  • Walking Spoiler: Everything about Rumi aside from being Mima's manager spoils the entire movie.
  • Wham Line: A completely snapped Rumi tells Mima that she's the one who asked Me-Mania to take care of the "impostor". It puts all of Rumi's previous actions in another light.
  • Wham Shot:
    • After her encounter with Me-Mania near the end, Mima calls up her agent to let him know she’s alright. Cut back to the studio where we see his face covered in blood and his body lying next to the dead Me-mania.
    • The reflection idol Mima appears in the climax...and Rumi walks into the room, dressed in an idol outfit and wearing a wig. Mima asks, in dawning horror, if Rumi was the one who orchestrated those murders.
  • White-Dwarf Starlet: Mima's overweight, middle-aged female manager Rumi was a former pop idol who didn't last and now thinks she's the real Mima.
  • Within Arm's Reach: Mima Kirigoe is getting choked on the soundstage by her Stalker with a Crush, Me-Mania. Unable to cry for help, Mima scrambles desperately for something to get this monster off her. Her fingers close around a claw hammer, and she swings this at Me-Mania's gonk head.
  • Word Salad Title: The title of the film doesn't refer to anything in particular within the film's universe, nor really have anything to do with its contents.
  • Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In-Universe. Eri, the co-star of Double Bind, praises the screenwriter, Shibuya, for his clever dialogue and story and asks him who the murderer is. Shibuya playfully replies that he won't say; it would be more fun for for her to find out herself. As Shibuya then walks out of earshot of the actors with the producer, Tejima, the latter tells Shibuya that he really needs to make up his mind on who the killer is. In fact, the character he settles on — Yoko Takakura, Mima's character — underwent drastic rewrites due to their agents badgering the crew to get them more scenes.
  • Yandere: Me-Mania for Mima. He starts off harmless enough, if a bit too into his Celebrity Crush — starting a fight to defend her at a concert, having a room that is covered in her merchandise, and obsessively reading a blog allegedly written by her. But by the end, he's willing to rape and kill Mima, since he doesn't believe she's the "real" Mima — after all, his precious, pure Mima-rin would never do such horrible things as film a sexually graphic scene or take nude photographs! Therefore, it's obviously his job to humiliate and destroy this impostor. Rumi didn't help matters there...
  • You Got Murder: While Mima is trying out an acting bit on a crime procedural series, her two managers are discussing her part with the writer and producer when they receive a letter. Tadokoro opens it, only for it to blow up in his face, and he is later seen with bandaged hands. It was sent by Me-Mania, a Stalker with a Crush.
  • You Have Failed Me: Mentioned in passing and briefly shown. While giving her little "Reason You Suck" Speech to Mima, Rumi mentions how the "real" Mima's fans will do any favor she asks of them, and notes that "Of course, Me-Mania screwed that last one up ever so slightly..." Just a bit earlier, when Mima is trying to call Tadokoro, we see him lying dead with his eyes gouged out — next to Me-Mania, who's also lying there dead from being stabbed in the eye. Apparently, neither Rumi nor the "real" Mima approved of Me-Mania's failed rape-and-murder attempt.

I'm the real thing!

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