Trivia / Perfect Blue

• Cast the Expert: A coincidental case. Junko Iwao, Mima's Japanese voice actress, had previously been in the idol industry before transitioning over to voice acting and even had an incident with a stalker though Kon was completely unaware when she was cast.
• In Memoriam: A dedication to Harutoshi Ogata, the film's editor, appears in the ending credits.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Rica Matsumoto plays Rumi, a retired idol turned manager who couldn't make it in the industry. Matsumoto, even decades later, is a very successful actress and singer, even being one of the founding members of anisong supergroup JAM Project.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The film's original 35mm camera negative was accidentally destroyed at some point, so all copies of the film are sourced from lower-quality prints.
• Late Export for You: The original novel was released in 1991, and the sequel in 1995, two years before the animated film was released in Japan. The film was released internationally in 1999, and almost 20 years later, Seven Seas Entertainment has announced that the novels will finally be coming to Western shores, with the first novel released in January 2018.
• Posthumous Credit: The film was released shortly after editor Harutoshi Ogata's death.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A series was planned but never materialized.
  • Darren Aronofsky tried to get the rights to remake Perfect Blue but was unable to secure said rights. That said, there are many similarities between Perfect Blue and Aronofsky's Black Swan although Aronofsky denies that the latter was inspired by the former.

---