Perfect Blue | Dissecting The Most Terrifying Animated Film

What's YOUR favourite Satoshi Kon film, and why?!

One of the most terrifying aspects of Perfect Blue is how timeless it continues to be, despite being released in 1997. The internet and social media platforms were in their infancy when the film was made, but parasocial behaviors were already present enough to be recognized and channeled into the story's antagonists.

Satoshi Kon was taken too soon, he was a visionary in psychological anime.

One thing i love about Satoshi Kon is how he always added a layer of complexity to his female protagonists that made them really interesting to watch. You can really see this in his film millennium actress too, which is a massive love letter to Japanese cinema and culture. All told through the lens of a legendary actress who struggles to discern between the reality and fiction of her memories. Really worth the watch if you like this film!

Something that has always creeped me out is happy, cheerful music playing while something horrible is happening in the screen. It makes me feel like I'm a child, seeing something that no one else can see, something painful and disturbing while everyone cheers.

The fact that the film is called Perfect Blue and also features so much red also subverts expectations, right down to the title.

I kept thinking what made the radio in the elevator scariest for me. (I'm a security guard who has worked in parking garages like this for a few years now, particularly in an elevator lobby. I've used elevators like this one all day every day for years. And the thing that sticks out to me the most, is that for the most part, these elevators move at a moderate pace. Even the slowest ones will get you to your floor in a few seconds, but it still takes some time for it to reach the bottom and open the doors automatically. But, they go just slow enough, that if someone was really hurrying down the stairs, they could beat the elevator to the bottom floor, easily, even if they started on the same floor. I see it every day. And at the beginning of this scene, we see him get off of the elevator, and it's empty. Then we see the note on his car, and we figure, huh, some lousy punks are pranking me, they probably did this some time while I was at work and are long gone by now. But then, we hear the music coming from the elevator and it completely recontextualizes his feelings of safety and mundanity in this situation. Now we think, what if whoever left the note on his car... What if they aren't gone? What if they're still around...? And then we watch him carefully approach the elevator with unease, So then when the doors actually open we're expecting to see the killer, but we don't. Instead we see the floor of the elevator, and it's red. (That is far from a common color for elevator floors I'll just say that,) This was intentional, to contrast the blue radio, and give the environment around it a sense of danger. Because as soon as you see the blaring radio on the red floor of the elevator, your gut wrenches as you realize, the killer isn't in there. But they did this on purpose, specifically because they wanted you to be looking down, at the elevator, with the music blaring so it drowns out all other sound behind you, which is even louder in big echoey parking garage, and be so puzzled, you're not even not thinking about what could be behind you. And that's when you realize what's about to happen but it's already too late. Absolutely chilling.

Wow. The boombox being in the elevator and blasting the music suddenly made my blood run cold. I don't know anything else about this movie, I just clicked on this because I like this channel, and wow. I didn't expect it to literally send chills through my body

This movie is one real surreal trip when i watched it yet it flows smoothly and feels like Kon's one big spectacle questioning what's real or what's not. The fact that the incident regarding Bjork's stalker is this film's inspiration makes it more creepy.

The intensity of the red color in this movie, always send my heart racing.

Perfect Blue wrecked me psychologically when I first saw it. Opening my eyes to the cruelty of anonymity and obsession online when I first watched it so many years ago before social media had even become such a huge thing. The whole film feels off from the faceless crowds to the muted backgrounds lit up by reds. It's an absolute masterpiece

That second murder scene is forever engrained in my brain. Rest in peace Satoshi Kon

As a fan of both Anime and Horror, "Perfect Blue" is one of the fewer anime films that really felt close to psychological horror. Not only was it uniquely unnerving and it gets under your skin, but it's scary how relevant its underlying message is. It's still a shame that Satoshi Kon is not here with us anymore. What a true artist he was.

He literally has a perfect filmography, such a tragedy we've lost him so early but his work lives on !

Something that really disturbed me were how the eyes were drawn,especially the stalker's one. It remids me of a dead fish,they're so creepy!

"Listen closely, the music is still playing" gave me chills! Your editing was so good :')

I always knew there was something so unusually terrifying about the elevator scene. Thanks for dissecting the scene & thanks for this amazingly and terrifyingly edited video on Perfect Blue. Satoshi Kon is indeed one of my favourite directors. No-one could & no-one ever has used the full potential of animation in telling such engaging and intricate stories, like he did.

What I love the most about this movie is the top notch editing that constantly blurs fact & fiction. It is very hard to pull that off in animation even nowadays but he somehow managed to implement it in his short yet sweet filmography

perfect blue is really unmatched for me in the way it depicts such utter loss of self, which is so rare to find in media and even less this masterfully done, and this video (and editing!!) made me remember what an Experience that was, so thank you for such a lovely review/vid essay!

This movie is so damn good. It is a masterclass on slowburn psychological horror, my favorite.