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Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $23.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This is one of the best animes I've seen. Beautiful animation, a thrilling plot, and a pretty main character. What more could you ask for? Despite the violence and brief nudity, it is something that I would enjoy showing to my children when they get older.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Perfect Psycho-Thriller
Review: Just two words: GREAT MOVIE. Being a lover of psycho-thrillers, both books and movies, I can easily say this DVD is a masterpiece. The atmosphere, the drawings, the settings... it's just perfect. Both Audio and Video quality is at its best, and the plot is intriguing and mind-shattering. My advice is: buy this DVD, you won't regret your dollars.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great concept, but badly polished
Review: I have to credit the film for a good start, but not much more than that. I enjoyed how the beginning of the film quickly draws you to the main character. It begins with Mima transitioning from a shy pop-idol (with a nice solo act, by the way) to a lackluster actress in a second-rate TV show. The film does a great job of making Mima feel real, kind of like a disheartened girl-next-door. I continued to enjoy the film through the initial stalking and murders, though I couldn't say it was done with much finesse.

From then on, things go downhill into what I consider to be a failed implementation of the second half. When Mima begins to lose the distinction between reality and her work, the film intentionally goes schizophrenic. While it is important to the concept of the film to mislead the audience about what is really happening, the segments were too short to effectively do so, which results in distracting discontinuity rather than smoothly leading the audience to believe Mima's delusions (and then shattering that perception). Also, Mima isn't fazed by her delusions, which causes her character to lose credibility. She seems almost detached from what's happening to her sanity. This may seem a bit picky for an Anime, but remember the idea behind this one was to create a wholly enveloping experience that suspends disbelief from frame 1 -- a concept which is violated, for example, when the film portrays Mima's alter ego as a girl-leaping-on-her-toes spirit in the style of Urusei Yatsura. It causes the film to lose credibility, and it just doesn't fit the genre.

Okay, so it's not a Miyazaki film. They had a great concept and a good start, but it was badly polished and the ending was a disappoinment. I want to like this film, I really do. But it just left me feeling like my money could have been better spent.

If you don't mind being reminded that this is an Anime that's trying not to be, you might enjoy it. If you don't mind your sense of continuity being put into the blender, you might enjoy it. If you like to become lost in the story, with little thought toward its implementation, don't buy this (watch it on someone else's dime, maybe).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The ending ruined it? On the contrary!
Review: Watching Perfect Blue, I came up with dozens of theories as to what was going on and how the movie would end.

They were all wrong.

Perfect Blue is suspense in the truest sense of the word. By the end of the movie, I was out of my seat and on the floor in front of the TV, as if sitting closer would somehow ease the suspense. It didn't, but all for the better, because the suspenseful feeling is so powerful and it works that way.

Of note was the animation, which had a nice style that was just realistic enough, but I maybe would have liked it to be a bit more reaslitic or stylized differently.

Animation aside, the characters were truly spooky and throw you off your guard at every turn. Much of the movie is spent in confusion as to what these characters are actually doing and what is real, but it only builds the suspense up even higher.

Beautifully crafter, a true suspense, and the dub isn't that bad, either. If you like anime, or just a good movie (and can look past the fact that this is animated) then this movie is for you. It'll really keep you guessing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not Hitchcock
Review: I picked up this video because the cover made fantastic promises of an incredible psychological thriller on par with Hitchcock. It was fairly good, but I still longed for more loose ends, more threads to be woven together. It all seemed so obvious. (The stalker looks like a rip-off of Disney's hunchback, and he displays obsessive 'psycho' traits from the beginning.) There was one mild plot twist right at the end, but the character didn't have enough development to make me shocked or surprised.

The obligatory comments about the version I'm referring to: I watched the "safe" dubbed version. Thus, thankfully the rape scene was quite short. The dubbing was pretty standard. Sadly the high-pitched English "Ok!" that the main character uttered many times only added to the annoying aspects of the her character.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If you ever wanted to be a star...
Review: The exhilaration of being on the big screen, the satisfaction of being famous, the indescribable feeling...of being stalked. This modern thriller follows the career of a young pop idol Mima Kirigoe as she decides to take a drastic change of genre, from singing to acting. Mima, portrayed as the naive innocent child, finds herself in a whole new world, one filled with despair, lust, and confusion. Her life soon twists into endless yesterdays as she loses her identity and, seemingly, her sanity. The ending comes all too soon, culminating in the revelation of who she really had become.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great movie and one of the best anime DVD's around
Review: Perfect Blue is a strange and wonderful movie, and this DVD really does it justice. The menus are beautiful and fit the film perfectly, and the extras are refreshingly good. We actually get interviews with the three main actors and actresses who contributed their talents to the (pretty good) English dub; it's beautiful and kind of strange to hear them speak in a normal conversational tone about the film and its meanings. The interviews with director Satoshi Kon and Japanese voice actress Junko Iwao aren't as good, but at least they're there. Everything else is good for an anime DVD release, and the film... well, you have to see it and make up your own mind. A lot of people hate it and others (like me) think it's great; everybody will agree, though, that it's confusing as hell at times thanks to some crazy editing. The movie tries to take us into the psyche of a crazy person, and for this film that means not knowing what's real and what isn't. You really lose track of reality, because the screenplay keeps turning the old "The character wakes up and it's all a dream" cliche on itself. After a while you forget whether it's a dream or not, and you start to sympathize with the insanity of the various characters. It's a powerful and unusual film, one of those movies you keep thinking about six months after watching it, and I think everyone should experience its lunacy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: if only there were more stars to give...
Review: This was my introduction to anime. And what a great start. Animation wasn't hard on the eyes like some and the dubbing was good. at first, it could be just some movie about a pop idol. When she decides to become an actress and lands her first roll in a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit-style drama, she is thrown into a world of madness. A fan, angered by her choice to become an actress, begins stalking her and her mental state slowly deteriorates until at the end of the movie, she can't tell what's real or not. It's very well done. When she loses her mind, it's hard for the viewer to tell what's real or not along with her. It even has a awesome chase scene, and the plot twist at the end came out of nowhere - it will surprise anyone. I recommend you stop reading this review and go out right now to buy it. Definately one you'll watch more than once.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Marvellous, this is a piece of Art. Two Thumbs up!
Review: This is really an anime ¨¤ la Hitchcock. Truthly, this is not the best anime I have seen. Actually, I am an anime fan and I have seen so many animes from Akira to Ghost in the Shell and Princess Mononoke. Nevertheless, Perfect Blue deserves a 5 stars. The reason is simple, a triller amongst anime, it's not d¨¦j¨¤ vu. It changes a bit from the mechas, monsters with tentacles and complex stories I have seen before. I should say that this is the first anime triller I have seen so far and I really liked it, though I wanted it a bit longer. The art is good, the characters look nice, no comment on the soundtrack and the story will keep your mouth open for 1 hour plus. Anyway I stongly advice this anime whether you are a fan or not. It's really value for money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 5 starts>? more like 100 stars!
Review: This movie rocks ! buy it! but it now! and for those who say this movie was confusing or even boring, well guess what? you people are slow in the head. A fast thinker is required through out the whole movie. It probably took them 2 hours just to notice they r watching a thriller. I'm not kidding.


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