| ~ light spoilers for perfect blue (if you haven’t watched perfect blue just watch it now) ~ I recently watched the movie “Perfect Blue” for our psychological theme and it was amazing. It had some of that really good psychological horror and also some interesting ideas about the public’s perception of celebrities and the effects on celebrities themselves. One thing I found pretty interesting about this movie was its confusing story. In the movie, the main character Mima quits her career as a pop idol to become an actress. Because of this she is labeled as a “traitor” by her fans and also has her own identity crisis. So far the movie is pretty easy to follow. However as the movie goes on, Mima slowly loses grip on reality due to her identity crisis, the attacks happening around her, and the scenes she must act out for a show she’s in. As she loses sense of what’s happening, the movie also starts being intentionally confusing. For example many scenes seem to be real but are actually just scenes from the show they are filming, confusing both Mima and the audience. All of this contributes very well to the horror, helping to make this one of the scariest films I’ve seen. However what I find most interesting about this is that people don’t criticize the confusing story, while other shows which also use confusion in interesting ways get criticized more. Perfect Blue gets recognized for using confusion for horror, and I want people to recognize other shows that use confusion in similar ways as well. Thanks for reading. I will be posting more about the shows that seem to get criticized for being confusing later. |
Mr_Chr1sJul 7, 2020 11:27 AM
| That sense of confusion, the characters losing their grip on reality, has made Kon's movies difficult for me to watch. Not because it's bad, but because it's effective. I consider the loose grip on reality being a human provides pretty important and how it's torn away in movies like Perfect Blue leaves me disorientated and uncomfortable |
Cccel said: That sense of confusion, the characters losing their grip on reality, has made Kon's movies difficult for me to watch. Not because it's bad, but because it's effective. I consider the loose grip on reality being a human provides pretty important and how it's torn away in movies like Perfect Blue leaves me disorientated and uncomfortable Exactly! I love how effective it is at making you uncomfortable. |
| I’m glad you enjoyed Perfect Blue. Funny thing you posted about it because it’s the anime I based my username after. The movie is an absolute masterpiece of the psychological genre. During my first watch of the movie, everything was quite confusing up until the ending (if you find yourself in the same boat, just know it’s perfectly normal). But I was blown away by it nevertheless. That said, it was in my second watch of the movie that I was able to pick out the small details that correlate with the main storyline, and I think this is where the true genius of the anime comes in. I personally have a love/hate relationship with the more confusing works of the psychological genre. On one hand, NGE and Perfect Blue rank among my top favorites. One the other hand, Serial Experiments Lain and Texhnolyze are two of my worst scored shows. I think the reason why I dislike some psychological shows is because I expect something for the attention and analysis I put into a psychological anime. To elaborate, Perfect Blue has a very insightful and interesting story (as the OP described above) that was worth watching for. However, Serial Experiments Lain had (what is in my opinion) a vastly ambiguous and senseless plot at its core that could not be fully deciphered because it was never created to be. This is just my opinion, as I know there are plenty of people who enjoyed Serial Experiments Lain. All in all, I have to strongly agree with the OP and suggest that you add Perfect Blue to your PTW if you haven’t seen it already. |
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