Perfect Blue/Headscratchers

• Okay, I get the rest of the film -- as much as you can get it, anyway—but I can't figure out the scene where Mima reunites with CHAM for a performance. The audience reactions would indicate she's actually there... but as far as I can understand the film, Mima was actually somewhere else entirely. It couldn't have been Rumi, because her costume wasn't remotely convincing to anyone not suffering a psychological breakdown, as we see when we see her as she really looks in mirrors and windows, rather than from her/Mima's perspective.
  • That was probably Me-Mania's delusion of Mima jumping on stage, and the rest of the audience cheering with him.
  • Or anyone who prefers pop-idol Mima sees the delusion, too...
• Correct this troper if he's wrong, but a part of the movie seemed like (or at least felt like) a Non Sequitur Scene. In one part at the beginning, while Rumi and Mima's agent are discussing the future of Mima's career, there's a TV in the background playing a scene Mima tried out for. She collapses onto a bed and ruefully says "I can't do this"...while a woman wearing a red and black teddy stands over her. ...what was that all about? Were they so desperate for a potential lesbian scene that they'd put one anywhere in the movie? What, did one of the animators say "Hey, let's draw up what looks like a lesbian scene! Who cares if it's not in the script? I'm sure we'll work it into the movie somehow."? To be fair, while it is one of my favorite movies, it's pretty much a big Mind Screw as it is.
  • At the same time, they were discussing how well-received she was when she had acted thus far. I had assumed the scene was showing what she had been well-received for. Beyond that...
  • Yeah, I'm pretty sure that clip was supposed to show how she had already acted in another soap opera or whatever. It was basically to just to show she had had experience. Thus, it wouldn't make her transition into acting too much out of the blue.
• So did Mima really murder that photographer or not? At the end of the movie she was implying that Me-Mania is the one who did all the killing, but he couldn't have put the blood-stained clothes in Mima's closet. Rumi is another suspect, but again, she most likely wouldn't have the keys to Mima's apartment.
  • Mima was so fucked up by that point that it may just be safe to disregard it.
  • I figured that Me-Mania did it by Rumi's request, and then she hid it in Mima's closet. I don't see why Rumi would have a hard time getting a key from Mima given how close she was.
  • Or it could have been Mima, after all. Given the fact that she was really torn apart and really affected by the disorder, it wasn't impossible for her to kill someone in that stage. The police didn't arrest her because they either thought Me-Mania killed the photographer or they just declared Mima insane when she did it and kept her in the hospital for a while, then released her, when she was cured.
    • the only reason i agree with this is because of the shopping bag and clothing themselves- Mima says before " so i was in harajuka today"- and there's a picture of her holding a shopping bag on the mima's room blog- the exact same one that's in her closet filled with the bloody clothing. If the mima-killing photographer scene was a dream- was it just a coincidence that the bloody clothing are the same as the uniform she wore in the dream? or were they the same because she subconciously remembered buying them- that those were the clothing she bought to dress up as the pizza delivery person? Rumi couldn't have planted this one- since how could she know Mima would dream it- the exact same uniform of murder? the photographer is also the only one mima ( in any incarnation) we've seen killing in detail. we don't see how the screen writer, the crazy fan or the other manager are stabbed to death-we just see the results, and infer that Rumi was responsible for them one way or another. Even when Mima asks the crazy fan- "you killed them?"- me-mania might have responded because he killed the screen writer and the obnoxious guys at the concert-(remeber there was that newspaper clipping of the guy in intensive care unit in the elevator that mima saw) instead of the photographer. I can't accept that the shopping bag and clothing were just imagined by mima- since Mima never actually touches her delusions: and she picked up that shopping bag- and shoved it back into the closet- like evidence she had to hide. The only time she did interact physically with her delusions was when she was fighting Rumi dressed as pop idol-mima.
    • I believe that it was Me-Mania on Rumi's request, simply because the murder take place around the time Rumi starts visting Mima. It'd be really easy for her to put those clothes in the bag and her visits didn't really serve any purpose.
    • Given the climactic sequence with both Rumi and Mima hallucinating that Rumi is Mima, I figured that that was actually Rumi-thinking-she's-Mima killing the photographer. She did one actual killing, and talked Me-Mania into doing the rest.
    • Or maybe Mina just imagined the bloody clothes?
  • I had always assumed it was Rumi who was doing the murdering, based on choice of weapon. The murders were carried out with an ice pick, yet when Me-Mania attacks Mima he uses a knife. I interpreted Rumi bringing out the ice pick against Mima as a subtle sign that she was the murderer.
  • This troper actually tends to assume that the scene we see of "Mima" murdering the photographer is at least partly or fully made up of scenes from Mima's TV drama. We know that the plotline and murders in the show are mirrors of the real life plot and murders, so it seems likely that Mima (and by extension the audience) are being confused into seeing the line blur between her role in the drama as the murderer and these real life murders that are taking place at the same time.
• Just how old is Me-Mania? When he's not wearing his brown coat, he wears what looks like something resembling a school uniform and we see other people wearing the outfit.
  • Mid 20s to late 30s? The outfit he was wearing looked like a jumpsuit used by event security. His voice doesn't really point to any specific age.
• Why is the movie called Perfect Blue anyway?
  • Perfect Blue is both the colour of illusions and of a "clear sky."
• I know it was mostly for drama, but I'm having trouble stomaching the setup of Mima's strip club scene. Did they actually' have to make the guy have sex with her for the scene? It couldn't be faked somehow- camera cuts, stunt doubles, no penetration, anything? Is this always done when filming such scenes? I could buy that the produces were sleazes, but if this is really a practice in acting, I'm gonna need so much Brain Bleach.
  • I don't think there was any actual rape. As I understand cinematography, there is a "no penetration" rule in non-porn films, and usually for a scene like that the actors will just be humping the air within a few inches of each other while the camera focuses on adjacent areas (exposed male buttocks are the most common thing, like the sex scenes in Torchwood). So they were just acting the hell out of it and not actually bumping uglies. Also, at that point the story's being told from Mima's POV, so its legitimacy may already be in doubt.
    • Yeah, the first time we see the rape scene it's made clear to us that it is fake—you see Mima's fellow actors in the scene apologizing to her. It isn't until later that the lines become blurred, to the point where there is an actual attempted rape on that exact same set.
    • You can see the crowd's heads blocking everything that isn't from the waist up in wider shots, so it's obviously faked. Also, why on earth would you assume it isn't fake?
    • I don't get the OP question. That scene is obviously staged and there is nothing in the movie that implies it's not. Why would be a real rape? Mima is not filming a snuff film or a porno.