A phenomenal horror film that has aged, maybe not like a fine wine, but more like a haunted fable that just gets scarier the further time passes.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 15, 2024

The timeless story and the complex characters, not to mention the fascinating visual language from start to finish, are only some of the reasons why fans keep coming back to Kon’s unparalleled debut.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 20, 2023

Like many great late ’90s films, Satoshi Kon’s animated thriller from 1997 grapples with the duality of the fledgling internet, but shockingly predicts future fallouts.

| May 11, 2023

Gorgeous little pseudo-slasher with plenty to say about the dangers of toxic fandom.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2022

Kon's feature debut is a hallucinatory fever dream filled with Pop Idols and doppelgangers. The editing brilliantly encapsulates the blurring line between Mima's real life and her performance on 'Double Bind' and the imagery is gorgeous and haunting.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 17, 2022

Still relevant even if not as deep as it thinks it is.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 26, 2022

Its remarks about entertainment culture, celebrity worship, virtual environments, and toxic fandom supply an incisive prophecy about how these factors continue to invade every aspect of our lives.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 26, 2022

A film about the question 'who we are' and the no-answer to this matter. A great anime and philosophical film. A must. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.75 | Oct 26, 2022

While I was familiar with the brilliance of Satoshi Kon before watching this (Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, just to name a few), it's no exaggeration to say that I'll be carrying the messages within his directorial debut for the rest of my life.

| Oct 26, 2022

Kon thoughtfully depicts a woman on the verge of madness as her squeaky-clean image devolves into the compromising and gruesome roles she plays in her acting career...

| Oct 8, 2021

This engrossing animated thriller somehow displays realist gore, nudity, and sexual violence in a tone not too far from that of a children's adventure; its innocence stems in part from the convincing naivete of the heroine.

| Oct 8, 2021

The directorial debut for one of anime's true visionaries, the late Satoshi Kon, and fantastic psychological thriller to boot...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 24, 2020

Strange, stylish and intelligent, this is a rare anime film that delivers on its Eastern promise.

| Sep 22, 2020

"Perfect Blue" is an artistic and technical masterpiece; however, what is of utmost importance is the fact that Satoshi Kon never deteriorated from the high standards he set here, in the first project that was entirely his own.

| Jan 26, 2020

Perfect Blue's success lies in the twisted, self-referential storyline that intercuts reality with fantasy so fluidly that viewers inevitably take on Mima's shattered point of view, unable to distinguish the truth until the stunning conclusion.

| Original Score: A | May 1, 2019

A brutal and haunting meditation on identity, femininity, and fame.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 16, 2019

Perfect Blue is an apocalyptic slasher, the ultimate crystallization of everything we came to fear about the internet before it became synonymous with living.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 9, 2019

For all its over-the-top violence, "Perfect Blue" is a surprisingly sophisticated film about the ways in which a celebrity's public persona can consume the real person within.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 6, 2018

A remarkable character piece about growth, staying true to yourself, and the terrors fandom can wreak.

| Sep 6, 2018

[Satoshi Kon's film], among the scariest in the medium, finds equally disturbing implications in its imagined threats as it does in its physical ones.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 22, 2018