Hacker Cinema
Perfect Blue
PERFECT BLUE
1998 · Film · 81 min
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Rising pop star Mima Kirigoe quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima's reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.
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22 comments on Hacker News
Seconding Fullmetal Alchemist. I hear the remake (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) is usually regarded as the better version. More suggestions: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Death Note, Sousou no Frieren, Cowboy Bebop, Nichijou, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Bakemonogatari. There's also quite a few good movies, anything by Studio Ghibli is great, and so are Akira, Perfect Blue, and Ghost in the Shell.
The best story telling in anime doesn't come from anything close to Ghibli - at least not modern Ghibli.
If you want high concept, good, unique stories, it's going to take you to some much more indie sutff. Serial Experiments Lain, The Tatami Galaxy, Perfect Blue (and everything that director made), Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), Akira, and a bunch of other weird 80s/90s anime films you likely wouldn't even consider.
If Hayao Miyazaki can be considered the Steven Spielberg of anime films, then I personally consider Satoshi Kon as the Stanley Kubrick. My top 3 from his filmography are “Perfect Blue”, “Tokyo Godfathers”, and, of course, “Paprika.”
Paprika is good, but I wouldn't elevate it to greatness. Whereas, for me, Perfect Blue makes the cut. The odd thing is, they both essentially explore aspects of the same theme: subjective reality and what happens when those of different individuals' collide. But they do that in very different ways...
And thank you for bringing up Metropolis, that film tends to be underrated.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Your Name
Violet Evergarden
Perfect Blue
Paprika
Metropolis
There's a bunch of great animated movies.
If you're referring to series then among the best Seinen classics are shows like:
Berzerk (1997)
Monster (2004) [My personal favorite]
Cowboy Bebop
Steins:Gate
Vinland Saga (newer)
Frieren (newer)
There's a lot of Shounen classics as well, my favorite probably being
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
granted there's several tropes in it that aren't going to be as enjoyable to watch on repeat for older folks. But the storytelling and plot is practically like Breaking Bad but in anime form.
My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand.
Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac".
The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.
> Satoshi Kon, the director of Perfect Blue and Paprika
(Perhaps these examples were saved for the subscribers-only section) Quite notable is the influence of those two films on later Western films--elements shots in Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream match those in Perfect Blue; the same for Inception and Paprika.
Relevant Every Frame a Painting video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE
Personally, I found 'Perfect Blue' to be a remarkably unpleasant movie... really well done, but ugh.
If you haven't seen it, I recommend seeing 'Millennium Actress' and/or 'Paprika' first, and then if you love the style, watch 'Perfect Blue'.
'Tokyo Godfathers' (which is not at all what you'd expect from the title... it's about three homeless men who find a baby) is also very good too.
I saw Perfect Blue in theaters. It must have been 1999. I remember just being burnt out on movies that were about not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. There were so many that year (The Matrix and eXistenZ just to name two.)
Speaking of having a little too much homage, an old anime I like (mostly nostalgia) is Bubblegum Crisis and it has direct rip-offs from Blade Runner and Streets of Fire.
I only saw Requiem for a Dream when it was in the theatre and other than the soundtrack from PWEI's Clint Mansell, what I remember about it at the time was sitting in the theatre watching it and thinking that I had picked the worst date movie ever.
Some months later, she evened the score with American Psycho, so it netted out. I remember people talking about Perfect Blue, but anime wasn't my thing other than Ghost in the Shell being part of the 90s hipster/geek crossover canon.
A homage usually means taking one or two shots, or perhaps a motif, from another film. It's common for a film to contain homages to many different films, and that's great - like you say, watching films and picking these out is a lot of fun.
But when a film takes lots and lots of shots and motifs from one single other film, there's a point at which it stops being a homage and becomes plagiarism.
It's been years since I've seen either of these films - although I remember Perfect Blue having a huge impact on me around age 20 - so I don't have an opinion on whether plagiarism happened here or not. Certainly the author of this article wants us to believe it did but I didn't find the article convincing one way or another.
I also wonder how common it is, and what's considered to be an acceptable level in the film industry - are there hard and fast rules about what constitutes plagiarism, like there is in academic writing? Or is there an acceptable level in the US that's different to Japan, perhaps?
I didn't realize Perfect Blue was a flop. Not one I can watch multiple times, but a really well done movie.
Aside Chiaki Konaka from Lain, I would recommend some of the works of Sadayuki Murai (who, coincidentally, co-worked with Konaka in Bubblegum Crisis 2040):
- Moryo no Hako (not sure what's the English name, but it's a nice horror/detective story from a novel)
- Millennium Actress (an IMO nice way to show the evolution of the Japanese cinema)
- Perfect Blue (mostly Satoshi Kon's work, but Murai worked in the screenplay)
There's also Boogiepop Phantom, but you lose a bit of the plot if you haven't read the original novels.
(To be clear where I'm coming from: I'm not what you'd call an otaku, haven't watched many things of this kind. I really detest over-the-top stuff. I prefer realism to fantasy but can enoy it if it helps with the plot. I've watched and enjoyed Evangelion (wasn't enjoying it at all in the beginning but when it started getting "psychological" I loved it) and Ghost In The Shell, still haven't but want to watch the others you mentioned. I also watched Stein's Gate and felt exactly the way you did.)
Death Note is awesome, especially the first half. There's a bit of cringy overconfident adolescent personality going on, but I think it's all for the best considering the plot.
Monster is one I'm torn about. The themes it touches on are just perfect for a great dark story, but I feel like it under-delivers by always making it sound like it's gonna get really dark but never making it so. There's quite a bit of "semi-filler" episodes. Thought-provoking but never goes as deep as I'd like.
One movie I'd recommend is Perfect Blue. Realistic psychological suspense/horror with great animation.
Not at all the same genre, but Welcome To The NHK is pretty nice if you want some realistic "light-hearted dark humor" (if there's such a thing), but maybe not if you don't relate to being a hikikomori (or social recluse in general). There's over-the-top characteristics, especially in the first episodes, but it gets better. Watch, say, 10 episodes; if you don't love it by then, it may not be for you.
EDIT: Oh, I also watched Ergo Proxy in an overnight binge so I honestly can't remember much about it. A lot of people like it, I found it really boring and felt too grandiose for what actually happened in the end. There's an interesting story behind it all, but I had to resort to reading fan theories to get it.
EDIT2: For the sake of completeness, the show I actually love the most is Avatar (The Last Airbender. I'm right now watching the sequel and still making up my mind on it). Possibly because I was a kid when I first watched it, but it still really moves me. And yes, I said before I prefer realistic stuff, but this is one of the greatest exceptions. It's also not dark by any means - it's a kid's show after all -, plenty of light-hearted humor and all, but there are many many things I'd say even an adult can get from watching it.
Anything by Satoshi Kon is great, and in line with what you've been watching. If I had to pick, Perfect Blue for movies and Paranoia Agent for series.
In the lighter more children spectrum, Mamoru Hosoda does beautiful things like Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
The Tatami Galaxy is another great one
As a documentary film, I bailed after the first few interviews. The novelty of peeking inside internet giants was lost on me. Just felt like awkward confessions of some of my peers with ethical second-thoughts.
I also feel like one method was singled out amongst others: the facebook algorithm. Which exploits its proprietary model of the links between individual humans to boost signal. I don't use the product myself. But I have to ask, to those who do use it regularly, how can any of jaron lanier's darkest predictions come as any surprise?
If you are in the mood for a free doc feature that will utterly blow your mind, I can sincerely give a high rec to The Real Story of Paris Hilton. It's actually a real life horror movie that I found to have a similar energy to Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue. But non fiction ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOg0TY1jG3w
Not sure if "iconic", but I recommend Millennium Actress for an interesting way to weave a story which goes through the evolution of the Japanese film industry.
The screenplay was written by Sadayuki Murai, who put a unique touch on whatever he worked in (he also worked with Satoshi Kon in Perfect Blue).
Also not a film, but I found "Mōryō no Hako" (a short series adapted from a 1995 book) worth watching: at the heart it's basically a crime story, but the execution, with some "hallucinated" scenes, and also the characters are interesting.
Not sure about that. I remember that in the late '90s - early 2000s people were really hyped up about the animation movies of that era, and rightly so, we're talking about the early Pixar movies, Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away", Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent" and "Perfect Blue" or about "Cowboy Bebop", people knew that they were contemporary with really, really great animation movies/series. Almost 20 years have passed since then and nothing similar is being done anymore, at least not in the mainstream.
I just watched "Perfect Blue", it was really great. I'll keep watching more Satoshi Kon movies if I can find the DVDs. It's really hard to find them.
I wouldn't introduce someone to Satoshi Kon with Paprika. In my opinion it is much better to watch Kon's movies in their chronological release order. Perfect Blue is much more accessible and less surrealist than Paprika which may confuse someone and cause them to dismiss Kon's whole cinematography as a whole.
I thought the actress who played Mima in the US dub of Perfect Blue did an amazing job. I can happily watch that film in English.
On a slightly different note, whilst trying without success to find the actress's name on IMDB, I just found out that the film's director Satoshi Kon tragically died of cancer 5 years ago. We lost a film making genius.
Sadly, it's kind of hard for me to come up with good hacker movies, but I can at least try to make a recommendation of interest to (most) hackers: Paprika. It's an anime film (by the same team that brought us Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress) that explores the ramifications of a device that allows someone to interact with someone else's dreams. Like I said, not a hacker movie per se, but I think it's one that most hackers will probably like.