![]() While not the same as the film, the novel is still good on its own merits. This is followed by a very scary climax, which utilizes tension, body horror, and good old-fashioned chase to effectively keep the reader drawn in and wanting to find out what happens next. Now, normally I’m not that big a fan of body horror (I associate it too much with torture porn, which I’m not the biggest fan of), but here it’s done very well, especially when “the man” starts practicing for his plan to “save” Mima. Speaking of which, there are some really disturbing scenes in the novel, especially as you go later in, that utilize body horror. It’s very effective for setting our perceptions of “the man,” and sets things up for the more disturbing actions he takes later in the story. But from the beginning of the novel, “the man” is completely active and menacing, committing a horrific crime within the first few pages of the novel. Me-Mania is, while intimidating, mostly a passive character, not taking any sort of action beyond stalking until late in the film. Me-Mania,” is given more complexity and we see more things from his perspective, why Mima’s innocence is so important for him and some of his ideas about the world. ![]() What I do like about the novel is that “the man,” who in the movie is called “Mr. There are times when the story is told from the POV of other characters, but they’re always related in some way to the lives of Mima and “the man.” Whereas the movie was a deeply psychological story about a young woman struggling with her identity, how people saw her, and how she saw herself after a career change, the novel itself is a very basic stalker story, like what you might find in an episode of Criminal Minds.* The story is mainly told from the viewpoints of Mima, who in this version is okay and even yearns for the changes to her image so she can progress in her idol career, and “the man,” whose sanity erodes the further Mima seems to get away from her innocent image and whose plans get more drastic. So right away, I should point out that the movie took a lot of liberties with the original story. When their paths intersect, their lives will be changed forever. Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis follows two very different people: Mima Kirigoe, a Japanese pop idol who is trying to leave behind her image as an “innocent” starlet and take on a more mature image and the other is someone simply identified as “the man,” a man who is obsessed with Mima and her “innocent” image and resolves to keep her innocent by any means necessary. It’s a review, so let’s get to reviewing. But of course, this won’t be a book-vs.-movie comparison (at least not entirely). And after about four months, I finally did get a copy and sit down to read it.īoy, that’s different than the movie in more ways than one. Naturally, I got excited and tried to get my hands on it. That is, until I found out a few months ago that Seven Seas Entertainment had licensed and translated the novel for the English-language market. I’d also known for a long time that the movie was based on a novel, but it wasn’t translated into English and therefore I had no hope of reading it. I found that my previous dislike for the film had been based on my not understanding it, and that with a few more years and a better understanding, I found it to be a really good movie. The first of those movies was the psychological horror anime movie Perfect Blue, released in 1997. A good number of you probably remember that late last year, I did a series of posts where I reevaluated scary movies I’d previously seen and disliked called the Rewatch Series.
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