Perfect Blue

Disney's hold on the world of animation leaves little room for new ideas. Hollywood appears transfixed by The Lion King's sales figures. In Japan, the creative team at Manga have gone the other way, exploiting horror comics and sc-fi.

Perfect Blue is a psychological thriller, more sophisticated than 24th-century superheroics. The graphic quality is not good, although it has a style of sorts. The plot is from Complex City (no translator provided). You don't know whether it's all in the protagonist's head, or real murders have been committed. Certainly, blood flows.

When Mima decides to quit her pop group at the height of its success and become an actress, bad things start happening. A sinister stalker lurks at the back of crowds with a video camera. A letter bomb and hate mail is sent. Important figures in her TV soap are killed. She agrees to do a rape scene, as if determined to destroy her little girl image, and then starts seeing her old self, as a shiny white spirit, and feels threatened. Is this a case of multiple personality, or silliness in the script dept?