Satoshi Kon's Hollywood Matrix: How an Anime Mastermind Shaped American Cinema — moviepilot.com

The year is 1998 and animator Satoshi Kon has just released his directorial debut, Perfect Blue. The story of Mima Kirigoe, a pop singer attempting to change her image to become a serious actress, allows us to question the blurred boundaries between perception and reality when she is stalked by an obsessive fan and the ghost of her on-stage persona. Across the Pacific Ocean, the closest offering in theatres is Jim Carrey's The Truman Show. Truman's crisis with reality occurs when he discovers his entire life has been a TV show and his loved ones are paid actors. However, The Truman Show is mostly a social comment on reality TV, and therefore doesn't come close to Perfect Blue's delve into the mind-bending topic of a 'subjective reality'. Why isn't there anything with the depth of Perfect Blue in mainstream cinema at this time? Well, because Satoshi Kon hadn't yet shown us how.

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