Plot
Mima Kirigoe, the lead singer of the J-pop group "CHAM!", decides to leave the band to become an actress. Her first project is a direct-to-video crime drama series called Double Bind. Some of her fans are upset by her change in career and persona, including a stalker known as "Me-Mania." Shortly after leaving CHAM!, Mima receives an anonymous fax calling her a traitor. She also finds a website called "Mima's Room", which features public diary entries that seem to be written by her that discuss her life in great detail. She brings the site to the attention of her manager, ex-pop star Rumi Hidaka, but is advised to ignore it.
Meanwhile, on the set of Double Bind, Mima succeeds in getting a larger part. However, the producers decide to cast her as a rape victim in a strip club. Rumi warns Mima that it will ruin her reputation, but Mima accepts the part voluntarily. Though it is apparent that Mima is indecisive, the atmosphere of the scene traumatizes her to the point that she increasingly becomes unable to separate reality from fantasy. She can no longer distinguish real life from her work in show business.
Several people who had been involved in creating the scene are murdered. She finds evidence that makes her appear to be the prime suspect, and her increasing mental instability makes her doubt her own innocence. It turns out that the diarist of "Mima's Room" is delusional and very manipulative, and that an intense folie à deux has been in play. The faux diarist and serial killer, who believes herself to be a Mima who is forever young and graceful, has made a scapegoat of stalker Me-Mania.
Mima knocks Me-Mania unconscious with a hammer in self-defense when he attempts to rape her, and she then runs to her only support she has left alive, her manager Rumi. Later on, back in "Mima's room", Mima tries to call Mr. Tadakoro but he has also been murdered, along with Mr. Me-Mania. When Mima encounters Rumi, however, her manager is wearing a replica of Mima's CHAM! costume and crazily singing Mima's pop songs. Rumi is in fact the false diarist, who believes she is the "real Mima". Rumi is angry that Mima has been ruining the "real Mima's" reputation, and decides to save "Mima's" pristine pop idol image through the same means she has been using all along: murder. Mima manages to incapacitate Rumi in self-defense after a chase through the city despite being wounded herself. Rumi remains permanently delusional and institutionalized. Mima has grown from her experiences and has moved on with her life with newfound independence and confidence.
Read more about this topic: Perfect Blue
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
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And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)