How “Perfect Blue” Predicted The Dark Side Of The Digital Age Before Anybody Else

Satoshi Kon's 1997 anime masterpiece was clearly ahead of its time by tackling issues such as online interaction, haters, stalkers, privacy, music sales, and everything else we're witnessing in the 21st century. Spoilers ahead!

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How did the internet look like back in 1997? Well, pretty different, to say the least. Google, Youtube, Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, The Huffington Post, or even Buzzfeed, didn't exist. According to internetlivestats.com, in 1997 there were only 1,117,255 websites. The dot-com bubble was starting to inflate and the Lewinsky scandal was a year away to become the first viral story ever.

So it's safe to say that back in 1997 the internet was kind of a virgin territory ready to be explored and transformed. Considering this, how's possible that Satoshi Kon managed to create a movie called Perfect Blue (based on the homonymous novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi) that accurately depicted all those things that we're experiencing today such as the hater culture, the decadence of music sales, the pros and cons of online interaction, and the redefinition of the relations between pop idols and their fandom? Let's dissect the movie and try to comprehend the scope of its eerie premonitions.

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Perfect Blue tells the story of Mima, the leader of a mediocre, oversexualized J-pop trio called CHAM!. Despite of lacking of significant success (none of their singles has made it into the top 100), CHAM! enjoys a pretty solid, mostly male fanbase and a decent media coverage. Then, after two and a half years as the lead part of the trio, Mima announces at the end of a concert that she’s quitting music in order to pursue a career as a TV actress. The surprise announcement receives a negative reaction from her fans, who believe Mima should stick to singing and give up the idea of being an actress. That’s when Mima’s ordeal begins.

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“Bye, bye Mima, the pop idol”, says the young woman while removing from the walls of her room all the memento from her days with CHAM!. After that, she opens a handful of letters from her fans. The first one begs her to keep singing. The second one comes more as a surprise: “I always like looking into Mima's room. I've put a link to Mima’s room”. The shock is interrupted by a call from her mother, who wants to discuss Mima’s sudden departure. Mima defends her choice by saying “the pop idol image is suffocating her”. She then tells her mother to call her later because she intends to take a bath. When she’s about to strip off her clothes, her phone rings again but this time isn't her mother, it’s a fax (faxes, remember them?). The fax accuses her of "traitor" using disturbing and aggressive fonts.

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In this brief, straightforward scene we can already appreciate several examples of Perfect Blue’s foreknowledge. First, the stalker (the letter). Second, the pop idol’s identity crisis (Mima’s TV aspirations). And third, the hater or bullier (the fax). Although these three questions have always existed in popular culture, no one can deny that, in the Digital Age, stalkers, haters and bullies are in exponential growth.

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But what really bewilders Mima is a diary-like website in which an impostor writes Mima’s thoughts and daily actions, including her grocery shopping and intimate conversations, with terrifying realism. So here’s another point in favour of Perfect Blue: In 1997, very few figured how the internet was bound to shatter the entire concept of privacy, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. Throughout the movie, Mima tries to face her impostor and the results are catastrophic because, basically, the impostor enjoys that unwavering wall called anonymity. Her fans begin to believe what they read in her "diary" and ask for the return of the real Mima, the beloved pop icon. Consequently, she develops a paranoid behaviour that jeopardizes her professional life and common sense.

So on the one hand, Perfect Blue brilliantly yet subtly tackles the dangers of social networking (if we consider the diary-like website as a Facebook substitute or predecessor) such as trolling, harassment, haters or identity theft; as well as other related issues like the demanding and unstable demeanour of fan communities, the inevitable disappearance of privacy, and the pressure of being in the public eye, even for D-list celebrities (who are easier targets for rumours and jibes). And all of this in 1997.

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On the other hand, Perfect Blue also predicted how pop music and pop idols are perceived in the Digital Age. We see as Mima’s TV agent incessantly attempts to convince her music manager that music is no longer a profitable business. “There are no places for pop idols to appeal to the masses”, he says, “on record sales, we make practically nothing”. Moreover, at the beginning of the movie, we hear some fans complaining that the price of the concert is “way too expensive”. Any of this sounds familiar?

During the first years of the 2000s, pop idols gathered momentum (think of Britney's, Christina's, Backstreet Boys's or NYSNC’s massive sales) but since the internet established itself as the main source of pop culture, music sales are in free fall (excepting Adele’s 21, deemed as the industry saviour). Concerts have proven to be the only guaranteed way of making big money thanks to the increasing ticket prices.

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And last, Perfect Blue portrayed the sexualitation phase that, apparently, every emerging idol has to go through at least once in order to achieve notoriety. We can clearly appreciate this in Mima’s rape scene, which gives a boost to her TV show’s ratings, and in Mima’s photo shoot, where we witness a lewd photographer encouraging her to be sexier and to take off all of her clothes until she’s completely naked. Again: any of this sounds familiar?

Sex has always been a main ingredient of popular culture but it's virtually everywhere in the Digital Age, where even the most serious subjects are trivialized and perverted. Not to mention that the more sexual the content, the more clicks it gets.

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Thus, Perfect Blue took advantage of its release in the late 20th century to become a inconspicuous caveat of what we were going to deal with in the new millennium. I wonder if anyone who attended the film première thought that the questions depicted were only few years away to become reality and routine.

I highly recommend watching (or re-watching) this 1997 anime movie and then, stop and take a moment to appreciate its premonitory nature. I bet you will laugh when Mima’s agent talks to her about the internet and she candidly replies: “Oh, that thing that’s been popular lately”. Yes, Mima, lately.

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DISCLAIMER: Just to be clear, I'm not 100 % sure this was the first movie to predict all the aforementioned matters. But it did, and that's the point of the article.