- Directed by Satoshi Kon
- Written by Sadayuki Murai, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, Rika Takahashi
- Stars Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 21 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uRakM7gpo4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s an anime that is more of a psychological thriller this time around. As we follow Mima, we watch her struggle with what might me encroaching madness or might be dark forces working against her. It’s got murder and mayhem, and a gripping story that keeps pulling you along eager to see how it ends.
Synopsis
We see the filming of an episode of “Powertrons,” a generic version of the Power Rangers. Fans talk about Mima, and how this is supposed to be one of her final shows. She’s a retiring pop singer. We also see a weird-looking guy with strange eyes attending her last show. The guy gets beat up by a fan.
After the final show, we next see her buying groceries in the store like a normal person would. The manager wants her to do more acting instead of all the singing. She goes home and reads fan mail; one of them says he can see into her room. She gets phone calls with deep breathing. She gets a fax calling her a TRAITOR.
Mima goes to the shooting of her new acting job. She only has five words. Her manager wants them to write more lines for her. She’s super nervous, but before she can say the lines, someone shoots and injures her manager. No, Mima’s fanmail that he was holding exploded.
Mima thinks it was lucky that she hadn’t been reading her own fan mail. A friend shows Mima how to use a computer and the Internet, which was a new thing at the time. She looks at a fan site devoted to her; someone knows entirely too much about her personal details, even what kinds of groceries she buys. Someone is clearly stalking her. Before long, knowing that her every move is being watched starts to weigh on her.
She sees a newspaper article about how one of the guys who disrupted her final concert had been killed in a hit and run. She then notices that weird-looking guy watching her from outside.
The writer of the show she’s on wants to write a rape scene for her character, and she knows she has to do it. Rumi, her manager’s assistant, takes it badly, but Mima does a good job with the scene. She goes home and has a breakdown. Then she talks to her alter-ego in the mirror. She reads the blog that was supposedly written by her. The alter-ego says the real Mima is writing that stuff. The real Mima who wants to go back to singing. She then watches her alter-ego fly out the window and down the street.
The writer for the show is murdered in his parking garage one night. Between that and the letter bomb, Mima thinks someone may be after her, but her manager plays it all down.
Mima does a sexy photoshoot next. The alter-ego wants to go back to singing, but her two friends from her former music group are doing very well without her, so she probably can’t go back. Meanwhile, the crazy-looking guide continues to write his blog. He imagines Mima’s alter-ego is there with him as well.
She divulges what she’s been seeing to Rumi, but she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore. The script of the show she is on starts getting suspiciously like the confusion that is Mima’s real life.
She dreams that she murders the porn photographer, and the next morning she hears that the man really was murdered. She finds a bloody shirt in her closet. Did she do that? The parallels in the TV show get really, really, close to what’s going on in Mima’s mind. What is real?
She encounters the weird guy in the basement of the studio. He pulls a knife on her and says he’s protecting the real Mima. He says the real Mima emails him every day and says she is in the way. He ties her up and gets ready to rape her until she puts a hammer through his skull. No, that was all a scene. Wasn’t it? She shows Rumi where it happened, but the body is gone.
We see that her agent, who wanted to get her into more adult films, is dead alongside the stalker. Then we see Rumi dressed as Mima. Turns out Rumi has been killing people; she thinks she’s Mima. She was the one emailing the stalker and putting him up to things. Rumi (who is also the alter-ego) chases Mima across the rooftops. Rumi falls on broken glass and then they both get hit by a truck.
Mima goes to see Rumi at the mental hospital. Mima’s a big star now, and she’s feeling much better.
Commentary
“I’ve heard a lot about the Internet. It’s getting really popular now.” Could there be anything more 1997 than a line like that? Maybe seeing a Macintosh Performa in her room.
This was intended to be a live action film, but ended up as an anime when then financers backed out. The story is pretty deep for an anime, so the “real” writing shows through. Mima is clearly having some kind of schizophrenic break, but she sees it as a second version of herself.
It gets really confusing in the middle, as it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s a mental break. By the end, it actually all makes sense, which I found surprising. Yes, I definitely liked it.