Satoshi Kon’s 1997 animation feature film “Perfect Blue”, whose 4K restoration version happens to be released in South Korean theaters in this week, is a disturbing but striking psychological thriller about one young actress under a certain insidious influence. I must tell you that I was quite disturbed more than once during my viewing, but I must admit that my eyes somehow remained held tight to the screen from the beginning to the end, and that is the main reason behind my recommendation.

Loosely based on co-producer Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s novel “Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis”, the story follows the plight of Mima Kirigoe (voiced by Junko Iwao), a pretty young girl who has been the member of a very popular J-Pop idol group but then decides to retire and then become a full-time actress. Although many of her fans do not welcome this much, Mima is willing to demonstrate that she is more than a popular pop singer, and her bold decision is supported by her agent as well as her manager.

However, as she prepares for a rather minor role in some popular TV detective drama series, there comes the growing possibility of being stalked by somebody out there. It seems that someone is not so pleased about her ongoing career transition, and Mima is gradually disturbed by a series of alarming incidents happening around her.

And it turns out that whoever is stalking Mima seems to know quite a lot about her daily life. Thanks to some help from her caring manager, she comes to learn how to use the Internet (Some of you may feel quite nostalgic while watching this scene, by the way), and then she checks out a certain little website devoted to her. As looking over the contents of this website, she is alarmed to discover that someone behind this website somehow knows every little personal detail from her private life, so she often cannot help but feel more like being watched at every moment.

The story slowly builds up a sense of anxiety and suffocation around its heroine’s increasingly unstable state of mind. Getting disturbed more and more by the presence of her mysterious stalker, Mima comes to lose more confidence, and, to make matters worse, her agent makes her play a much bigger part in that TV detective drama series. In contrast, her manager, who was incidentally once a successful J-POP idol singer, shows some understandable concern, but her agent does not listen at all as paying more attention to how much Mima’s burgeoning acting career will benefit his agency if his plan goes as well as he hopes.

Around the middle act, the movie becomes all the more disturbing as Mima lets herself to be exploited in one way or another. At one point, the writer of that TV detective drama series makes her character raped in front of many men, and, of course, the shooting of this repulsive scene turns out to be much more grueling than she expected at first. In addition, her agent pushes her into almost being naked in front of a very notorious photographer, and the film boldly enters the realms of adult animation film as never looking away from how disconcerting and humiliating this is for its heroine.

In the meantime, her mysterious stalker becomes more determined to corner her in more than one way. The situation becomes very serious as several figures associated with Mima are brutally murdered one by one, and Mima subsequently faces a certain dreadful possibility as her grasp on reality seems to be dwindling day by day. Is she actually going crazy enough to become a serial killer? And does that stalker in question really exist?

Stylishly and intensely toying with those dark possibilities brimming around its heroine, the film gives us several memorable moments to remember. In case of that brief but striking bathtub scene, it actually influenced Darren Aronofsky when he shot an almost identical one in “Requiem for a Dream” (2000). In addition, you may also notice a parallel between “Perfect Blue” and Aronofsky’s subsequent film “Black Swan” (2010), which is also about a young heroine who gets quite unnerved and then unhinged while being pressured a lot by an ambitious artistic task which might be beyond her talent.

In fact, just like “Black Swan”, “Perfect Blue” unhesitatingly leaps beyond plausibility as throwing its heroine into more madness and chaos during its last act, and this is somehow more acceptable than expected due to being strikingly presented in animation. To be frank with you, I could not help but think of all the preposterous qualities of those Italian giallo films as observing when Mima finally faces the shocking truth during the climax part, and I had no problem with going along with the following craziness unfolded across the screen.

Although I personally prefer the unabashed romanticism of “Millennium Actress” (2001) and the offbeat charm of “Tokyo Godfathers” (2003), “Perfect Blue” is still an interesting debut work from Kon, who died too early in 2010 after making his fourth and last animation feature film “Paprika” (2006). Yes, this is definitely not something you can comfortably watch on Sunday afternoon, but it will leave some indelible impression on your mind nonetheless, and you may want to check out Kon’s other three works later.