Of the two Satoshi Kon films I’ve seen (both as part of the syllabus for an anime class I took as an undergrad), those being Perfect Blue and Paprika, I remember considering the former to be the stronger overall work of art. Though it came earlier in Kon’s oeuvre, Perfect Blue’s relative accessibility seemed to work in its favor, while Paprika’s story and characters get muddled in surrealistic Freudian psycho-babble, despite the occasional intrigue of its visuals.

Having just watched Perfect Blue again, I found it to be even better in certain respects, though on the whole I would not rate the film nearly as high as its most ardent admirers; and while Kon’s concerns about the blurring of fiction and reality, the unreliability of memory, and post-Internet celebrity obsession have always been praised as prescient, Perfect Blue seems even more so today, what with the rise of live-streamed entertainment and the increasingly unhinged behavior of those infected by the para-sociality it helps cultivate.

It is a welcomely lean affair, as well, clocking in at a mere 81 minutes; which goes to show how much ground artists can cover in under 90 minutes if their sense of visual storytelling is sufficiently developed—especially in a medium like animation, which has the potential to manipulate imagery to an extent most (pure) live-action media simply cannot. This is a double-edged sword, however, for such advantages allow for the possibility of excess and unjustified narrative obfuscation (see first paragraph). […]