AFTERWORD ‘91
For several years now, I’ve had an idea in my head—of a battle between a young pop idol and a twisted, obsessive fan.
As it happens, I’m a pop idol superfan (though not twisted and obsessive, of course…) and that gives me a particular understanding of how fanatics can become emotionally attached to idols.
The point I most wanted to emphasize in writing this story was what would happen if that devotion deepened to the utmost extreme. I especially wanted to write about what would result if that devotion was directed against one individual idol.
Kirigoe Mima, the main character of this story, represents a certain style of pure and innocent idol, while the antagonist, only referred to as “the man,” symbolizes the end result of a fan whose attachment grows unchecked.
Idol singers are constantly striving to improve their craft, hoping to graduate into the next phase of their career, while their devoted fans are drawn to and fixated on the idols’ youthful innocence. I wanted to speculate on the consequences of a head-on collision between those two conflicting ideals.
Because this story takes the form of a horror novel, that collision of aspirations manifests as a larger-than-life spectacle of violence and action, but the driving intent was to call to attention the vulnerability of an idol who has to deal with the all too plausible scenario of a fan becoming too obsessed to ignore.
As a writer, I hope that readers will approach this book with that layer of the story in mind. That said, the development of the plot is compelling enough on its own; if a reader simply enjoys this work as a straight thriller, that’s fine, too.
I look forward to hearing what people think after reading it.
—Yoshikazu Takeuchi
(while listening to
Noriko Sakai’s White Girl)
March 25, 1991
AFTERWORD ‘98
In the fall of last year (1997), I watched the anime adaptation of Perfect Blue at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival.
I was deeply impressed by the beautiful, high quality animation projected on the big screen of the Shibuya Pantheon Theater, and the delight at seeing my own work nurtured and transformed into something so splendid brought tears to my eyes.
Of course, the journey from novel to motion picture came with many difficulties and took plenty of twists and turns along the way.
Thanks to the efforts of my esteemed friend Koichi Okamoto during development, the excellent script written by Sadayuki Murai, the presence of the brilliant up-and-coming director Satoshi Kon, the powerful backing of ONIRO and MADHOUSE studios, and the financial support of Rex Entertainment (without which none of it would have been possible), an outstanding psychological thriller was brought to life.
I came up with the plot for Perfect Blue more than ten years ago.
I’ve always been somewhat of a geeky type of guy. In my school days, I loved things like idols and kaiju. As they say about birds of a feather, I attracted a startling amount of fellow enthusiasts. We were the kind of guys who naturally got along well with each other, but no matter how much fun we had talking, I always felt somewhat out of place.
Looking back, I suspect it was a difference in intensity, a different level of passion for our shared interests. Some loved Godzilla, some saw Japanese ghost story movies as the pinnacle of artistic expression, some had an unusual affection for the young women who hosted children’s programs—and so on.
The deeper and more focused their enthusiasm became, the more genuine it got—and the more intensely I felt out of place. I started to wonder what unimaginable catastrophe would come about if their passions became as sharply pointed as the T-1000’s blade arm in Terminator 2, aimed at the subjects of their obsessions.
In that way, the seeds for the basic motif of Perfect Blue—the confrontation between idol and fanatic-turned-stalker—were planted in me more than twenty years ago.
—Yoshikazu Takeuchi
January 24, 1998