I rented [link|http://us.imdb.com/Title?0156887|Perfect Blue] a few nights ago and watched it with my wife. It's an anime...but quite a bit different from most anime I've seen. It's not sci-fi, nor fantasy (nor commedy, for you Ranma and Maison Ikoku fans). It's a psychological mystery thriller, set roughly in modern Japan.

The basic plot is that a Japanese singer, a "Pop-Idol" named Mima (also called Mimaden..any explanation?), decides to give up the music business and become an actress. In the process, she seems to be being stalked by an obsessive fan who is not happy with here career change. However, even more disturbing is that Mima starts seeing visions of her old self. These visions taunt her and actually claim to be the 'real' Mima. After she had to do some rather nasty scenes for the show she is working on, the vision-Mima accuses her of being 'dirty' and that' nobody wants a tarnished Pop-Idol.' Her sense of confusion and disassociation are made more complex by a) a Web page called "Mima's Room" the includes a supposed diary of hers including some rather detailed descriptions of her life and things she said, and b) the show she is acting in is called "Double Blind" and is a murder mystery involving someone with split personality. Her life and her part on the show have some eerie parallels and she has trouble keeping them straight; made more gruesome in that some of her friends and coworkers start getting murdered.

The animation is very good and the scenery and backgrounds are great, which is impressive to me in a film like this because there are no flying `techs and flashing swords with lots of action as eye candy to distract you. The plot is involving and convulated, and distrurbing. My wife knows someone with the same kind of disassociative disorder and the potrayal is very accurate. This movie is as good as a psychological thriller as any live action movie in the genre

Warning: There are a few very violent scenes, as well as some scenes with nudity.