Perfect Blue and the negative representation of fans

Among the various representations of fans in film, the image of the psychologically troubled and socially awkward individual is amongst the most common. In this article,I discuss the anime Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) as a text that directly engages with the negative portrayal of fans by depicting a deranged stalker and his obsession with a young female singer-turned-actress. Perfect Blue is an anime that is concerned with the violent fantasies that underlie both fan identifications with media products and the manufacture of these products by an exploitative entertainment industry. Central to Perfect Blue’s criticism of fandom and popular culture is its use of the thriller genre to problematize the issue of identification. Here, I use Perfect Blue’s criticism of fandom and the construction of media commodities to focus on the problem of identity as a central issue in the construction of an ideal anime text by fans.