Perfect Blue’s Mind-Bending Finale: Is Mima Free at Last?

Kon drops you into Mima Kirigoe's head and then starts moving the furniture. If you walked out of Perfect Blue thinking, Wait, who actually did what? you are not alone. Let’s untangle the ending, the themes, and why this late-90s thriller from Satoshi Kon (animated by Madhouse) feels like it was made for right now.

So, about that ending

After Mima survives a brutal encounter with Me-Mania (the obsessive fan who tries to sexually assault her), her manager Rumi whisks her away. When Mima wakes up, the room looks exactly like her old idol-era apartment… except it isn’t. It’s a perfect recreation. That’s the first big tell.

When Mima calls for help, Rumi appears in a full idol costume and insists she is the real Mima — the eternally pure pop idol — not the actress who’s been taking riskier roles. Rumi snaps, and the mask drops: she’s the one who manipulated Me-Mania and she’s the one behind the murders the movie nudges you to pin on Mima.

What follows is a delirious chase through city streets and glass and neon. Rumi, convinced the 'fake Mima' has to die, goes after her — only to trip and impale herself on shattered glass, then drift into the road, mistaking a truck’s headlights for stage spotlights. Arms wide, ready for applause. Mima pulls her to safety at the last second.

Cut to the future: Rumi is institutionalized. The idol persona has largely taken over; glimpses of the real Rumi flicker through. Mima visits but keeps her distance, and quietly credits Rumi with shaping where she ended up. That can mean a few things at once: Rumi was the rare manager who actually cared about Mima’s feelings more than the company’s bottom line; Rumi’s scheming forced Mima to find the actor inside herself; and, yes, the chaos probably raised Mima’s profile. Either way, Mima is now a famous actress — and she claims herself as the real one.

"No, I’m real."

Is Mima actually free at the end?

Short answer: kind of. She’s free of Rumi and Me-Mania — one is dead, the other is in an institution — but the movie doesn’t pretend that ends her problems. The bigger Mima gets, the bigger the odds there’s another obsessive fan ready to crash through her life because their version of her doesn’t match reality.

Kon is very clear about the trap. First, Mima is boxed in by the idol machine: be spotless, be cute, be 'pure' or get out. Then, when she leaves Cham, she’s boxed in again — this time by a more malicious version of the male gaze. She’s stripped and sexualized by a photographer who specializes in that exact thing, and a scriptwriter keeps pushing her into scenes designed to shock. The infamous staged assault is shot again and again, as if the takes matter more than the person living through them. Mima didn’t even want to do those scenes; she was new and had no leverage. The roles were manufactured just as much as her idol image was.

So, yes, Mima has free will on paper. In practice, her choices are constantly bent by managers, fans, producers, and a culture that wants her to be a product. That pressure breaks real people all the time, and the film does not blink about that.

The web was the weapon before anyone said 'algorithm'

Perfect Blue is a late-90s story that predicted our always-on, zero-privacy present a little too accurately. 'Mima’s Room' — the blog that knows her every move and inner thought — becomes the movie’s nerve center. It’s dead-on because Rumi is writing it, and Me-Mania is feeding her intel. The result is a digital double that gaslights Mima and everyone watching. Fans project what they want onto that version of her and demand she comply. Today, that swarm isn’t just stalkers; it’s stalkers plus paparazzi plus anyone with a camera, all treating a private moment like a public mistake.

Zoom out, and the movie hits everything we still argue about: the cult of celebrity, impossible beauty standards, the fetish for spotless 'idols,' and how women are over-sexualized in every industry. It’s been decades since release — 1997 in Japan, 1998 elsewhere — and the film somehow feels more current, not less.

Where it lands, by the numbers (and where to watch)

• IMDb: 8.0/10
• MyAnimeList: 8.55/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 84%
• Availability: currently available to rent on Amazon; not available to stream

The takeaway

Perfect Blue is about an idol who wants to grow up and an audience that won’t let her — plus the people around her who confuse 'protecting the brand' with protecting the person. It’s sleek, scary, and uncomfortably honest. What did you read in that final look to the mirror? Drop your take below.