This was one of the last items on my Netflix queue before the disc service discontinued. Once I saw that it was replaying at a local theater, I leapt at the opportunity. In truth, I'd been putting it off before, because people warned me it was grittier than the cover made it look. But anime fans deem it a classic, and I had enjoyed director Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, and to a lesser extent Paprika.
In her early 20s, Mima (Junk Iwao) gets tired of being in a pop trio and takes up acting instead. Her agent, Tadokoro (Shinpachi Tsuji), nabs her a role on a mystery TV series, with increasing airtime. Some fans are displeased with her career shift, and hostile messages are followed by substantial violence against people involved. The prime suspect is a freaky stalker known as "Mr. Me-Mania" (Masaaki Ōkura), but he's not the only cause of trouble in Mima's life. Under stress, she starts to imagine her pop persona as a separate, impish being out to supplant if not kill her....
I had to wonder why Mima would make that first choice. Sure, the music scene can grow monotonous, but it's hard to believe Tadokoro's claim that she'd make more money as a novice supporting actress than as an established pop star, and you've likely heard of the difficulty in working one's way up in show business. It's also hard to believe how unseriously key figures take the threats to their lives. Is money everything to them?
We get reminders that this was early in the online era. Mima owns a computer but has no idea about the Internet until she learns of a site called "Mima's Room." It turns out to be full of first-person accounts that she never wrote but that display an intimate knowledge of her, a prospect no less scary today.
Not that she would keep personal secrets for long. The R rating isn't just for bloodshed; Mima poses for full-frontal nude photos and plays a stripper who gets raped on stage. The fiction-within-fiction aspect may make it less disturbing to watch, but it's still no fun for her or her watching manager (Rica Matsumoto). And she comes terribly close to getting raped for real.
...Or does she? Kon keeps pulling the rug out from under us with revelations or at least hints that a given moment was staged (with remarkable parallels to Mima's reality), dreamt, or hallucinated. The mind screw would do Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, or David Lynch proud. Unlike Jacob's Ladder, PB never fully explains itself. Or even its title.
As always from Kon, there is a semblance of a happy ending for the protagonist. I cannot guarantee that you will walk away happy -- I was only partway there -- but at least you'll be forewarned.
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