Berthier - Perfect Blue

            In the film entitled Perfect Blue, things go haywire in the most intense ways imaginable. The overall theme of the whole movie is the idea of the cross over between illusion and reality. The plot line of the film is about the main character, Mima Kirigoe being in a J-Pop group called CHAM! And while Mima was the star of that she had switched to acting in a film called Double Bind. Her fans turn to fanatics and create this unwanted persona for her that she is not used to nor enthused about. Her transformation from normal human being to celebrity pop and film sensation has taken a serious toll on her psyche and sense of self worth. My favorite scene is when she walks into her room to find that all of her fish are dead after the rape scene that she does for double blind. After that she’s seeing hallucinations of herself and how she has become which disappoints her and makes her feel extremely vulnerable. After she stops hallucinating, she realizes that her fish aren’t actually dead and that she just imagined the dead fish in her fish bowl. The significance of this is that fish in Japanese culture are supposed to be a symbol of freedom and fears and she feels as if after the rape scene, those aspects of her are gone and she has no innocence left within her entire being.  This is sad because this happens to celebrities all of the time and lives can be smothered by supposed fans. I feel like the fact that celebrities are put on an unrealistic pedestal that they can’t escape and because of this their illusion becomes their reality. Especially if this illusion surrounds them all the time with TV and magazines telling celebrities how they are when they are really not that way. After a while, I would assume the celebrities would believe it and start to not like the stories about them which makes them not like themselves. This is an extremely sad state of affairs and if I was a celebrity I’m not sure if I could handle it. 

Berthier - Cowboy Bebop

The film Cowboy Bebop is an anime movie filled with intense fist fighting and insane jazz music in the background which adds to the interesting plot line and sets itself apart from other anime and films of it’s genre.  The setting takes place on Mars in the 2071 and is interesting as that is, Mars is set up to look like a lot of American cities such as: New York, San Francisco and Chicago.  The plot revolves around the main character, Spike, who along with his posse is trying to stop a fugitive who’s attempting to release a virus on to the planet of Mars. The capital city of Mars is offering an unbelievable sum of money as a reward to catch the culprit before time runs out. With spike and his crew being bounty hunters, they are gunning to get the man responsible to save Mars as well as get a ridiculous sum of money as a reward. The reason the movie is entitled Cowboy Bebop is because the name of the ship they use to travel around as bounty hunters is called “BeBop”. Overall I was fascinated with the movie and enthralled with the imagery and artwork that the director used in the setting. It was a very interesting set up because of the way the artist who animated the film almost directly mimicked American cities was mind-blowing to me because half of the time I was trying to pay attention to the plot line and the other half I was paying attention to the beautiful artwork and music that was put into the film.

            Another compelling aspect or even some would say controversial aspect about the film, the reference to nine-eleven with the twin towers on Mars. Also the movie was originally titled Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s door but due to copyright laws, the director wanted to avoid any conflict with the copy of the famous Bob Dylan song “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. As I was saying before I really enjoyed the music that was in the background for all of the fighting scene’s and the intro in this film. The name of the group who performed the score was called The Seatbelts and I would love to get into them as well as into the show series that was before the movie.