Perfect Blue

Looks like a healthy girl right?

"The color of illusion is Perfect Blue."

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Tagline! Today I decided I would take a break from psychologically disturbed movies soaked with violence and twisted sexual motifs, and talk about an animated movie that is... all of those things I just said. Written and directed by Satoshi Kon, who's final theatrical length work Paprika might be better known to my writers, Perfect Blue was released in 1998 and is about a J-pop idol named Mima who decides to become an actress. This seems to be going well until she is cast in a role that includes a rape scene (that she assents to despite some hesitation), and then spirals into psychological confusion and madness, while being stalked by a 'fan' calling themselves Me-Mania. To make matters worse, someone claiming to be Mima is keeping a detailed public journal of her life, leading Mima to question whether or not she is going coocoo batshit crazytown. This situation is complicated still further when everyone around her start dying grisly deaths, as the result of an unknown killer, possibly the aforementioned Me-Mania. While the primary plot's affinity for violence and sexualization might at first blush seem unrefined, the direction of the plot is nuanced and pointedly raises questions about certain aspects of Japanese pop-culture.

The Secret World of Arrietty

Arrietty, aka The Secret World of Arrietty aka the Borrower
Arrietty aka a lot of French words on a poster.

"Do not be seen by humans. That's been the law of children of the underfloor."

Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Studio Ghibli's Arrietty, which has like three different names but I will refer to it just as Arrietty, because that is shorter. The most recent of Studio Ghibli's efforts and a film from the post-Miyazaki era, Arrietty follows a teeny tiny girl (named Arrietty) and her adventures. The film is based upon The Borrowers, a novel by English author Mary Norton, (and a book which previously received an American film adaptation in 1997... a bad one) and centers around the Clocks, a family of borrowers living underneath a small country home. These tiny folk are called borrowers because they take things from the house they live under (little things like a sugar cube or a tissue) of course 'borrowing' seems like a cute way of saying stealing here. I mean, I'm not saying I'd miss single tissues or anything, but I hope to god they don't give them back when they're done using them, that sounds pretty gross.

Redline

Look, time is dilating around him, you know it's extreme.

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different, and talk about an animated film I watched over the weekend. I don't normally talk about Anime on this blog, but I figured it was a movie, and I do talk about American animated films, so why not right? Redline is a movie that's relatively unremarkable in plot, but remarkable in execution. The movie is a science fictiony futuristic racer movie (basically like if they made an M-rated movie about the F-Zero games) where a racer with an enormous and ridiculous pompadour named JP makes the cut for the Redline Race, the most dangerous and prestigious race in the galaxy. The race is supposed to take place on the militant cyborg planet known as Roboworld, despite the violent (literally) opposition of the Roboworld government. This is all the better to spice up the race, as it just wouldn't be as interesting if certain death weren't on offer for a single mistake. Along with JP, a varied selection of weirdos is also competing in the race, including a giant robot Frankenstein man, magical sex-princess idol twins, a crime fighting bounty hunter duo (with their own theme song) and some other freaky aliens. Also JP's love interest, who is the only other not weird looking human in the movie pretty much (because having two tone pink/green hair or a massive blimp-sized pompadour is relatively normal). The racers gear up, prep their vehicles (mostly they are hover cars full of dirty tricks) and set out for what will surely be the most intense race ever.