In this anime, it’s hard to tell when reality stops and delusions begin
Towards the end, they said Mima was really named Yoko and she was acting everything. She was really an actor in a drama. But she was acting in a tv show throughout most the movie. Was the show real?
Was she really an actor called Yoko, trapped in a box throughout the whole movie? Why did she look like a pop idol at the very end? How did Rumi help her “Make me who I am today”
Were Me-Mania and Rumi real?
Mima really named Yoko? Being shut in a box? o_O I don’t remember that part. Maybe you watched a sub and it had some complex Japanese metaphor in its translation or something? >.>’
The Perfect Blue I remember - Mima, tired of being a third-rate Japanese pop idol, wants to be taken more seriously and turns to acting (and other dubious things later on cough nude photography).
Mr Me-Mania and Rumi are indeed real. Rumi, one of her agents, is dead-set against her being anything but Mima the popstar. So, once she starts acting out rape scenes and stuff, Rumi gets extremely upset and tries to be Mima herself (this is evident in the last ‘fight’ scene, where she’s made a replica Mima room and dresses up as Mima The Pop Idol to chase and try and kill off the ‘tainted’ Mima). Most of the murders you see ‘Mima’ commit, are in fact committed by Rumi - we see Rumi during those scenes as she sees herself (as Mima).
Me-Mania is also real - an obsessed fan, he sees Mima the Pop Idol as perfect, and is furious when she turns actress. He collaborates with Rumi, obviously because they’re both pyschotically obsessed with Mima the Pop Idol. The scenes in his bedroom, with a ghostly Idol-Mima hovering over his shoulder, might be Rumi visiting him.
Everyone who dies has somehow ‘tainted’ Mima (the show writer for putting her in the rape scene, Mima’s male agent for allowing her to be put in it etc.), and it’s Rumi and Me-Mania’s grudge that prompts them to kill anyone who is ‘tainting’ her.
A lot of the more inexplainable scenes can be put down to Mima’s growing stress, paranoia and doubts and concerns about her change of career and identity. The Idol-Mima jumping across street lamps for example - obviously, Rumi couldn’t do that 
But in the final scenes when Rumi is chasing Mima, you see the ghostly Idol-Mima who Rumi THINKS she is, and her real reflection in shop windows as she’s running, as the real Rumi.
Now, I have NO idea whatsoever if any of that made sense. It’s not exactly a straightforward movie, and it’s meant to be very disorientating. That’s part of it’s charm as a stalker flick X3 But I’ll clarify further if you’ve other questions ^^
EDIT: Some other thoughts I missed when I was typing that monster out:
Yoko was the character she played in the drama, I remember now ^^ Mima’s identity crisis crossed over a lot with her character’s issues and that causes a LOT of the confusion in some of the scenes. At the end where she’s in the room being interviewed, and the other two actors are discussing her, they’re still in-drama. They’re still acting, and talking about Mima’s character. It’s an extremely disconcerting scene, because you have to unravel a lot of layers to get to the reality in it all.
Rumi ‘made her’ who she was today simply by, inadvertently, clarifying who Mima really was. Mima’s identity crisis stemmed from her uncertainty in abandoning her ‘safe’ pop idol identity for a darker, more serious actress role. Rumi and Me-Mania’s machinations obviously didn’t help her make the change in this respect, serving to confuse her identity entirely. But afterwards, with that conflict there and gone, she was able to realise that she could hack the actress path and that it was what she wanted. I guess it’s kinda open to interpretation.
So she was a character called Yoko in the drama? They called her Yoko when they interviewed her. In the interview, they said everything that happened up to then was being acted out in the room
When Me-Mania attacked her while she was on stage, they found out Me Mania wasn’t actually there
I’m sure that we get an obscure shot of Me-Mania, dead, shoved up in that rubbish bin along with Mima’s male agent after Rumi kills him as well - I think Rumi moved him out of the way after Mima killed him, I’ll have to watch it again for the little details. But he definitely existed.
As for the two people interviewing her, they were also actors. That scene was still very much in the TV drama, but Mima’s conflicts and thoughts overlapped with how we perceived it. If I remember rightly (and I might not, 'cause it’s been a while since I’ve watched it though I have watched it several times), when we’re actually in the room listening to the interview, Mima is imposing her life and thoughts on the dialogue. For example, I’m sure the interviewer asks her what she does, and she says “Idol! No . . . I’m an actress,” or something to that effect. And the two main actors in the drama then start analysing her from behind the magic mirror, and they might also be talking about Mima, I can’t remember exactly how it goes. But later, when we see the whole thing played back, the dialogue is different, relating specifically to the drama and the character Yoko, and the part she played in the drama’s murders. That’s how it really was - a TV drama, and Mima was only acting in it.
That’s how it really was - a TV drama, and Mima was only acting in it.
In your first post, it sounded like the first half of the movie really happened. And there were people really killed
A lot of the movie really did happen, and people really were killed. Mima WAS a pop idol, who turned actress. She DOES have a stalker (Me-Mania) and an obsessed agent who wants only Mima the Idol to exist (Rumi). Rumi and Me-Mania both end up killing a lot of the people who were encouraging her acting career or ‘tainting’ her squeaky clean pop idol image. The script writer and Mima’s male agent for example, are killed by Rumi. You’ll probably have to watch through it a few times before a lot of it really sinks in.
During the course of the movie, Mima is starring in a murder investigation drama, which is where most of the confusion occurs. Her character, Yoko, undergoes an identity crisis (which is where the crossovers occur and Mima becomes uncertain and paranoid about who she really is) and becomes something of a schizophrenic murderer, and the two ‘star’ actors, that woman and her acting partner, are the two investigators in the drama. Yoko and Mima are NOT the same person. The real people in the movie are people like Mima’s agents, her fellow band members before she quit, Rumi and that other guy whose name escapes me, Mr Me-Mania, the script writer, the director etc. The people who are just characters in a drama are the two investigators and Yoko.
EDIT: When I said ‘that’s how it was’, I referring solely to the scene at the end where Yoko is in that room with the magic mirror, being interrogated.
“Yoko and Mima are NOT the same person.”
Yoko is the character Mima plays
Did Mima really beat up Me-Mania in the end?
Is the Me in Me-Mania pronounced with a silent e? Like a normal Japanese “me”