Satoshi Kon's classic film Perfect Blue will receive a SteelBook Blu-ray release this September.
In a recent press release, North American anime distributor GKIDS and home video company Shout! Factory announced that director Satoshi Kon's groundbreaking psychological thriller Perfect Blue will be available to North American audiences in a SteelBook Blu-ray edition. This digitally remastered version of the film will debut Sept. 14 and will include a number of bonus features.
In addition to the digitally remastered cut of the film, the SteelBook edition will also include the original SD version of the film with Japanese mono Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. Both versions of the film will feature English subtitles. Furthermore, the SteelBook boasts an exclusive, never-before-seen 12-page artbook, several theatrical trailers and TV spots (including new trailers from the film's US and UK re-releases), interviews with the film's English cast and crew and four new featurettes.
The four featurettes are Into the Blue, which will include entirely new interviews, Angel of Your Heart, which will showcase the film's recording sessions, a full English version of Angel of Your Heart, and the new Lectures by Satoshi Kon.
Released in 1997, Perfect Blue was the directorial debut of the late Satoshi Kon, and it pioneered many of the themes and concepts he would further explore in his later anime films like Paprika and Millennium Actress. Even beyond the scope of anime, the surrealist and psychologically horrifying Perfect Blue has had a tremendous influence on a number of films, most notably director Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
Perfect Blue follows Mima Kirigoe, a former pop idol who decides to quit singing and become an actress. Her managers convince her to accept a recurring role in a popular TV show, and her new career seems to be taking off. But when an obsessive online fan displeased with her career change is connected to a number of murders involving Mima's managers and colleagues, the guilt-stricken Mima's reality becomes blurred in a series of increasingly vivid, bizarre and life-threatening visions.
Source: GKIDS and Shout! Factory
