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Mima is a singer of the girlband Cham, but at the height of her
career she dcides to quit the pop business and instead pursue an acting
career, staritng with a small part in the TV-series Double Bind -
much to the pleasure of her manager Tadokoro but much to the dismay of his
assistant Rumi, a former pop idol herself.
... and much to the dismay of at least one fan who sends her a
letterbomb (which is opened by her manager though and does only minimal
damage).
Soon her role in the TV-series gets bigger and bigger, but to expand
her role, she has to be in a quite revealing gangrape scene, and later she
does a nude photoshoot to help her career. Then though a website pops up
that claims to be Mima's diary, but that paints a different picture of
her, as the popstar who was forced into doing naughty things in films and
photos and who asks his fans for help ... and at least one fan, the
disfigured and borderline psychotic MeManiac, hears her call and kills
both the series' screenwriter and the photographer who took her nudes.
This is bad enough, but what's worse is that Mima by and by loses touch
with reality and thinks she actually sees the Mima of the website,
the eternally young, eternally smiling pop idol in her silly outfit. And
as a consequence, she's no longer sure if she hasn't developed a
personality disorder and has really killed the screenwriter and the
photographer ... plus as her role in the series Double Bind
increases, so do the parallels to reality, as in the series she is
portrayed as a psycho killer suffering from personality disorder ... and
at times Mima no longer knows if she's in the series or if what's
happening is real ...
Then though, the other Mima, the one Mima thinks only she sees,
pays a visit to MeManiac and convinces him to kill the real Mima, claiming
she is a fake. And the day Double Bind is in the can MeManiac
attacks Mima and tries to rape her (incidently on the set her rape scene
was filmed) and kill her, but more out of luck than anything else Mima
manages to grab a hammer and beat MeManiac's head in with it ...
Later, Rumi finds her somewhere in the filmstudio, calms her down and
(almost) persuades her that the whole rape was just imagined ... but then
Rumi turns out to be the fake Mima, the popstar-Mima, and now she tries to
kill the real Mima, after she had already killed her manager as well. Rumi
almost succeeds too, but somehow Mima manages to tear the Mima-wig off her
head, which destroys Rumi's illusion that she is Mima for just one
instant, but in that instant she accidently buries a shard of glass in her
belly and almost gets run over by a truck, only saved in the last moment
by Mima ...
The end sees Rumi in a sanitarium, by now having forgotten her own
personality and totally believing she is Mima. Mima on the other hand has
regained her touch of reality and is ready to further pursue her serious
acting career.
A combination of psychothriller and ghost story done as an animated
feature might read a bit strange on paper (or indeed on monitor), yet the
outcome of this blend is nothing short of a great film, a stylish and
multi-layered horrortale that profits from great writing, a great
direction and interesting characters, andthat is as intelligent as it is
suspenseful and entertaining.
Recommendation.
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