➡ A girl in a TV series transitions from a regular girl to a model, and then experiences a traumatic event in a strip club. She later takes revenge on a photographer, but struggles to distinguish between reality and her acting role, leading to confusion and guilt. She begins to question if she was ever a pop star or an actor, and if her actions were real or part of a show. This confusion is intentionally disorienting, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and leaving her and the audience questioning what is real.
➡ The text discusses the struggles of a character named Mima, who is forced to adopt different personas due to her career. She experiences trauma from simulated assaults, which leads to her developing multiple personalities. The trauma is used as a form of mind control by her talent agency. Another character, Rumi, tries to take over Mima’s persona, escalating the situation further.
➡ The text discusses the intense fandom surrounding a lesser-known Japanese band, CHAM, and the peculiarities of Japanese collectible culture. It highlights the dedication of super fans, who spend large amounts of money on merchandise and concert tickets, and the awkwardness of interactions between fans and celebrities. The text also delves into the popularity of claw machines and miniature collectibles in Japan, and how these trends influence Western markets. Lastly, it reveals the rigged nature of claw machines, where the grip strength is manipulated to limit the chances of winning.
➡ The text discusses the concept of multiple personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder in the context of a movie. It suggests that the main character, Mima, develops multiple personalities as a result of her traumatic experiences and the pressures of her acting career. The text also explores the idea that Mima might be intentionally creating these personalities to cope with her experiences. The discussion concludes with a comparison to role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, suggesting that such games could potentially influence a person’s mindset and behavior.
➡ The text discusses the phenomenon of being so engrossed in a task that it begins to infiltrate your thoughts and dreams, often referred to as ‘Tetris brain’. It also explores the idea of dreams affecting reality, and the concept of sacrifices leading to success, using the example of a pop star’s rise to fame. The text also touches on the confusion of identity and the impact of one’s actions on their perception of self.
➡ The text discusses the changing music preferences in Japan, particularly among older generations, and the shift from traditional Inca music to J-Pop. It also talks about a store selling cassette tapes of Inca music and small clocks, indicating its target audience is older people. The text further explores the evolution of music in movies, mentioning the influence of artists like RZA in film scoring. Lastly, it discusses the financial success of a particular movie, suggesting it was not a major hit but has gained critical acclaim over time.
➡ The speaker discusses finding a full movie on YouTube, expressing surprise that it hasn’t been taken down. They also mention their confusion about the platform’s censorship rules. They talk about an upcoming visit to their city, highlighting the unique way Japanese animation recreates real locations. They also mention their comic series, Time Samplers, which explores conspiracy theories and mind control. Finally, they discuss their various projects, including a podcast and music creation.

Is the name of this TV series that she’s part of, but it’s. It’s very specifically about serial killers doing, like, horrific things to people. And in this, she originally, I guess, is a regular girl that gets approached on the street by someone that’s like, hey, you could be a model. So in the TV show, she’s now a regular girl that is turning into a model. And then through this model trajectory, she ends up being in a strip club. And then she ends up getting violated in the strip club. But it’s all this is this trajectory. But later on in the movie, when we see her, which, again, to me was confusing, but she actually goes to the photographer’s house and, like, stabs him violently.

Like, it’s a. It’s actually pretty awesome scene, right? The best scene in the movie. But she goes in there and, like, takes him out, and the next morning finds all these bloody clothes and stuff in her closet. And that one too. It’s like, unless roomie is telepathically beaming back to her exactly what’s actually happening. And then snuck in and hid her bloody clothes in that closet. It seems that she was somehow involved, somehow aware, somehow cognizant of this entire event happening. But anyways, so now she’s living with the guilt of being a murderer because she thought she killed this.

This photographer and perhaps even the writer. But she’ll pass out. She’ll. She’ll go there. We see the scene where she’s, like, stabbing the photographer. And then right before it ends, we hear, okay, take three. As if she’s now back on the set. And then she’ll just wait, but wake up in her apartment. And that happens a few different times, all the way to the point where her co star, who is originally a detective, now there’s a version where they’re questioning her and she is. They’re like, oh, my God, she thinks she’s a music star. She thinks she’s a pop idol named Mima.

And she doesn’t realize that she’s created this whole entire backstory of being a pop star just to hide the fact that she was violated in this horrifically sexually violent way. She’s kind of, like, suppressing this, and this is where the multiple personalities get in. But she’s suppressing this horrific event by pretending to be a pop star turned actress. But then it cuts again and they repeat that. But now it’s like, oh, she’s pretending to be a model in order to pretend as if none of that violation happened. And that’s where it Get. I think that is the most confusing part of the movie is because they acknowledge, like, yeah, the movie so far and like, breaking the fourth wall has been about her going from pop idol to actress.

They acknowledge that, and then they kind of retcon it by. By redoing that scene. And now she believes she’s a model at that point. Like, I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t think she has any idea what’s going on. And she verbally says that. She’s constantly saying to everyone around her, like, is this real? Am I in a dream? Is this part of the acting? Like, I can’t tell if this is pretend anymore. Yeah, I mean, it’s all. It’s all very intentionally disorienting. That’s what’s not in the novel. And that’s kind of what Khan’s bringing it, is that it’s, you know, you can’t tell where the fourth wall is.

You’ll pour a 40 out for David Lynch. I watched Inland Empire a few weeks ago. That does the same thing, where you’ll have a real intense dramatic scene that’s okay, cut. You know, it’s like, not. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not. Well, again, it’s not. Nothing in the movie’s real, but this one is clearly not real in the narrative of the movie either. So that’s the other thing here. When you say she’s having conversations with Mima in the mirror and stuff, it’s like, is that cinematic? Is she actually, you know, like, losing it? Right. Because you assume Mima’s losing it for most of the movie, and then it’s like, oh, well, if she is, you know, her manager’s losing it a whole lot more.

Right? She. Well, she definitely is losing it because she clearly cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction. And if she’s at the job or if she even ever was a pop star, if she’s even an actor now. But again, it all hinges on, for example, I mean, there’s some questions that I got that are probably easily answered. For example, she gets home one day and notices her fish are dead. And this is right after she reads on this online blog that talks about, like, the specific type of fish food that she bought at the market the day before.

So she starts freaking out. She realizes that she’s being watched very closely. So when she discovers the dead fish originally, you’re like, oh, is this the stalker that did this? Who did this? Well, after the movie ends, I guess the implication is that Rumi, her agent, is the one that killed the fish because she’s also the one that knew what she was buying and doing all this on the blog. So then the next question is, well, how did those bloody clothes end up in her closet? Were they actually in her closet? If they were in her closet, it had to have been Roomie that put them in there.

But then it’s like, well, how did Mima have the memory of what happened in those bloody clothes? Because it’s. When she sees the clothes in her closet, not only does she know that they’re okay, there’s bloody clothes, but she knows what happened in those clothes. So what’s the answer there? This is like the. The biggest un. Unexplained question, I guess, in the entire movie. So either either Mima has a telepathic bond with Rumi, or Rumi took her along, or Rumi told her what happened while she was sleeping or something, but she. She absolutely had some sort of an awareness of exactly what happened in those bloody clothes.

Right? Well, I mean, at least for Roomie, you know, like, she’s obviously in high stalker mode and she has a key, I’m assuming. Like. Yeah, so. So she’s got the accessibility. But what she doesn’t have accessibility to is, I think, to Mima’s brain to, like, plant specific memories in her brain about things that she wasn’t actively involved in yet. She has memories of doing these murders, and then she has the grief that goes along with it. And it’s almost like she’s, like, afraid of getting caught at that point. Like, she had no control over these things that she thought she was doing for a TV show.

And now she’s like, oh, my God, did I kill someone in real life or was that part of a show? That’s the part of it. But she did know that she killed someone. And that person that died really did die. And in the real world, outside of the TV show version that they’re going after here, this. This is a. This is putting on the writer’s head, of course. But what I’m kind of guessing, I mean, sitting here being asked the question, is that Mima does the scene where she murders the guy, right? Roomy’s offset. And then she cosplays those clothes, kills a photographer.

So now and then, you know, since she’s got the key, puts the clothes there, and so Meme has got this memory yesterday of wearing those clothes and killing someone on set, but then it’s like, wait, was that. Was that me acting? Or was. Did I actually do that also. I’ve. I’ve been, you know, getting naked and doing compromising positions. So not this would improve the movie at all, but it would eliminate some of that confusion. If there was just one scene where they show that Rumi was putting something in her drink each night to cause this weird amnesia.

Or this thing where she would just pass out and wake up in her bed and not know the difference, that would have made all that clear. But again, like, David lynch wouldn’t just make like an easy out like that either. No, no. I’m looking at quotes that I wrote down the best. I. I think this is the best quote in the movie. The there’s no way illusion can come to life. You should stop dreaming soon. I’m not even sure what that means, but I found it fascinating. Well, that phrase about illusions coming to life is stated at least three or four times in this movie.

That’s probably the most recurring theme is playing with this idea of can your illusions come to life? And they keep saying no. Yeah. So Roomy is basically mind controlling two people to a certain extent. The stalker guy, me Mania and. And Mima herself. So. And you were mentioning you’d heard this movie being a kind of a textbook case of signifiers of that. So, so what do you, what do you think Roomie is doing? What methods is she rocking for these two people? Oh, well, I mean, this is classic Monarch style programming. This. It makes the most sense.

And sometimes Monarch is conflated with Disney programming or like this pop star kind of thing. But a. A large part of that is based on starting with someone and inflating their ego to the point where they feel they’re royalty or they’re a pop star or there’s some kind of famous actress or singer or something like this inflated ego. Because now you’ve got a larger than life Persona. Imagine that even if you really are a pop star or you really are some like, you know, important person, that outward version of yourself is still a Persona. It’s still some kind of a facade that you have to be able to like put on like a hat and take off depending on the context.

And that’s kind of what Mima is struggling with this entire time. Like you mentioned that, like that. That virgin Persona that she has to pretend to be for Cham, but doesn’t want to be suffocated under that the whole time because it is a per. Even though it’s her, but that’s a Persona of her. So that’s one aspect is implanting this Concept of a Persona at a. At such a rudimentary level. And then through trauma, which is the other part of Monarch is it’s all trauma based programming. The trauma of even simulated assault. The way like the violent strip club assault that happens to her, I think that’s another implication is that even though she’s willingly doing this, everyone’s stopping her.

Hey, are you okay with the script? You realize what this is going to entail, right? Even one of the co. Even the person that is enacting this simulated thing on her during one of the cuts, he’s like, hey, I’m so sorry. And she’s like, no, no, it’s okay. Like, I get it, this is part of the job or whatever. But even after all that happens, it shows her going back home and she flips out. I think this is after she sees her Fisher dad. But she absolutely loses it. And she kind of says to herself, of course this affects me.

Of course I don’t want to do this scene, but I feel like I have to do it in order to prove myself, in order to make sure that I’m not letting anyone down. At least, you know, the director and the writer and the co stars. Like, it’s all hinging on me. So she forced. Feels forced into it. So the idea there being that even the simulated version of this very traumatic experience is just as potent for implanting memories or implanting programming into somebody. You don’t actually have to do the full thing as long as you just put the other person through the paces.

And that happens a few different times in this movie where she is being traumatized. And each one of those traumatic experiences results in her passing out and waking up again and not realizing how she got there or being able to tell the difference between all these. This is essentially every time you break someone’s spirit like that and you program a new feeling into them through a traumatic experience, then ideally, from the standpoint of being like the mind control programmer, every separate trauma can result in a unique personality. Then again, in this movie we see the model version of her, we see the actress version, we see the pop idol version, we see the normal version of her.

And then we also see this perhaps like, murderous, imaginary version of her. So there’s no less than five distinct personalities which each would kind of be compartmentalized by each individual trauma she goes through. I guess what’s kind of interesting here is because the typical, you know, conspiracy theory rant is like, here is a. Here is this, you know, organization, like doing this and weaponizing it’s. Interesting here. That’s the. The. The studio system causing the trauma and then the talent agency kind of weaponizing and using it to her own advantage to do the actual mind control part.

And personally, and she and I, I think this is also an interesting correlation that in the TV drama that they’re acting out, which tracing the serial killer, it’s about someone taking someone else’s skin because they want to become them. That’s kind of what Rumi is doing. She’s not literally taking Mima’s skin, but she’s definitely taking on the Persona and acting as if she were Mima. She puts up the blog, she puts on her clothes. She goes out and acts like, like the virgin version of her as the pop idol. So she also is doing the things that the serial killer is doing in the show that they’re shooting.

I. I assume Roomy was going for her skin in the final sequence of the movie. Yeah, I mean, that was definitely leading to an escalation. It wasn’t just going to stop at, like, a Selena story. It was going to be worse for Selena. Right, right. She wasn’t like, you know, like, I’m going for your skin. But you could assume that might have been the. The end goal there was. I mean, it was escalating. Every single thing that she was doing was leading to more and more. And again, maybe I don’t know if this was intentional, but her and the weird Frankenstein stalker dude both had a weird, like, space between their eyes.

I don’t know if that they were supposed to share that in common to, like, show that. The same way that, you know, Disney or classic Western animation will give someone a humpback or a crooked nose to kind of imply like, oh, look here, like, we’re gonna tell a cast. Here’s a bad guy. I think that’s pretty much how they were going for it. Because Me Mania, just like you said, looks like Frankenstein’s monster or something. He just looks completely bizarre, roomy. Just Rumi looks a little off. Right. But. And then once we. Once the reveal comes, it’s like, now she looks kind of, like, weird and terrifying.

So though she looks like she could have been kicked in the head by a horse when her skull was still soft. Yeah. Yeah. Really? I. I think. Did they say it implicitly in the movie? I believe it’s implied that she was an idol of her own, you know, 20 years previous. Like, she was. Oh, I totally missed that. That would make even more sense. I don’t think I’m making that up, but Yeah, I believe the idea is like she used to be. She actually used to be Mima. She can’t really be anymore. So okay, there I’m looking at the wiki plot which calls her former pop idol Rumi Hidaka.

So maybe I needed wiki to tell me that and the movie doesn’t do it enough. I don’t know. I mean this is really, really complex though. Like all these interwoven stories and the Requiem for a Dream reference and even like the Inception sort of feel to it. It still blows my mind that this was ever have been considered for just like a niche little market. Well, that’s I guess why Khan got to make a few more movies before, you know, dying way too young. But another thing this movie does actually, you know, there’s all the Internet stuff with the message board and stuff and this is 97.

So this is very early in Internet and they kind of get it right, I think. Yeah, I mean pretty prophetic because I don’t think AOL hit their million users, which is a laughably tiny number. Right. Like that’s a huge milestone for that. But that was a million people on the Internet is nothing. There’s probably that many people watching like a Mr. Beast video on, on some good days. Right. But yeah, that was like 93 or so. And if this came out in 97 or 98, we’re talking four or five years. And they have nailed the 4chan in cell demographic like to a T on this.

But maybe again maybe Japan was just like on like they had their, their thumb on the pulse of Internet creepos at that point. Yeah, well, hey man, you can still take a walk through Akihabara and you’re feel a little weird. I, I think I’ve gone on the train otaku story before. Yeah, maybe not on this podcast where I said it train platform. And one week there’s a kind of weird looking guy, you know, kind of like a me mania sort of guy making train announcements on the platform. You know, he doesn’t work for the train company or anything.

He’s just there because he likes trains and he’s memorized the announcements. The next week I’m there again, another guy’s doing a different platform. The week after that they’re both there competing against each other. I haven’t heard this though, and, and I’ve been on a train and I’ve seen a guy muttering to himself and this is just a few weeks ago, the guy was saying the train announcements about seconds before they came on. Like you knew exactly when they were going to come on, he knew exactly what the announcements were, and he would say them himself five seconds before they.

They played over the speakers. So that’s the level of twerk we’re talking about here. That’s. Yeah, you know, these. Those guys getting that obsessed about trains, because that means you have to just, okay, now I see that house. Now I say it. And then they’re gonna say it. It was weird. It was. The recordings were repeating after him, you know, but you gotta just memorize for all. And you can do that. It’s Japan. All this stuff works like clockwork. So you. You. If you remember all the points, you can do it. But it’s. It’s not like I think he was being supernatural or anything, but it is weird.

And it’s weird to put that much attention into something. And the fans of CHAM are putting that much attention into cham. You know, the Me Mania’s got just what, Mima like, plastered all over his walls and his little computer. He’s a super fan. These are the. The guys that end up spending all the money to buy top tickets to go to, like, a weird team, like a Taylor Swift, you know, concert or something, or they’re people that buy the $30,000 VIP suite. So she kind of is obligated to do a meet and greet. And, you know, it’s always like an awkward moment where it’s like, I kind of have to, like, say hi to this person because they’re basically funding a large portion of my fan base.

But also, what a creeper. Who the hell is spending 30 grand to do this? I feel like that’s a. That’s a normal aspect of this kind of fame. Right? But again, you threw out Taylor Swift, so if you meet someone, they said they did that, you’re like, oh, I guess they really like Taylor Swift. But in the case of Cham, chances are most people don’t know who Cham are in Japan. Right. 83 on the charts is. Is their big breakthrough. So they’re not well known. So these. It’s not like other. He’s getting in early on the ground floor.

That’s all it is. Yeah, but how many groups did you get in early on the ground floor? And they never went anywhere. You know, that’s also super common. People getting obsessed with these groups and they just kind of sputter out. I mean, it’s. Hey, it’s like getting into a podcast, you know? I also assume now, too, that all those guys muttering, the. The train stops, they go back home and they cross dress and murder people at night. Because that’s the logical conclusion. That’s of course weird. Japanese people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they, they, they leave the train station.

Then there’s a little machine where they can buy little diecast model trains and play with those at home. They’re feeding into the fetish. Yeah. Hey, some walking out, it’s like it’s two drink machines and then this one little machine. They’re always changing out to have like little weird collectibles. It’s not one of the ball machines. It’s a different thing but. And then. Yeah, the. Yeah. Panties and train parts from the same thing. The, the prayer machines. You know, we were at the mall a few weeks ago and it was like a store just of the little, you know, bubble machines.

Right. And some of it’s weird stuff. Go to machines or something. Little, the vending machines and things come in little plastic bubbles. Right, right. Yeah. And it got weird. There was probably about like maybe a couple hundred of them in this store. And some of it was like, it was like little plastic recreations of like 90s and 2000 era Internet routers. So you put your 300 yen and you wouldn’t know which one you’d get and you’d get one of five tiny recreations of Internet routers from 20 or 30 years ago. That’s how weirdly specific some of this stuff gets.

What else did I see there was. You could get little miniature boxes of famous snacks and candies. Of course it was just a model of it. It’s not actually the snack or candy that’s actually really big. Now in the States even they’ve got. This is like a big thing is miniature versions of products where it’ll have like a little miniature version of say like a Barbie all the way. Like, like a, like a box with plastic on it and a little miniature Barbie inside of it and then toys and candies and stuff. Yeah. I don’t understand the allure of buying a miniature version of a thing that just stays in its package.

But I don’t know. I guess it’s like a cute thing. I, I think they probably got that idea from the Japanese vending machines. Well, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Like very likely that was one of the trends that goes opposite because Japan does interestingly drive a lot of the collectible markets in the West. Like the same way that the west movies might have a huge influence. I feel that the collectible markets in general are bigger in Japan than almost anywhere else. And that’s one way that they’re also influencing the West. It does depend on what like you know, say genre or what specific thing you’re looking into.

Again, if you’re trying to look for Star Trek and collectibles in Japan, no, that’s not happening. That stuff’s coming from somewhere else. Right, but, but that’s an ip. But, but like a trend would be like the squishable trends or these miniature product trends or a lot of other like formulas. Formulas that you could apply to any ip. Yeah. Actually the reason we were in that store, my daughter wanted to see an anime in the theater. Nintama Rantaro or something. It’s the ninja kids. I think I mentioned it. But yeah, she wanted, she was like, oh, I want to get a ninja kid.

Like a little plush ninja kid. So we were like, maybe we could find a figure in one of those machines or something like a keychain. The only way you could get them was the claw machines. And I suck at the claw machine. So she tried a couple times and I tried and I was like, yeah, we’re not getting it out of the claw machine. You get a claw machines. No, in fact, one of my, some of my favorite videos are very unethical. I’m not advocating for this. But people that bring these high powered magnets to the little claw machine things where they’ll just like hook things from the outside.

And even there was one, I’m sure most of these are fake, but there was even one where they get the claw machine claw over the drop receptacle and they, they are able to get the magnet up on the claw. So now anywhere the claw goes in the machine, as soon as it just gets close enough to something metallic, if it’s a keychain or an iPhone or whatever, it just sucks up to the claw. So they’re just like clean and shop. I’m pretty sure that would technically classify as like grand theft if you use that method to win like an iPhone or something.

But those are some of my favorite videos was seeing people like Beat the House because I, I also, I worked for A long story short, but I worked for a couple game companies and like casino type companies. And it blew my mind to know that those claw machines generally have like a setting where they’ll, they’ll give it a setting that one in every. I’ll just make a number up but one in every 30 grabs, the, the claw will actually retain its force. But for those other 29, even if you nail that thing right on the claw arms are just Programmed to stay springy and to not pick anything up.

So it’s not only is it a game of skill, but it’s also a game of chance. More so chance than anything, right? Right. Now I got a friend in Japan, I mean he’s American, but he’s like, yeah, I’m really good at the claw machines. And then another friend just kind of whispered me, yeah, he just spends a lot of money. Well, that’s what it is. If, if you spend enough to play it 60 times, you might get two or three wins in there because you’ve probably, you’ll probably develop enough skill to know when to hit the button and how to time all the things out.

But it also has to align with the built in internal. It’s an. It’s a very real setting. Like if you go to five different. Like Denny’s used to have them in almost every single Denny’s they would have a claw machine right by the door, in and out. And there was an actual setting where you could go in there and say like every 10 poles or every 30 pulls or every 50 pulls to, to make the arm not lose its sort of grip. So I mean it would, it was down to the point where anyone would be like, yo, go, go change the claw machine.

You know, make it twice as hard because we’re gonna have a lot more traffic today. So I don’t know, seeing that part behind the curtain, like I don’t feel bad if anyone scams their way through one of those claw machines. But I do like the idea of the teenager working at the arcade. Drags you into the back room and beats the crap out of you casino style. You know, he’s got. The Creed’s got like the little quarter belt on him. Come on back here. We know what you’ve been doing, that sort of thing. Well, let’s, let’s crack into a few more notes.

I guess if you have anything on yours you would like to plow into, dive into. Yeah, well, I mean the, the multiple personality and the dissociative identity disorder thing. I think that’s probably the main reason people recommend this movie. And because it’s this transition from a, like a Disney esque pop star to into doing like adult work. Which is also a recurring theme when it comes to this project Monarch mind control programming. But that would leave out. Usually there’s a reason for that. It’s not just to deteriorate like, like an actress so that they’re no longer anything.

Usually these are. One of the examples would be like beta sex Kitten programming. This is kind of like the Sparrow movie where they’ve got Jennifer Lawrence is like this Russian spy slash like sex pot, honey pot that if you get too close, turns into a black widow kind of deal. Well, if this were to be applied to Perfect Blue, then it would almost go to speak that if she were being created to be this MPD did person, that it would be in the efforts for something bigger. So let’s just say for a second that Roomy maybe is crazy Ruby maybe does kill her stalker.

But also the open up the possibility that Mima also is killing people because she really does exhibit multiple personality disorder. She actually is going through real traumatic experiences. Simulated or not, she’s going through that. So I don’t think there’s any real debate that she is potentially becoming this, you know, multiple personality person. And in order for that to actually have a practical effect, if someone were orchestrating that, it would be to turn her into an assassin. Like she’s actually going to kill someone. So maybe part of this, if you were to watch it and ignore all the Wikipedia breakdowns that someone wanted to take that photographer out or someone wanted to take the writer out and this was a really convenient way to do it.

But I mean it’s. It’s too complex and too blurry to like say that that’s what’s happening. But if this were a Project Monarch movie, that’s. That would be the natural conclusion. I mean roomies like Manchurian candidating Me Mania. Almost by chance or by accident, you know, I guess she is actually corresponding with him though as Mima. So that suggests a little more intentionality. That’s also the thing, I think, why the last scene the movie is like weirdly unsettling because we’re getting a new Mima, right? And this is a super famous Mima. Everyone at that sanitarium is like, oh my God, is that really her? You know, but.

And then she acts completely differently. You know, it’s like all of the trauma this movie has reprogrammed her into the now she’s like, she did that. But now she’s like the classy star because the nurses aren’t like, oh, that smutty actress. They’re like, ooh, she’s like one of the most famous actresses in Japan kind of vibe, you know, like, we respect her, we like her. Yeah, I guess she gets the respect that Jennifer Connelly never necessarily achieved. Although she’s been awesome in her later roles. But I don’t know if everyone would recognize it at an old folks Sanitarium that’s, that’s especially impressive that people in a insane asylum would be like, wow, I’m snapping out of it and recognizing who this person is.

Right. But I mean, not to dwell completely on the last scene, but did you pick up on that just being like kind of a different person? I think that’s why it threw me off the first time because she’s. So it is supposed to be sometime later, but it’s like this is a different person than we’ve been spending the movie with. I mean, I guess it just made a lot of sense to me because again, she already has multiple personalities in the movie itself, so it would make sense that she’s just adding on to those over time because each one is basically protecting the previous one.

So whatever normal version of her exists now, it kind of exists in that normal fashion. In order to protect the previous previous, she has fully integrated all of these different personalities. And I, I don’t know if that’s a technical term, but usually in this, this like mind control conspiracy sphere, that’s the term used to like reverse this weird trauma based programming is that you would slowly integrate each of those personalities and the way that you would do that is you would sort of hone into one of those either through trauma or through just being intentional about it, and then slowly introduce them to the other personalities until they all fold back into the one main personality that comes out again.

Yeah, I, I guess one of the interesting things about this movie is it shows that as a symptom of the system, it’s not like there’s some guy in a dark office orchestrating it all. It’s like. And then like you said, everyone’s like, oh, are you sure you’re okay with this? No, she’s not. You really want to do this? No, she doesn’t. You know, it’s like a symptom as. Because you just used the word intentionality, I feel like there’s not much intentionality going on, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s structured that way and I think that’s probably one of the, the cooler, wider approaches to this is that just the, the fact that like Hollywood would do this or you know, Japanese version of Hollywood, but that getting into acting can put you into these situations and you’re living through these very real scenarios that you can’t just completely turn it off, or if you can, maybe that implies you’re already been traumatized by some other previous experience.

But, but essentially, even if, even if you’re completely normal, even if you come out of it on the other end, there’s a chance that for that temporary scene in which something horrific is happening to you, you probably are disassociating. You probably are putting out this proxy personality to kind of deal with that. Because even being in the moment and just reminding yourself this isn’t real, this isn’t actually happening, that probably would not make the best performance because you actually have to be performant and act as if it were all real, right? So in order to do that, you have to create this Persona.

So I’m. I think that this is like beating over the top of the head. But it’s not like they’re hiding this fact that Mima is intentionally creating these different public Personas for all these different reasons. And I guess the trauma that she goes through is just emphasizing that. But if anyone’s programming Mima, it’s probably Mima herself. And she’s willingly doing it, like, you know, acknowledging that she’s doing it. And I mean, it’s like, even if it’s, even if it’s like a nicer role, like less sex and violence or whatever, you know, I, I’ve got my Trekkie friends.

One of them did an interview with the not visitor who played Major Kira on Deep Space Nine. The point being, it’s. I mean, she was, you know, it’s the darker of the Star Trek shows, the 90s. And she was like a hardcore character, if you’re not familiar, blah, blah, blah. But she was talking about when she did the role for seven years, she would have dreams where she was her character, you know, like in the prison camps or something, or, you know, she just. Especially in dreams. Just like that character would start to kind of infect her life, you know, and that’s not even like as disturbing as the stuff in this movie.

And that’s a, a real life example. You know, this is also. I, I always find the best way to, to shoehorn in Satanic Panic concepts. But in the Satanic Panic, I think people now maybe look back and joke about this aspect a little bit about how the Satanic Panic critics would point to like Dungeons and Dragons. And it’s like, oh, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, you’re inviting the, the devil right into your living room. You’re going to lose your kids to Satan if they play Dungeons and Dragons. And it’s not all reactionary because it’s just like, oh, they’re talking about magic and wizards and that’s evil, that’s anti Christian.

So that’s why the Devil’s coming. It really is because of that extra role playing aspect of Dungeons and Dragons where someone goes into a basement and they like literally transform themselves depending on how much they get into it. And they are like a bloodthirsty warrior. They are some dark mage casting these real spells. And if you do that enough over time, I think that some people recognize that you can change the way that your brain works. And maybe that is a risk. Like you actually could be risking little Johnny’s soul. Not because God’s angry and Satan’s gonna snatch him up because he believes in magic, but because they’re role playing at a formative time of their, their youth, I guess.

And now they’re like opening themselves up to this other magical thinking. I mean, I’m not saying that Dungeons and Dragons will make you evil or give you multiple personality, but that there is something slightly more nuanced and complex than just if you talk about dragons, then God gets mad and you go to hell. It’s actually that you’re, you’re opening yourself up to this programming and alternate way of thinking. And that was part of the real danger and the panic of the Satanic panic. Yeah, I mean, to put in another term, like you’re playing like a dumb Match three game or something on your phone, like a casual game.

You go to bed and then you stay awake an hour, like playing it in your head, you know, it’s that kind of thing. Like why am I still doing Tetris? You know, I’m in my bed supposedly going to sleep and I’m playing Tetris in my head in a, in a not so previous life. But yeah, as a, like a software engineer, there were times when I was working on one specific project nonstop and just coding for 12, 14 hour days to the point where this would happen often enough that it was like, oh yeah, that my brain’s doing that thing again.

But I would, I would do things like stand up equals true. Before I would stand up and it would be like walk dot to equals refrigerator. Or like, you know, like me dot drinking equals true. Like every, every action I was happening in real life in my brain, it was like writing code to, to make it make sense about what was happening in this external world. Even to the point where like me sleeping, like my dreams would be about, you know, these things like stating logical things like I’d have to write the code in my dream to understand what was happening.

And yeah, they call that like Tetris brain too, I think you had mentioned. But it’s like if you focus on one specific pattern for too long now, like your body starts to just force everything into that pattern. Your mind, rather. Now I have, I have a different one that happens when I wake up sometimes, which I guess most. Maybe most people do this or maybe, maybe I’m losing my sanity. But, you know, like I have a dream, I don’t even remember what the dream is, but I’m half awake in bed doing some weird repetitive motion, like it’s a task or something, you know, and then at some point, me, no, I’m not familiar with this.

Yeah, like I’m moving my leg in like some kind of sequence. Like, because I’m the dream, I’m like performing a task and then I’m awake, waking up in my bed, I’m like, why am I doing this weird repetitive motion? You know, it feels like. Have you ever seen the. The oa? No, I haven’t. The. The OA is. I think it was like a. I can’t remember what series it was on FX or something, but it basically is following this Carlos Costaneda movements thing where, where the, if I can oversimplify, the general premise is that we’re all magical and we’ve got magic energy and it builds up over time and that the, the spaces in between your body, like inside your elbow and between the webs of your fingers is where all of this latent energy kind of like falls into and it just collects like, like belly button lint or something.

And that if you can move the, the energy out of these latent spaces, you can almost like form like a ball of energy or intent. But if you do these very specific motions in a certain cadence and in a certain order that you can basically break like the time space barrier, you can astral project, you can travel in time, you can do all of these crazy things, like these supernatural abilities, all because you’re able to like, use this sort of latent energy out there. So I don’t, I don’t know how I think that that just relates to that particular topic.

It kind of does because it’s something I was doing in my dream. And sometimes I do feel like I’m doing a task in my dream. Right. Or something. Right. Sometimes my dreams feel like I’m up to something in the other realm and I can’t quite figure out here. And that’s why I’m like, kind of confused doing it when I wake up, you know, I mean, I’m not doing anything horrible or violent. Like I said, it’s usually just like moving my Leg. Or even just like having to continue through this thought cycle. Like, I think of this and I think of this.

I can’t explain it now because once you’re fully awake, you’ve completely lost what right. No, I get that. The logic disappears. You don’t understand anymore. There have been a few times that I woke myself up punching or kicking or like. Like I had to kick someone in a dream and I ended up kicking my girlfriend. Not hard enough to, like, be bad, but it woke both of us up. And so, yeah, sometimes it does carry over in those weird ways. The most fun was my unit. My university girlfriend was a lifeguard or whatever. And this was before the Adult swim was a big thing on TV.

This is like 2000. But I think somewhere at like 4 in the morning, she just suddenly shouted Adult Swim at the top of her lungs. So what the hell. Yeah, so that was kind of fun. But yeah, yeah, yeah. What? You know, the dreams infecting reality, which we get here. I wrote pop, pop, fizz, fizz in my notes. I guess she is. I’m just thinking, going back here, like, maybe Rumi is drugging her because they do have some specific shots of her taking some medicines or something. Okay, that wasn’t. That wasn’t an Alka Seltzer reference. Well, it was about Seltzer reference.

I’m just looking at my note now, thinking about what you said earlier. Here’s one thing. Just. Just, you know, for the sake of conversation. The idea to become a true star, which at the end of the movie, Mima is a true star in Japan, you’ve got to sacrifice someone. Is that Rumi? I mean, until she tries to murder her. I guess they’re close, kind of. Although, I mean, the sacrifice would make more sense for the three people that actually gave up their lives in this indirect path of. They want close to her. Right? Right. But they don’t have to be close.

The sacrifice doesn’t have to be close to you. It just has to be a sacrifice that you are claiming and using for some other good. It’s a release of energy that you’re then repurposing. And I guess that all three of those people did in fact lose their lives to Mima in stardom. And. And I don’t know the whole backstory because it just jumps forward in time. But you would assume that if Rumi was caught and this came out now all of a sudden, this actress, which was normally just some unknown pop star that is now acting now it’s like, oh, but she’s Also this chick that’s surrounded by these three murders and there’s all this extra sort of like, like mythology that gets built around her.

Like the double bind rates of the curse production, I’m sure. Right. Well, and that itself, like that’s buying you marketing that you wouldn’t be able to buy that kind of marketing. And now she’s getting it for free thanks to Roomie. So if anything, Roomie did her job really well. She was an amazing agent slash PR person because she put Mima on the map. Right. At the cost of her sanity. I do also find it interesting in the end where the nurses say, oh, real. The real Mima, not Mima. The real Roomy comes out every once in a while, you know, just like that.

That sound that’s disturbing like hey, where am I? What’s going on? You know? And then who is the real Roomy? The psychotic one? Who is that? Is that just Nima? How would they know? How would they even know which is the real Roomy out of all of the different versions? Yeah, just because she tells you that. But yeah. Anyway, that last scene is like the first time I couldn’t quite work it out and now I’m still not working out. But it is seemed to be kind of the key to the movie in some ways. Well, I mean she really does.

Like those sacrifices did work. So if anything, maybe deep down she realizes that she owes part of this new life that she was so set on getting to Roomie. Like if, if Roomy hadn’t done any of those things, she probably would have just been a walk on one time for this show and that would have been the end of it. Rumi’s mistake was becoming a talent manager instead of becoming an Anka singer. That I guess that’s something you can do if you’re no longer a pop idol. Do you know Anka? Paul Anka. Not Anka. Anka. Which is Jap, like 50s 60s Japanese pop music.

But it’s still. It’s popular with old people. Kids don’t like it. But think of the Japanese music in the Kill Bill movies. That, that was Inca. So just that super melodramatic love song thing with lots of orchestration. So if you’re in Japan, I guess maybe this applies to you too. Or maybe you have to actually be like full blooded Japanese. But do you just turn 50 and you start liking that music? Or is this going to be a situation where like, like 50 year olds in the next couple years they’re just going to be listening to J Pop and Anchor is completely out of the window.

I’m not sure. When I go to. To work, I walk by a store. It’s been there for probably 50 years. And it’s. It’s selling cassette tapes, mostly cassette tapes of Inca singers. They got some CDs too, but mostly cassette tapes. And then, and then they’re selling like clocks, small clocks. It’s a really weird store, but it’s, you know, I guess it’s very much geared to older people. So I’m not sure when. When that store goes out, business. Maybe I’ll. I’ll start wondering if Inca’s dead. The. The. I think I mentioned Kohaku before. That’s the New Year’s Eve program.

Four and a half hours long of. It’s male artists versus female artists. If it’s a band, will go with whatever gender the singer is. But yeah, it’s one song after another. It starts off with a whole lot of J Pop. And then Inca starts slipping in and by the end of the night it’s like wall to wall Inca, you know, so it’s like, okay, now we’re getting back to Japan’s roots or something like that. And they’ll have these big, lavish, weird productions of Inca singers this past year. We actually noted they seem to balance it out more this year where it was like kind of like the same throughout, so.

Or as past years it would kind of shift. It’s like, okay, we’re getting, it’ll get phased out eventually. It’s. It’s the same way that like, like classic rock or real golden oldies are kind of getting phased out now. You’ll hear Lincoln park or Nickelback or Offspring or something on like a classic rock station here in the States. Like it’s. It is going to end up pushing some of like what was originally classic rock out of that because now people are going to be listening to, you know, Fred Durst. Well, I assume it’s just, you know, like, like time has already pushed out the stuff that people really don’t care about.

I feel like Led Zeppelin or the Beatles will still be played for a while, but, you know, The Dave Clark 5’s already already been forgotten despite. Or. Or, you know, like the James Gang or something, you know, like, who listens to the James Gang now? You know, other than maybe a big single or something. The Guess who. You listen to the who, but who listens to the Guess who other than their one big hit. But, you know, they were. They’re a big band in the 70s, right? So that’s probably the way the funny thing is, when Kill Bill came out in America, we were all like, oh, that music’s so cool, you know, because it was in the, in the Tarantino movie and all that.

Meanwhile, in Japan, I think that was partly scored by RZA too. Yes, yes, right. But he. It also had a lot of needle drop, so. Soundtrack’s great, by the way. Both of them on vinyl. But yeah, yeah, the RZA does like, you know, little one minute things and he put the thing together, but it’s not like a RZA album. Kind of like My Bloody Valentine’s, Kevin Shields and the Lost in Translation soundtrack. He only made about like six minutes worth of music for the soundtrack and then it’s a bunch of like, you know, curated songs. I think Ghost Dog was very similar to that.

I don’t know. Have you ever seen Ghost Dog before? Like when it was new, but it’s. It’s been a while and I’m mixing it with Alpha. No, I have not seen Alpha Dog. But yeah, and I see you put out two dog moves. You get them mixed up in your head. So yes, I’ve seen Ghost Dog. I’ve not seen Alpha Dog, but I don’t remember Ghost Dog. I remember liking it. You can live without seeing Alpha Dog. Yeah, yeah, you can’t live without seeing Ghost Dog. Everyone has to see Ghost Dog at least once. Okay, I’ve seen at least once, but yeah, I don’t.

I remember the DVD box looks like pretty clearly. But yeah, that was another example that RZA basically did the score and he, he had involvement with the soundtrack, but the soundtrack was needle drop. But it was needle drop from pretty much all Wu Tang affiliate groups as well. And I think that that was one of his first forays into scoring movies, both soundtrack and the score, which led to him doing Kill Bill. Yeah, I feel like that’s kind of the coolest segue from a pop career that we have in the States at least. You know, at Oingo Boingo, you get Danny Elfman, you get Devo, you get Mark Mothersburg or I don’t know how to say his name, but you know, the Rizza from the Wu Tang.

That, that’s kind of a cool way to soundtrack. You know, Kevin Shields only did that one movie, but he should have done some more because that’s a cool soundtrack. Well, I mean, I guess we have a similar ladder here where you would start in music and then work your way into Hollywood. But then usually the last step is you get into politics. If you can get all the way into politics from that route. That’s usually like. It’s not a reverse. Usually you don’t see politicians getting into movies and getting into music. It usually happens the other way.

And I think it’s just how much money you make. You probably make more royalties with movie credits, and then you make even more royalties, you know, taking people’s money and fleecing them through the tax system. Yeah. I was about to say you’re not getting it through the. The. The actual salary of those positions. Do you want to hit anything else big in your notes? I think I’ve pretty much got out most of the things I wanted to say in mine. So, out of all of the movies by this director, is this the one to see, or is it Paprika, or is it some other one? It’s all four.

You gotta watch them all. Okay. He only made four movies, and. And none of them suck, so, you know, all of them have people that would say it’s the best one. I mean. Yeah, Paprika, I. The. That’s the one I’ve heard the most criticism on. And the criticism for that is just. It feels like a really good TV pilot. So I guess the point is it seems like something that’s just setting up something that never happens. And I’ve heard people be disappointed by that. But Paprika, by the way, is like, has a lot of the Inception ideas, like, about three or four years before Inception, by the way.

Way. Well, so did this movie. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This too. But. And I love Inception, and I don’t mind that it uses an Uncle Scrooge comic book or. Or Satoshi Khan movies. That’s fine. You know, you can use influences. Yeah, they don’t own that. No one owns the. And. And maybe that’ll be my last note on this, too, is that NLP nested lube that is kind of a very complicated version of a nested loop. Is. The Inception movie itself is just starting one story and then putting a story inside of it before you finish it, and then another one inside of that one before you finish that.

And then as the movie or the story progresses, you slowly resolve each one from the inside out. And that’s sort of what happens in this particular movie. Although this one feels a little bit less linear. It feels, again, almost like a Tarantino movie in some ways. Yeah, this one’s kind of artier. Like, I mean, it was successful, but it was not. I mean, it was not like, a major financial success in Japan or in the States or anywhere. It made some Money more than they expected because it was supposed to be a weird throwaway and it got a lot of critical acclaim, but it’s not like some, you know, major hit or anything.

Well, you’re not. Yeah. You’re not putting this one on for the family? Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. Okay. Nine. Ninety million yen. Okay. Made for less than a million dollars. About $800,000 in 1997 in the box office in the U.S. and the UK is less than that. 768. And I don’t. I’m not even sure it made its much. It’s. It made money. I don’t know if it made money at all, but maybe it broke even at best. Well, they don’t care about money in Japan. They care about just like the. The love of the craft out there.

Right. In this case, that’s kind of. I think that is kind of it, though, because it was meant to just, you know, make a few dollars and vanish and it. And here we are watching it 25, almost 30 years later. You know, I mean, I actually watched mine for free. It was on YouTube. I just searched for full, for perfect blue, full movie, English dub, and bam, there it was. No ads or anything. Yeah. Rock on. If they. Hey. And I. I feel like, you know, if YouTube didn’t like it, they. They’d take it down. Right.

Which is crazy too. Taking down other videos, I’m making sure to. To intentionally mince my words a little bit. Like, I don’t want to say what actually happens on that stage in that strip club because that could be censored. But at the same time, I saw the actual movie on the platform that would maybe not let me talk about what I saw on their platform. So I. I almost too feel like I am in a weird Kafkaesque story within a story. Like I am inside of an Inception in some way. Triple standards. There we go. I.

I guess we will wind down for today and for. For the listener or the viewer next week. You actually will be visiting my. My. Well, not my hometown, but the town I’ve been living in for a long time with summer wars animates locations in my city and trains and things like that. So I’ll try not to get kicked out or get you in trouble. Right. That’s kind of the weird thing. Not weird, but something very different about Japanese animation. There might be a little bit of. In this movie, but locations are a big thing. Like, it’s like, here’s a location, but they animate it, right.

They didn’t film there or anything. It’s just they photo real recreated in the movie. So. But you will find things for more modern animes like here is the site the anime is used and they’ll show you the picture and then the animated version side by side or whatever. So yeah, you mentioned they actually have like location scouts, which I still don’t understand but I, I accept it because they’re gonna photo real make it. Yeah. How about on your end? What are you making? You’re making lots of things. Choose one or two. Yeah, I mean I’m actually gonna do a throwback since this one does come up often in the context of Project Monarch and mind control.

Issue three of my Time Sampler series, which you can find@paranoidamerican.com Time Samplers was the very first comic series that I put together like long running series. And in issue three it completely breaks down the entire process of Project Monarch programming. Allah, John Todd, Brit Springmoo, maybe a few other sort of like very fringe conspiracy theorists. But it shows the very real process of how they create these altars, what type of trauma they use, how they procure the people that go through this part of it happens in the, the comic book in this place called Dignity Colony, which is a city in Chile which was kind of founded after the Vatican Nazi rat line.

It gets, it gets super deep. But if you want to see how that all plays out in a fairly funny comic book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Nazi rat lines and Project Monarch trauma programming, then you should definitely check out the Time Sampler series. And yeah, you can find it on paranoidamerican.com it’s also on Amazon. So that’s probably my, my best contribution to this topic and that has my thoughts and my research way better than I could ever verbalize it because the best way that I know how to communicate is still through comic books. All right.

On my end, a lot of the movies we’ve been talking about today, other in Ault Disney, I, I do the films and filth. Or actually we’ve talked about Perfect Blue before. We’ve talked about Inception there, although that was like five years ago. Who knows what we said there. But yeah, yeah, that’s films and filth. I talk about the Twilight Zone. Time Enough podcast, you can find all that@podcastio podcastius.org Thomas, don’t you want to make music again? Why are you doing this? You should be singing and dancing. I, I actually worked on a, on a perfect blues song.

Maybe I’ll throw it in the credits or something. But I was inspired to make a and then I made a Totoro song, but I’m not as happy with the tutorial song yet. Oh, well. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see how those roll. But for now, a feeder saying I guess I scribbled my life away driven the right page willing to light your brain give you the flight my plane paper the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real to real you will engage it your favorite of course the lord of an arrangement I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hey maybe your language a game how they playing it well without Lakers evade them whatever the cause they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated met is the apex execution of flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see max them out that I light my trees blow it off in the face you’re despising me for what though calculated they rather cut throat paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real Lord give me your day away vacate they wait around to hate whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotate when a beat hits so thank us you’re welcome niggas for real you’re welcome they ain’t never had a deal you’re welcome man they lacking appeal you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
[tr:tra].