Monday 30 November 2009

Honorary Villain: Rumi Hidaka


Film: Perfect Blue (English title)
Pāfekuto Burū (Japanese title)


Voices: Rica Matsumoto (Japanese)
Wendee Lee (English)


The Character

The character, Rumi is probably as mysterious as Me-Mania but in many ways, she is much more. Me-Mania does come across as the villain at first. After all, he is obsessed with Mima but when you come to the end, you realise that he has been used as a pawn for a much higher power and it is her who is the main villain. Of course, how many of us were shocked when we discovered that the main villain, the one posting the TRAITOR fax, killing Mima's fish, sending the bombed letter and killing the photographer and agent was Rumi? This was kinda of a let down, more to the fact that Mima is showing symptoms of DID and in the end, it is Rumi who is suffering from the disorder.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. I'll start at the beginning. Rumi is Mima's agent but she is more than that. She communicates more with Rumi more than her own mother and in a way Rumi is a mother figure. She is against Mima's choices to be an actress, especially when she has to do a rape scene but as it is Mima's choice, Rumi is powerless and can only give advice.

We learn that Rumi was once a pop star, just like Mima and you have to wonder if Rumi's main concern is to protect Mima and have a long-standing career, something that Rumi may have desired but never got the chance to. She could be compared to a mother who is pushing her child to live her dreams. The concern comes in as she watches Mima act out the rape scene; she cries and flees and it is at this point, we can speculate that she went to Mima's room and killed her fish.

It could be this longing to be like Mima that the DID developed and that she thought she was Mima. Not just Mima; the real Mima and she sees Mima as the fake Mima out to destroy the real Mima. Of course, instead of getting her hands dirty, she gets Me-Mania to do some of the dirty work. In the climax, as we see Rumi as Mima, we see the floating Mima in real life and Rumi only in mirror reflections. This is significant for this signifies that the Mima persona of Rumi has surfaced and Rumi has been pushed into the background. It should be noted that some of the symptoms of DID include blackouts so it could be that Rumi is unaware of her Mima persona which would make her just a victim of her own mind as Me-Mania and Mima are.


The voices behind the character



Wendee Lee is pretty good as Rumi. She’s really convincing as Rumi and she makes the twist so much more fun and heightens up the theory that Rumi has no idea that she has problems and is actually the one trying to hurt Mima. She gives off the impression of Rumi as a concerned mother rather than a pushy agent. And the fact that she makes Rumi sound almost robotic in the climax works in her favour for we know then that Rumi isn’t conscious of what she is doing.

Rica Matsumoto is softer in her tones than Lee is. She is less abrasive and angry in her confrontations although the assertive is still there. In the final climax, she is less robotic than Lee but is more girlish almost matching Junko Iwao’s Mima perfectly.

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