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According to the IMDB trivia on Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue:

The film's original 35 mm camera negative was accidentally destroyed. As a result, all copies are sourced from lower-quality prints.

However I can't find any supporting source that this is true. Could someone find the source of this information (probably in Japanese)?

lulalala
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    FWIW, I have tried researching this in Japanese but found nothing that mentioned this. I was under the impression that this might refer to the 35mm *live-action film* getting destroyed due to the Kobe earthquake, but retracted myself because apparently anime also uses 35mm film. – Aki Tanaka May 21 '20 at 15:01
  • @AkiTanaka still thanks for digging into this though! – lulalala May 22 '20 at 07:03
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    With the very limited Japanese I know, I couldn't find any source talking about destroyed film negatives in regards to Perfect Blue. I did however find a Japanese seller on Mercari selling an allegedly original film negative from Perfect Blue. Here's the link: https://www.mercari.com/jp/items/m43664493382/ I don't know if that means the negatives weren't destroyed, or only a portion of them were?? If someone who's fluent in Japanese can contact this mercari seller, I feel like we might get an answer. – FeelinEggy May 26 '20 at 05:15
  • The production studio that was affected but the Great Hanshin earthquake. Due to a lack of budget, the production was reconceived as a lower budget animated film. It was according to [an interview](http://konstone.s-kon.net/modules/interview/index.php?content_id=6) with Satoshi Kon, it seemed to have been considered as a "video work" (i.e. non-animation, see #5) prior. Additionallt, the negative in question is likely an [internegative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internegative) and not the original like the cels and film negatives offered for Disney animated works. – кяαzєя May 27 '20 at 02:39

1 Answers1

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The closest source that exist on the internet is hearsay, according to an internet user on a forum post on the topic of the Bluray:

What's the source on this? I've never heard of this before.

The disc compressionist, privately to me. - professorwho

All copies were sourced from telecine transfers (i.e. digital copies of the film), which is why you see certain artifacts and overall decreased quality.

кяαzєя
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