The watching of Perfect Blue was a test of courage. Back in my college days I went over to a friends’ house for the first time. They showed me this anime. It was how they decided whether or not to keep people. If you ran away screaming, you failed obviously. I think they mainly did it to weed out the “real” anime fans from the teeny-boppers who had only seen "Sailormoon" and "DBZ". I passed by the way.