FLCL is probably the most memorable anime I have ever seen. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, guilty only because this is not a series that I would recommend to anyone whose tastes I didn’t know well. At the heart of it is a boy’s experience of growing up, but it’s not exactly family friendly. To those who assume that all anime is either giant fighting robots or raunchy jokes, FLCL will only prove them right because it has both of those things in spades. The emergence of one of the giant fighting robots is a raunchy joke. The title, Fooly Cooly, is kind of a raunchy joke. But let’s not talk about that right now.

One of the things I love about FLCL is the steady stream of references to other animations. Character costumes, jokes, visual dynamics, and animation style all in turn make reference to a number of shows and films. Even South Park gets a shout out.

In other episodes, the characters break the fourth wall to acknowledge how hard it is for them to do slow motion or manga scenes (I can’t even count all the pop culture references in that clip).

FLCL manages to include winks at pop culture in every episode while still being original and creative.

We’ve seen animated works pay homage to other animation, and films pay homage to other films, but I would like to present a case in which a live action film director pays homage to animation. The anime motion picture Perfect Blue is a drama/thriller released in 1997 by director Satoshi Kon, who is also known for Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Godfathers, and Paprika. (You like Inception? Check out Paprika.) Perfect Blue is a favorite of mine and apparently of director Darren Aronofsky too.

The film follows Mima, a young ingénue who has found success as a member of the pop group Cham. Sweet, soft-spoken Mima is given the opportunity to perform in a wildly different role as a stripper and murder suspect in a TV drama. She wants the role, but no one believes she has it in her. To push herself, embody the character, and please her bosses, Mima tries to change herself from a sheltered “good girl” into a devil-may-care “bad girl”. She ultimately cracks under the pressure to perform and begins to see her fractured self — literally, in mirrors and windows — as a separate entity over whom she has little control. A version of Mima ends up dead.

If any of that sounds familiar, that’s because Perfect Blue is uncannily similar to Black Swan. I have to admit, I spent the month after Black Swan’s release internet shouting at anyone who would listen that it was basically a knockoff version of Perfect Blue with ballerinas, and that they should just watch Perfect Blue instead. I wasn’t the only one who noted the similarities. Aronofsky was asked about the earlier film’s influence on his movie, but denied it. Here’s the kicker: we know that Aronofsky admires Perfect Blue because he’s used it before.

There’s a scene in an earlier Aronofsky film, Requiem for a Dream in which a female character, feeling violated, sits in a bathtub, holds her head underwater, and screams. This scene was a near shot for shot recreation of a scene in Perfect Blue. Aronofsky even purchased the rights to it.

I think that makes it all the more curious that he actively denies that Kon’s film influenced Black Swan. There’s no shame in taking influence or homage. The bathtub scene, even though it was copy/pasted from another movie, still worked to great effect in Requiem. So why deny it now?