I got the impression that MD is a remake of the 1997 Japanese
animation directed by the late great Satoshi Gon. I saw it on YouTube.




SPOILER FOLLOWS



It reinforced my "Double Dreams in Hollywood" theory but I'm not
sure why. I guess because the beautiful young lead turns out to be
(perhaps) the dream of a failed actress/idol from a prior generation.

I get that impression in MD, if only due to the 50's (?) jitterbug
contest at the beginning. That suggests someone much older
than the two heroines.

Perhaps the fat female receptionist /telephone switchboard
operator who gets accidentally shot through a wall? There were a
lot of phones. One of Lynch's hints was pay attention to accidents
and where they occur, but folks think of Rita's crash. The bit with
the hitman was a sequnce of accidents.

Perfect Blue has been mentioned on this forum before. I tried it but bailed after about half an hour. Couldn't get into the teeny-bopper setting and didn't rate the battle-of-the-planets animation.

I'm a BIG animation fan, but Anime has never resonated for me. Even Akira left me a bit cold. Have you see The Tale of the Princess Kaguya? That's some serious animation (yay analogue!). No MD references/ties ins from memory, although it is a bit bonkers, so I'm sure there's something in there

I'm not really sure about MH being a remake of Perfect Blue. I see the similar themes, but both directors had such long established careers exploring those types of ideas that it's more likely that they came up with the ideas for their movies independently.