Creation of test mysql database "db1" and test table "tbl1" with unicode content:

mysql> create database db1;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> connect db1;
Connection id: 27
Current database: db1

mysql> create table tbl1 (id INT, str CHAR(80) CHARACTER SET utf8);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> insert into tbl1 values (0, 'äöüß');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into tbl1 values (1, 'Ƽ®©');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into tbl1 values (2, 'ĦǾǺǽ');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into tbl1 values (3, 'no unicode');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from tbl1;
+------+------------+
| id   | str        |
+------+------------+
|    0 | äöüß       |
|    1 | Ƽ®©       |
|    2 | ĦǾǺǽ       |
|    3 | no unicode |
+------+------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Test program:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;

use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:database=db1","","");
$dbh->{mysql_enable_utf8} = 1;

my $sth = $dbh->prepare('select * from tbl1');
$sth->execute;
my $ar =  $sth->fetchall_arrayref;
$sth->finish;

print Dumper( $ar );

binmode(STDOUT, ':utf8');

my $str1 = $ar->[1]->[1];
print qq{"$str1" - },  (utf8::is_utf8($str1) ? 'UTF8' : 'ASCII'), qq{ 
+\n}; 

my $str3 = $ar->[3]->[1];
print qq{"$str3" - },  (utf8::is_utf8($str3) ? 'UTF8' : 'ASCII'), qq{ 
+\n};
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Output:

$VAR1 = [
          [
            '0',
            "\x{e4}\x{f6}\x{fc}\x{df}"
          ],
          [
            '1',
            "\x{c6}\x{bc}\x{ae}\x{a9}"
          ],
          [
            '2',
            "\x{126}\x{1fe}\x{1fa}\x{1fd}"
          ],
          [
            '3',
            'no unicode'
          ]
        ];
"Ƽ®©" - UTF8 
"no unicode" - ASCII
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