With Hayao Miyazaki mostly retired from the animation game. There’s a question in Japan of who is going to pick up his mantle. My current front runner, is Makoto Shinkai, who’s made the best anime film of the last 10 years. Hot on his tail though is Mamoru Hosoda, who shows an adept skill at making seemingly mundane stories more interesting. Hosoda’s newest is Belle, proving again that this talented director is great at finding new roads into tired concepts with his great imagination. And proving some fairy tales translate across all cultures.
Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) is a painfully shy teenager in rural Japan. However, inside “U”, the social media app of the moment, she’s Belle, the star avatar known for her beautiful voice and lyrics; only Suzu’s best friend Hiroka (Lilas Ikuta) knows Suzu’s secret. One day, at one of Belle’s concerts, a creature known as the Dragon (Takeru Satoh), bursts in and interrupts the show, prompting U’s self proclaimed police officer Justin (Toshiyuki Morikawa) to start a campaign to out the user and de-platform him. Suzu and Hiroka become enamored with the Dragon, and set out on a search across U to find this fascinating avatar.
One of the great parts of an anime film is the dazzling images that pop onscreen. Belle has those amazing visuals about every 10 minutes or so. The world of U is an animator’s dream as director Hosoda gives us some great visuals like a flying humpback whale equipped with a killer sound system, avatars in all shapes, forms, sizes and colors, and great virtual concert setpieces outlining the scale of U’s social media reach. Even Suzu’s real world has some gorgeous moments, whether walking along a quiet, reflective pond or maybe the most artistic puke ever put to film. Hosoda takes great care to make sure the animation enhances the deep rich storytelling his Belle has to offer.
That rich storytelling comes from Hosoda’s mixture of the classic and the modern, the East and the West. Movie watchers from the Western Hermisphere will recognize the references immediately, as Hosoda uses most of the famous moments from the fairy tale. Thankfully though, Hosoda has no interest in simply telling the same fable: he modernizes it and equips it in the social media landscape of today. However, the basic themes of beauty lies within or in the eye of the beholder hold as potent and true today as they have for generations, forming the emotional crux of Suzu/Belle and the Dragon’s connection. When it comes to the social media commentary, yes Hosoda addresses the common themes surrounding what people choose to present to others, but most of the Ready Player One like surface level commentary is relegated to side humor among Suzu and Hiroka’s friends. Hosoda almost daringly presents social media with a more balanced eye. Yes it contains its share of con artists and attention seeking jerks, but for kids, it also presents a way to get your voice out into the world when you think you don’t have anywhere to go, and a place where you can find lonely people like yourself to make a friend, ask for help, or recover from a painful traumatic past. I don’t know if I agree with what Hosoda and Belle are pitching, but its hard to argue with the emotional catharsis and heart on its bruised avatar it wears so truthfully.
Belle also shows why Japanese animation can have an edge over American animators. Japanese animation is unafraid to approach heavier storytelling themes that skew more sad, and more adult in nature. These stories have to be taught to kids someday, so using anime storytelling makes Belle another example of a magic trick those great Japanese animators pull in teaching necessary lessons for everyone. But don’t worry, because a pop star flying on a humpback whale sound system apparatus isn’t too far away…