ANI-MOVIES, *Belle

Possibly acting as a sequel to Summer Wars, this was yet another movie by Mamoru Hosoda about people coming together on the internet to fight an aggressive force. Still borrowing from the Digimon prequel short film he directed in 1999, Hosoda reuses the premise again in his 2021 spectacular, Belle. This was a non-romantic version of Beauty And The Beast, both the original story and the Disney movie, despite the fact this isn't a straight up bootleg of the Oscar-winning animated epic. Studio Chizu, the studio behind this film, already did a movie with a similar title to the source material named The Boy And The Beast, although there's no connection. Hosoda wrote and directed this feature, which is a digital age musical, or at least there are songs frequently done by the title character similar to an idol singer. Belle is a cross between a slice-of-life story and a modern fantasy.

Similar to Oz in Summer Wars, Belle has a virtual internet of its own labeled U, and the reclusive Suzu has just signed on to it. U makes an online avatar of the user's personality and mixing it in with some of their physical appearance, and it transforms Suzu into a pink-haired diva with the strength to finally get over her anxiety and start singing. She had been reclusive since her mother passed away years ago when she sacrificed herself to save a child from drowning, but now under the moniker of Belle does Suzu find the heart to tap into her amazing singing talent. Belle gets fans from all over even though no one except Suzu's hacker friend Hiroka who manages to keep her online identity secret. At one of her concerts, Belle's performance is interrupted by a rogue player known as the Dragon but referred to as the Beast. Dragon defeats the U security force and Suzu wants to find out who this mystery person is. Belle manages to find the Dragon's castle thanks to the help of a quintet of choir singers who in real life knew Suzu's mother and act as her fairy godmothers. Belle befriends Dragon, but he departs when an angel avatar arrives. Suzu is determined to learn more about who the Dragon really is which leads to several revelations concerning her friends from school, and her own family life, including the boy she's had a crush on for most of her life. Not to spoil the ending, but this is not a girl-gets-the-boy kind of anime as its more of an introspective of trying to find someone's inner self and how they can use it to help others.

Studio Chizu has come a long way from before they were formed when they did The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the title character of which is their company's mascot. Belle is an astounding accomplishment of CGI and traditional animation with some of the most sweeping songs in an anime since Macross: Do You Remember Love. The 2-hour long movie is at certain times unnecessarily prolonged either uncovering the backgrounds of the secondary characters whereas others who secretly play a larger part in the plot that the film never gives enough time to. The divide between the online and offline worlds isn't too jarring, even though the virtual realm of U is like something out of dream, most specifically Belle's musical numbers. When Suzu is using her Belle persona, you can see her channeling the Disney Princess that is desperate to break out, and the movie is spectacular at showing how Suzu can be this way in real life and virtually. The movie contains possibly the greatest anime movie soundtrack of the century so far, although this would have worked better for an actual stage musical instead of trying to tell a coming-of-age story, so it suffers from serious pacing issues. Belle will be a valuable viewing experience for lovers of animation, despite the fact that some Disney fanatics might see it as being a wannabe of their fairy tale features.