“Here you can start all over again” – this is the central promise of the comprehensive social media environment “U”, which inspires five billion users. It is particularly attractive to teenagers, because this online world is more gripping than Second Life, more hyperactive than TikTok and has more opinions than Twitter.
But what makes “U” special: All users there get an avatar (called “AS”) that reinforces their physical and character traits. This makes it the ideal reverberation room for the lonely, lost and under-seen, like 17-year-old Suzu from rural Japan, who becomes an instant pop star online.
Be seen in the social media fairytale world
As Bell – and later ennobled by her many fans as Belle (French for the beautiful) – Suzu can live out what she does not succeed in reality: since the accidental death of her mother, she no longer dares to sing, once she was connected to music her. But what really makes Belle popular is her empathy, with which she makes everyone feel like they’re only there for them. Beyond the online world, the shy Suzu cannot play to her qualities in her peers’ hierarchical games of beauty, first love and social prestige. It’s good that her friend Hiroka is a computer ace and manages her appearances in “U”.
Hosoda, who was nominated for Best Animated Film at the Oscars with “Mirai” (2018), shoots with his fairytale social media world in the form of a gigantic city in which gravity is suspended and avatars fly through the air, the conditions: he presents the net as a place where the authentic self of the user can emerge and the social constraints of reality can be shaken off.
Cracks in Utopia
Of course, this utopia – as such one can easily interpret “U” – cracks very quickly. The excitement of the digital echo chambers with their shitstorms, which dominates Suzu’s increasingly lonely and gloomy world – one scene tells how she had to deal with the social media comments about her mother’s accident as a small child – naturally also prevails in the counterworld.
Plus, the avatars (character design by Jin Kim, who also worked on Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon) don’t just enhance the musical talent, of course – the gorgeous J-Pop soundtrack was made for “Belle” in Japan already excellent – but also the darker systems of the users. An avatar named Beast (in the subtitled original version he operates as a dragon) appears, who can convert his internal injuries into great strength and not only disrupts a concert by Belle, but also becomes the persecuted fascination of the users of “U”.
Hosoda transforms the attraction between Belle and the Beast into a clear and tongue-in-cheek homage to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast – although in Belle the fairy tale is online-only and the real world of the youngsters, as so often in anime, is a gruff one .
Online police gone astray
In addition, Beast is being pursued by a self-proclaimed group of superheroes, whose leader has a magical power: he can transform avatars into their real form, thus exposing and embarrassing the users. This is another way in which the supposed utopia shows its dark side: the self-appointed police are constantly in danger of becoming a thug who oppresses in the name of self-professed justice.
How lightly “Belle” tells of childhood and youth in the social media age as a gripping and visually impressive anime drama is impressive. The questionable social and commercial effects are also narrated in passing. The focus, however, is on the fascination of being able to try out one’s own feelings and behavior in different roles – even if with this film one understands better that this trying out has nothing utopian about it, but always has an effect on reality.