And next on The Masked Singer, everybody please welcome Belle to the stage! I jest, but still, it's hard not to draw comparisons between the two. Belle is the latest cinematic offering from Mamoru Hosoda, who brought us epic animated yarns such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Mirai and The Boy and the Beast.
Belle centres around mopey young teenager Suzu. Suzu is still grieving over the not-so-recent tragic loss of her mother, growing more distant by the day with her father, withers at school around her more vibrant and confident peers and, worst of all for this once passionate musician, Suzu has lost her ability to sing.
Things seem beyond all hope for listless Suzu until she one day stumbles upon a fully immersive social media site "U". U is a vast, vast virtual reality world where users have new personas created for them digitally based on their own personal biometrics.
In real life, Suzu is a gawky, be-freckled wallflower with no voice. In U, and under the careful career managment of her hilarious best friend Hiroka, she is transformed into the stunningly beautiful vocaloid Belle. (Bell being the English translation of her name). Gaining international mass media attention and fame as virtual singer Belle, the world becomes obsessed with discovering her true identitiy.
However, it's not only the beautiful songstress that the denizens of U are dying to unmask. Who is this ferocious Dragon character going around causing a terrible ruckus and running amok!? Is he as vicious as he seems, or will music ultimately soothe the savage beast...?
As the lines between IRL and the digital world disintegrate, it's time for Suzu to leave the past behind and take firm charge of her future.
Belle is a blend of traditional fairytale, fantasy and vey grim reality. Suzu's rural home town is one of the most lush and verdant animated depictions of Japan I've ever seen, with painstaking day-to-day homelife details.
I have a few issues with the world of U. The physics and mechanics of the virtual world aren't clearly explained, Suzu just appears to enter through her mobile phone and ear-pods, nothing more, which raises a lot of questions about whether she's slumped in the middle of the road drooling while her brain is transported to the fantastic other world!?
The blending of worlds and the themes of loss and triumph are nothing new for Mamoru Hosoda, but there's plenty of highs and lows, feelz and humour in Belle to keep audiences entertained and engaged. The visuals are spectacular, the plot is meaty and well paced and the sound track is exquisite.
Despite all these boxes being ticked, this still isn't the greatest movie of Hosoda's and feels like an elevated version of Summer Wars that's more style than substance. I'd give Belle a 7/10, mainly for the giant sonic whale that floats through U acting as Belle's personal stage. He is a breathtakingly majestic good boy.
Don't just take my word for this though! I saw Belle as a preview at The Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin with thanks to the Japanese Film Festival Ireland but it's now readily available for all nerds across Irish cinemas.
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