Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime

Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime reinforces the idea that a gold-covered turd, is at the end of the day, still a turd. This sorry excuse for a Beauty and the Beast inspired film falls short in many vital aspects, calling into question exactly "whose idea was this?" and "did anyone really read the script?".

Watching this film felt as though the director had cut out chunks from the storyline at random. Frequently, scenes would fail to adequately flesh out the narrative, resulting in an extreme lack of explanation for character motives or general functionalities of the world. Also present, was an excessive absence of continuity. In ... one scene, the main character, Suzu Naitou is running while putting on her device that allows her to connect to the world of "U". As it turns on, she continues running, despite the fact that the app redirects her literal EYESIGHT in order for her to live in this separate world.

The animation is fairly good, however, at times was very underwhelming. In particular, one scene later in the film ( a side character confession scene) has the female involved stand completely still for about a minute straight. It's as though she didn't disconnect from the app, but from life itself, reminding the viewer of the feeling of losing a teammate in an online game.

The music composition is lovely, but is juxtaposed against an utterly mind-numbing script. If the soundtrack of the movie is on Spotify, I would highly recommend checking that out instead of watching the movie.

Overall, this movie was a serious letdown, but was somewhat entertaining to laugh with friends who are just as confused about what is going at any given moment.

P.S. All you have to do to stop abusive parents is stand in between them and their children, say some heartfelt words, and then let them live together like normal. Bing Bang Boom Pow, problem solved.

I used to love Mamoru Hosoda films. Wolf Children and Summer Wars always made me cry like a baby, and while The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Boy and The Beast were less charming and therefore less enjoyable, their universal emotional triggers still managed to touch me, and their awe-inspiring imagery never ceased to amaze me. However, something in my brain must’ve changed between 2015 and 2018, because when I watched Mirai no Mirai, I felt nothing but cynicism, and upon rewatch, many of those earlier films which I just named came across as feeling tired, boring, and more than anything else, manipulative. ...

I will now detail the template structure of all his films and explain why they’re all fundamentally the same movie. Each one begins with the main character in a place of low self-esteem and general inaction. They’re suddenly forced into action when their lives become supercharged by fantastical elements: time travel, real-life video games, demihuman superpowers, straight-up isekai, etc. At some point, the stakes become emotionally overwhelming, and combined with some contrived tragedy, they find themselves at their lowest point. Just as all hope seems lost and the protagonist begins to retreat back into their shell, they overcome the odds with the power of love/family.

Not only does Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime follow this same pattern, it’s also quite possibly his worst film yet. I understand this format pretty much describes every G-rated family blockbuster on the planet and isn't inherently bad, but what's bad is being shallow and manipulative. When I recently rewatched Summer Wars and Wolf Children, I described the latter as being “a better Clannad movie than the Clannad movie,” and I came up with a name to label and analyze this strategy of filmmaking. I call it “Outsourcing Emotion.” Outsourcing Emotion is when the film depends on its ability to jog your personal memories in lieu of the emotional depth it doesn’t quite have itself.

Essentially, the writers realize their stories are too generic and forgettable to make the audience emotional, so they manufacture the most broadly appealing pathos they possibly can to make you lament your own life, yet feel as if it was the film and its flimsy characters which moved you. A little German kid saying, “Please protect our precious families.” The single-mother MC yelling to her son, “Live a good life!” The innocent four-year-old MC yelling to his baby sister, “I am Mirai’s big brother!” What casual viewer isn’t going to tear up at this shit?! I myself did, and I’m cynical as FUCK. This manipulation may seem touching, but it’s deep as a puddle and transparent as a window.

Unlike his other films, Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime managed to screw up the one thing Mamoru Hosoda has always gotten right, even back in the days of Digimon and One Piece. The visuals in this movie are at best, uninspired, and at worst, utterly hideous. His previous films boasted gorgeous animation and spectacular artwork to counterbalance the boilerplate character writing, but the only halfway-interesting visuals in this movie are directly ripped-off from Summer Wars and made horrendously ugly with shitty CG animation everywhere. U, the virtual reality shit, is just another clusterfuck of contrived technobabble nonsense just like OZ was OVER A DECADE AGO. To top it all off, despite some of the characters having Hosoda’s signature charm, the movie ends by fumbling through extremely delicate topics with borderline offensive forced sentimentality. Mamoru Hosoda needs to undergo a creative renaissance, and he needs to do it very soon. This is just Disney Princess shit.

Thank you for reading.

I'll get straight to the point: I don't like this movie. It's somewhat nice to look at and listen to at best, and downright painful to watch at worst.

Here's a spoiler warning as it's a bit hard for me to explain myself without pointing out specific examples.

Belle is a movie that follows Suzu and her experiences with the world of "U", a virtual environment where everyone can be the best versions of themselves, bringing out their true, hidden potential from within. As the name may somewhat suggest, another major part of the plot is its parallelism with another popular work, Beauty and the Beast.

To give ... credit where credit is due, the concept is not bad. Virtual worlds can be done very well and there is a lot that can be explored with this premise. Part of this is fully realized with the presentation of Belle - the virtual segments are animated in 3D in contrast to most of the real life scenes being in 2D. While the movie isn't anything super stunning all things considered, never would I say it looks bad. Good visuals aside, what really brings out the best in Belle is the sound. All the songs are genuinely quite good, and the best parts of the movie, in my opinion, are the performances of these songs.

Unfortunately, that's about where most the positives end for Belle.

Now, I'm not saying every movie or any anime in general needs to have a super deep story that tackles some real-world issue and makes you analyze every part of the plot. The story doesn't have to be some world-shattering, revolutionary masterpiece. That being said, I at least expect some sort of coherence. The best way I can describe Belle's progression and pacing is that things just happen. There's often no flow or connection between events, just a jumble of things that occur. Why is there suddenly a fight scene out of nowhere? Why did we cut to a scene of Suzu fending off against gossip of a crush?

This especially begins to affect the plot starting in the second half of the movie, where many plot points also just seem to pop up inexplicitly, and bring up more questions than it ever should've. What makes this even worse is that because of the sheer amount of subplots adding on, each one of the subplots are “resolved” in a way that feels very lackluster. The worst one of these, in my opinion, is when one of the subplots chose to take on abusive family members. Not only did this feel like a last minute plot point, it was portrayed in a way that made it end as abruptly as it began. Ironically enough, the movie even had one of the characters point out in the dialogue that the conflict wasn't something that could be easily solved, but no, the abuser backs down after a very, very intimidating stare, and we'll just accept that the issue is solved after some people find out about it despite the victim clearly expressing that people knew about it before. Cool.

Speaking of dialogue, some of the writing is downright laughable at times.

“I love you, Belle.”
“Thanks.”

Who wrote this? Have they even talked to another human being in the past decade? And no, it’s not me cherry picking a line out of context to make it seem bad. If anything, it makes LESS sense with context.

This so-so writing partially contributes to the fact that none of the prominent characters are really that likeable to me. In a world that’s functionally realistic besides the wacky virtual world which is essentially an MMORPG social media, most of the characters’ actions rarely makes them feel believable, and instead just makes them come off as silly and sometimes straight up annoying.

There's a lot of things that straight up don't make any sense from a worldbuilding perspective either. Why is the moderation so lax in U that people can literally doxx others with no repercussions? Why does a random user have the ability to carry out the role of a moderator despite not being one? How extensive even is U that a random user can have AI that bends to their will, as well as hide a castle in this virtual world they don’t own? How are people going into U at will anytime and anywhere despite U very evidently taking control of the user's senses from the second it begins?

I understand "rule of cool", and going for style and impact over logic; I can absolutely accept going for cooler stuff rather than the most logical conclusions for the sake of drama and action. Belle, however, just makes random scenes that don’t leave me in awe, but instead comes off as pure stupidity that leaves me in confusion. I’m also not expecting every writer who works on a science fiction film to have a complex understanding of AI and the virtual world, and to give an in-depth explanation on everything. However, when much of Belle’s narrative relies on these very obvious oversights that keep adding up, it makes it incredibly hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

Belle is a new take of Beauty and the Beast that tries to implement a poorly thought out virtual world in its setting, as well as tackle more plot points than it could feasibly do so. Save yourself the time and just listen to the soundtrack.

My friend told me before we watched this movie that it received a 14 minute standing ovation on its debut. After watching this terrorist attack on the soul of a movie, I'm only left asking, "How?" The worst movie I have ever seen, period. That includes the likes of 'The Room', 'Birdemic', and 'Battlefield Earth'.

The story is hollow, boring, does not earn its climax in the slightest, predictable, jarring, had countless plot holes, and lifted most if not all of its ideas from the director's previous works and 'Beauty and the Beast'. In almost every scene, I felt as if I had seen it done ... much better before. The themes were more undeveloped than an aborted fetus. I get what Hosoda was going for, but he missed the mark and impales the audience's patience with his arrow.

The 3D art-style was abhorrent. Hosoda's 'virtual reality' gets worse with every interpretation. To call it paper-thin would be a disservice to paper. Don't expect any world-building, instead endure through the vapidity of nothingness. I cannot comprehend how these apps work on a fundamental level: what is everyone doing? Do people sign into these apps and just blindly follow people around with no apparent purpose? Has Hosoda ever used the internet before? 'Our War Game!', nostalgia for Digimon aside, was relatively groundbreaking for the year 2000 but nothing special in hindsight, 'Summer Wars' was a disappointing interpretation but tolerable, and whatever this movie was was genuine eyeball torture. But on the contrary, I've always like Hosoda's traditional animation and it was at its best in this movie.

Regarding sound, the songs were cliche and could've been written by an edgy teenager. I suppose that makes sense considering our nervous wreck of a protagonist. I find it hard to believe that millions of people would pop-off to 'la la la la la'.

I have so little to say about the characters, if you could even refer to them as that. These soulless creations are flatter than an old, opened can of coke. Suzu and the Beast are poorly done sympathy bait; you would think I could relate to characters to which I've shared similar experiences, but the execution was almost insulting. Shinobu is a one-note protector archetype. Hiroki is a bootleg Izumi or Oz. The other characters aren't even worth wasting words on, especially the antagonist if you can even call him that.

I could go on and on and on, but I've already collapsed the worldwide salt economy. I have nothing positive to say except it's over. My explanation for the ovation was people being glad it was finally over.

Absolutely appalling.

Rushed with a horrible story throughout. You should most certainly NOT write a movie about a futuristic world if you're incredibly out of touch with reality and technology.

My first bone to pick: the Beast.

Why does everyone hate him so much? Because he beat a few people up? You expect to tell me there's 5 fucking billion people on the app and only one is famous for beating people up? Ridiculous. How did he even enter Belle's concert? Y'know, logically, there'd be shit programmed around the "stage" and you wouldn't be able to get near her. This is already implemented in every game, a few ... standout ones being ROBLOX and Animal Jam. Kid's games. So.

And, for some reason, people are obsessed with his identity? What did he do that makes him stand out? You're telling me out of 5 billion users, he's the only one who's throwing down with random people? Not to mention the internet police who try and stop him. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOOOOO WAY THAT THAT APP HAS 0 ADMINISTRATORS. Wouldn't he just get banned/kicked? And if he ruined the face of the U app's concert, he most definitely would've gotten IP banned.

The writer also quite obviously does not know doxxing exists. And the fact that no one would care about some random edge lord furry. And that no sane person get's obsessed with a stranger and stalks them and the stranger is 100% alright with it.

You can also get hurt in this universe? HOW? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU ACTUALLY GET HURT FROM A FUCKING GAME? TELL ELMO. EVEN NPC'S CAN GET HURT TOO. WHAT

The main character has no clue that she can. LOG OUT. of the game whenever she doesn't like the situation. She doesn't have any protection thing that blocks you from going over to certain areas in games and... I don't know, I think it's funny that literally no one has jumped her, especially since there's doxxing beams. No one thought to use them against her? 5 billion people?

The main character's plight of her mother being dead also doesn't make much sense. She died when she was, what, 5? At least a decade passed since her mom died and she's still hung up on it? Maybe if her mother died 3 years ago, it would've made sense, but she died when she was a little kid.

Anyways, the plot is a mess and so is the character. Without the good animation, this movie would be nothing. My advice? Don't watch this unless you're 10/have the brain of a 10 year old.

Let me preface this review by saying that I love Mamoru Hosoda. I've seen the vast majority of his directorial output from the silver screen to the small screen. He directs with a deft hand, making the absolute most of any budget he's given. The episodes he's directed in TV anime, imbued with his distinct sensibilities, are the high water mark of any series they're a part of.

But Belle is simply baffling.
Belle makes for the third time Hosoda has revisited the concept of an virtual world. A fact that worried me before the film was even released because I don't believe Hosoda has any real ... grasp of the internet. Oz, his previous depiction of a virtual space found in Summer Wars, felt like a fantasy setting rather than speculative fiction. But oh how I miss Oz when I compare it to Belle's world of U. Hosoda, and by extension the audience, has such a poor grasp of the inner workings and mechanics of U that any narrative he places within it crumbles.

Belle is about a introverted girl named Suzu (the Japanese word for bell) who finds popularity as her online persona named Belle in the virtual world of U due to her amazing singing, something she is too afraid to do in the real world. Except not really because that plot line is speed through in a montage. The plot is actually a Beauty and the Beast story. Except for when it isn't, which is most of the time. The abruptness of these plot points and their on again off again nature is fast enough to make anyone's head spin.

Hosoda's films have not been the same since he and his long time script writer Satoko Okudera parted ways. Okudera worked on what I consider Hosoda's best films, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children. Even Summer Wars (my least favourite Hosoda film until Belle) is a perfectly pleasant watch, thanks in part to her no doubt.

Hosoda has been the sole script writer on his films since Boy and the Beast. And while that was still a standout effort, it marked a shift in the writing style of his works. Hosoda has felt unfiltered ever since, adding anything and everything to his works. His scripts becoming increasingly bloated and convoluted.

Even Hosoda's directing gets muddled in Belle, with half the film being in CGI to portray the virtual world of U. These portions of the movie were outsourced to Cartoon Saloon, best known for their gorgeous hand drawn films about Irish folklore. So it's odd to see them commissioned to work on CGI. That's not to say they did a bad job though. The CG animation is expressive but most of the character designs are overblown and the world they inhabit feels paper thin. Nothing about the virtual world of U makes any sense and most prominent glimpse into this world we ever get is a sea of avatars placed in a large void with indistinct buildings in the far off distance.

This sever lack of world building leaves me wondering how U works on even a fundamental level. Placing any story in this setting invites confusion at every turn, creating an incoherent mess with logic gaps everywhere.

There are still tender, well executed moments found in Belle but they're few and far between, found almost exclusively in its hand drawn segments. Honestly, if the film focused on Suzu finding confidence as her online persona which in turn gave her the courage to mend the fractured relationships in her life, that would've been enough.

Instead, Belle is less than the sum its parts and stumbles at every opportunity. The competing plot lines battle for screen time, leaving the narrative under-baked. The CG world of U doesn't leave room for Hosoda to stretch his usual directorial muscles. The cast is overloaded, forcing characters, their development and relationships to be sidelined.

In the end, Belle has too many ideas and lacks the ability to implement them into a cohesive whole.

I went out of my way to make an account on this website just to write about how bad this movie is. The only redeeming qualities of the movie were the visuals and OST. However, those alone weren't enough to carry the horrible character development, continuity errors, world building, and lack of exposition.

There were too many plot devices that served little to no purpose and conflicts that never got a satisfying resolution. Additionally the romance aspect of the movie was complete garbage. The movie teases you with some semblance of romance here and there but never grants a conclusion. You can't just throw something ... like that into a movie and have it go nowhere.

This movie made me very angry for some reason. I just don't understand how anyone could call something so void of content sufficient for a movie.

In the first half of the movie, it was great, but then it lost me and things started making less and less sense by the end, which left me outright confused and at a loss for words. I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed, so disappointed that I'm making this "review". The writing for this was just bad, there's no other way to really describe it. It's like the director/writer combined all his movies into one at the end and created this jumbled or convoluted mess. This is my first time seeing a story devolve like it did. It was like I was watching a ... completely different movie by the second half of the movie. At first, I didn't even realize this was directed/written by the same person as Bakemono no Ko, Ookami Kodomo, Summer Wars, Digimon Adventure Movie, etc. Those movies are probably one of my favorite anime movies and so naturally, I "should" like this movie, yet I don't. So, it definitely was not a matter of expectations as I had none. If you decide to watch this movie, have the lowest possible expectations for some enjoyment.

Apparently this film won an award and a standing ovation for 15 minutes but after watching it with a group of friends on discord, I realized it was severely overhyped. The plot moves too fast with very poor world building. Remember the old saying, "Show don't tell"? This film tells a LOT with a shit ton of exposition dump. It was to the point I was glad the discord stream was lagging a bit so I could take some time to understand what was going on instead of the characters talking 10 words a second on wtf was happening behind the scenes. Also, for a ... film praised on its visuals, some of the CG was really awful. The metaverse police guys with the exception of a few leaders like Budget All-Might have the same character models that are poorly animated in the fight scenes. The film also laughably uses still frames frequently with a shit ton of dialogue again and again so they can save money for the big musical scenes I suppose. The story itself is a strange stew of half-fleshed out ideas on identity, technology, music, death, and abuse. At several points, everyone watching the film together with me was confused about the plot progression, character development, and the overall message of this film. For instance (spoiler warning ---------------------->) after Belle is revealed to be Suzu, she finds her voice again and sings. You would think the movie is trying to say "Be your authentic self" but Suzu transforms back to Belle mid-song so I guess it's saying "You can pretend to be something you're not if you're authentic about it?". I've watched the director's other films such as Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and I can say for certainty that for all the hype Belle received, it was the worst anime film I've seen in a long time.

Mamoru Hosoda can't write. The Boy and the Beast, Mirai and now Belle lack a significant amount of charm compared to his older works. The thing these feature films all have in common is they're the only ones written by Hosoda himself. Belle, in particular, showcases Hosoda's immensely bad habits as a writer more clearly than any of its predecessors.

The story of Belle is heavily inspired by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 version of 'Beauty and the Beast' with even the main characters sharing the same pseudonym. However compared to Disney's animated adaptation of the same tale, this feels like a jarring attempt to reinvent ... the wheel, devoid of any of the original's charm. Beauty and the Beast is a story that does have interesting themes; while it isn't subtle about them in the slightest and they're not particularly profound by today's standards they certainly do exist. However, the premise of finding empathy and love with another, even when your appearance is unsightly, loses a large amount of its emotional impact when the appearance is a virtual avatar CHOSEN by the player. Especially when the "beast" is revealed to, in fact, be some anime-haired righteous cool-guy in the real world. It astounds me that, 266 years after its publication, Hosoda has managed to somehow retell this story with less depth and complexity than the original.

The writing itself feels incredibly cliché and, quite often, contrived. I found myself on an embarassing number of occasions being able to predict the outcome of a scene before it had transpired. The twists, turns and poor attempts at dialogue feel drearily similar to fictional writings I wrote for school assessments as a child. There's one scene in particular where the main character is on a train that felt ripped from an adolescent fan-fiction blog.

Studio Chizu, the studio that has been in charge of every Hosoda film since Wolf Children, feel incredibly out of their depth here trying to bring the three-dimensional world of 'U' to life. The 3D visuals felt very sub-par; something that I may not have felt five years ago when there were no stellar examples of 3D animation within the anime industry. Studio Orange have since brought us Houseki no Kuni & Beastars, both of which look stunning compared to Belle despite it being a high-budgeted feature film. The backgrounds feel like the same asset copy and pasted dozens of times until some blocky mega-structure comes together and every asset, aside from the main two character models, feel utterly forgettable. Not only did it feel incredibly dated, certain scenes felt downright offensive; such as the worst-looking CGI fire I can recall in the last decade. The scenes that take place in the real-world look fine. Not incredible, by any means, but certainly not bad. However, it's hard to be kind to the film's style as a whole when Chizu's usual animation style is only used for 50% of runtime.

You'll notice I did not give this film a 1/10, this means it clearly had some saving graces I enjoyed. For a start, the sound is quite nice. Again, not incredible (though I admit this can be subjective), but certainly enjoyable. Being a movie about singing, it had some nice original songs that were a delight to listen to; although I absolutely despised the method in which it was used to explore the motif of overcoming trauma. There are also certain scenes that I found quite charming. The confession scene between two side characters was superbly directed and had me genuinely laughing out loud in the cinema. While the confession itself had zero emotional weight, largely due to every side character having the depth of a puddle, the way it was presented was whole-heartedly charming.

In conclusion, I hope Hosoda goes back to hiring more talented writers than himself to work on his projects. My favourite work of his, to this day, is the One Piece film Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island released in 2005. It feels like he's only become less creatively inspired as he's grown older and turned into a complete hack. A sad comparison compared to someone like Hayao Miyazaki who continues to impress me, with The Wind Rises being one of my favourite works of his to date. Belle lacks any form of subtlety in its storytelling, any originality in its writing, any masterful creativity in its visuals and any depth to its characters, with only a few subjective saving-graces to save its score from a 1/10.

This is actually my first MAL review, I'd like to write more and hopefully get better at making them more succinct. So if you've read this far, thank you.

Mediocre movie. Even from the beginning I was skeptical of how it would turn out. I was left with too many unanswered questions, and there were still unresolved conflicts of the story. The storyline kept going one way then another and it just feels unrealistic. Spoiler alert: Some things I questioned were U, the reality you can travel to; the storyline of Beast, and the main characters’ friends and family.

I was in some disbelief that U would really have that many users, especially users who genuinely cared about the drama. Basically, the world building/setting definitely could have been better developed. Beast’s storyline was also ... questionable. I did not understand why Suzu and her friend along with the entirety of the U users cared that much about Beast. In the end, why would Suzu drive all the way to Tokyo for two guys she met on the internet? How could the boy also say he loved her after just meeting, and Suzu didn’t question that at all?

As I mentioned, there were unanswered questions. I was expecting some sort of big reveal (yes, there was to the users of U, but what about Suzu’s close friends and family?) but it seems that Belle’s true identity was brushed off? Just before her friends get involved, they say “Who could Belle be?? Hey, you look really similar to her lol, you sure you guys aren’t related?” Then minutes after, Suzu is shown to be Belle yet nobody is stunned? How could the choir ladies and Shinobu also know that she was Belle, especially after he just brought it up out of nowhere?

You’re also lead to believe that Suzu and Shinobu would end up being a pair and have feelings for each other, yet in the end that anticipation was for nothing. I’m going to be blunt: perhaps I would have liked it more if it was simply a slice of life story without the technology and U aspect. Imagining Suzu as just a faceless singer on YouTube or something and the storyline progressing for her to find her confidence as well as seeing the characters’ daily life already seems more enjoyable, at least for me personally.

TL;DR: too much going on in the storyline where new things keep getting added, poorly developed setting/world building, plot holes/ lots of asking “how did they know that major secret and nobody gives a second thought?”

Great Music and good animation, Would definitely re-listen to many songs from the Movie Soundtrack

Though the story flows poorly, And the obvious solution to the problem presented really breaks the whole premise, Makes it seems like the director or writer doesn't really understand how the internet works.

In simple terms a good story would present a problem and have the characters go about finding and executing a solution, The problem presented in this movie had such an obvious solution that it breaks all logic to do it the way the MC decided to, Like they even go on to make a stupid excuse why the ... obvious solution doesn't work,
At the end the solution chosen wasn't even a solution, Like nothing happened we just have to assume that the problem has been resolved off-screen.

The characters are bland and uninspiring, Other anime use cookie-cutters to create a base to characters this makes it easy for viewers to understand or assume what kind of person the character may be, The main characters have no actual objective. One of the Support characters has a stronger set objective than the MC,

Would not really recommend the watch, unless you really had the spare time to enjoy the music, Otherwise just listen to the movie soundtrack. skip the movie

I like Mamoru Hosoda. His films have always been a treat to interact with and watch. Regardless of whatever controversial claims he made about the anime industry before his movie release, I was still extremely excited to see Belle and thought the premise sounded foppish yet interesting at the same time. This was actually the first anime movie that I have gone to see at the movie theatre right at its release in American theatres. After I left theatre though, I can easily say that this is Hosoda's worse film he's released which is really disappointing. I shall go over the positives and negatives I ... saw and then wrap this review up with my final scores. Also, this is my first review so any feedback will be much appreciated.

Positives: First off, I would like to speak on the art and animation from the movie. This is easily my favorite-looking Hosoda film. The green landscape where Suzu lives is a joy to look at, and all the characters offer a lot of emotion in their animation and the colors Hosoda uses to blend all his scenes together make this film look amazing. The virtual world known as "U" is very vibrant and the viewer really gets the impression that the world is full of life and is busy through its art. The 3-D animation is also serviceable. Sometimes I felt that Belle's animations were quite lackluster and didn't quite fit the scene at hand. Two scenes were the opening where Belle was singing on the whale and her arms moments were very lethargic and didn't match the passion of the song. The second scene I am speaking on is when Belle is getting interrogated by one of the Justice members, she is sitting in a chair with an upset expression during their whole exchange. This is one time where a character's facial emotions don't react to what is being said and I would've loved to see Belle be more expressive in this scene besides having the same face for almost a minute while important information is being given. Still, the animation and art are top-notch in this movie are well worth my praise.

Another part of the movie that I will give huge praise for is the music/sound. Each song Belle sings is filled with passion and gives a lot of meaning behind the scene they are attached to. This goes for both the English and Japanese versions. The lyrics beat, and vocals are all a treat and were the first thing I went back to after watching the movie. If you are not going to see the movie, I would still highly recommend listening to the soundtrack because it is really worth your time. Speaking of the English version, I also saw this movie with an English dub. Now I will state right now that I do not like English dubs and try to avoid them whenever possible because the voice acting is important to me. However, the theatre I went to see it at only had English dubs when I pre-ordered the tickets so I had to compromise. I can say now though, that Belle has a fairly respectable English dub, dare I even say that it was good. Each voice fit the character they played and the emotion was conveyed well (except for Shinobu who sounded bored for the entire movie). Those were feelings toward the music/sound, easily my favorite part of the movie.

For my last part of the positives, I believe this may be somewhat taken as hot takes. I actually liked Suzu's character throughout the film. I believe that her journey from a self-proclaimed nobody to somebody and her getting over her mother's death was the best story/character-focused part of the film. There are other aspects of her character that aren't well developed and hold her back from being a top anime film character, but that's for the negatives. Finally, here are some final things that I thoroughly enjoyed in the film and I'll quickly go over them. The representation of the internet is well-done throughout the whole movie. I like how as soon as Belle sings her first song, there is a mix of both positives and negatives comments about her and the viewer gets to see them front and center. This happens throughout the entire movie and it really adds some commentary on both the positives and negatives of the internet and its effects on people behind the screen. I like the first scene where we get introduced to each central character and how it presents them, even though you don't learn anything else from them in the whole movie (in other words they are one-dimensional static characters besides Suzu somewhat). I liked trying to figure out who the beast was. I like how the film was trying to misguide viewers even though people who know about writing like me would see how Hosoda was intentionally trying to mislead the viewer; it was still an exciting part of the film though. I also love the interaction between Ruka and Shinjirou when they learn that they both like each other. It was very charming and wasn't overplayed. I also love Ruka throughout the entire movie, she was really a cute character. The climax of the movie was really powerful to me as well. Like any other Hosoda film, the powerful moments really have an impact and Belle is no different. The beginning scene of watching Suzu and her mom bond was detailed and gave us a lot of information on why Suzu is how she is in the present. Watching Suzu unveil herself and have the confidence and sing proudly again to the people of "U" was really emotional and a great moment for Suzu and the movie. This was easily my favorite scene of the entire movie and while it didn't make up for its flaws, I'm glad it had a scene like this that I really enjoyed. So, I think that's it for the positives, now let's move on to the negatives.

Negatives: Let's go over the worst part of the film, the story. Oh boy, where do I even start? Well, first off, the pacing is really a mixed bag. Some scenes, like the two I used at the end of my positives, are well-paced, but a lot of scenes are either too fast or too slow. For example, when Belle becomes a singing sensation in a matter of minutes and it is not done well at all. As soon as Belle enters the world of "U", she starts singing for no real reason. Citizens listen to her and have mixed opinions, then we learn that Suzu's friend Hiroka planned this all along. Like what?? Before this point though, the film was going really well. To put it shortly, there are plotholes, relationships and scenes are undeveloped, and a lot of the scenes are put together weirdly. Like it's not coherent and the movie feels like some scenes are jumbled together. The relationship between Belle and the Beast is really underdeveloped and therefore while the dancing scene is nice to look at, it has no emotional weight because it feels like two strangers dancing instead of a heartfelt dance in the original Beaty and the Beast because the relationship is actually developed in the original. Even the little servants of the Beast are so unimportant in this film while in the original they were really charming. I'm not saying that Belle has to follow the original though, but they put these things into the movie so I will critique them. The second mightily underdeveloped relationship in the film is Kei (I think that's his name lol) and how he was the beast. I would like to give myself props by saying he was one of my options for who the beast was and my reasoning was just because she looked mad and had hair covering one of his eyes lmao. Anyway, his perspective of family abuse while a good idea was not developed and built up to, so it all feels quite bland, to be honest. It obviously feels terrible because no one likes family abuse, but it could've been a really emotional part of the film if it was handled carefully. There is a lot more that I can pick out from this film and critique, but I'm sure that you probably understand how I feel. The worst part to me is that there are really good ideas here and it could've been something amazing, but the ideas weren't really handled with care. I can't help but think that the pandemic interrupted the progression of making this movie. Remember how earlier in my review I said that all characters are one-dimensional? Yeah, that stands pretty strong. Each character can be described in two words and I'm not exaggerating at all. Now let's talk about my issues with Suzu as the main character. Before, I said I liked her and said she wasn't a terrible main character and that I actually liked aspects of her and what she brought to the story. However, with the convoluted script, there are some aspects of her that I have to call out. One is her relationship with her father. We get the idea very early on that it is very awkward between her and her father because of her mother's death. I have to say I think it's a little overplayed, but I can't say for sure. This was a part of her character that I was excited to see develop, but it gets very little screen-time compared to the rest of the events. While it is nice to see Suzu accept her father's dinner request at the end, it just isn't as impactful as it should be. Hosoda also has to try and force the idea that Suzu is a nobody, he doesn't show this to us naturally. This is my main issue really, it is shown that Suzu isn't very confident and is still living through the pain of her mother's death, but Hosoda has to tell us and sell the idea that Suzu is a nobody instead of showing us. Again, it is a mixed bag. That really is through all the negatives I have.

Final Thoughts: The negatives really fall heavily on the important parts of a movie and that's why he really holds this film from being extraordinary. I think this showed us the flaws Hosoda has though. Now, I know a lot of people are turned off from Hosoda and aren't being fans of him anymore, but I can't do the same. Hosoda has shown that he is a talented director and that he has the potential to make a classic. If he can fix up these flaws and really think about what he wants to do going forward, I think he will succeed. Regardless, I will still look forward to his next movie and even though I had a lot of negatives, I still liked the movie a little. Would I rewatch it? I mean if it came out on a subscription service I own, then I might rewatch it to see what I missed. Belle was a bad movie to me and one of Hosoda's worst in his filmography. There are things to like in Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, but it is weighed down by the aforementioned negatives.

Final Scores:
Story: 3
Art: 7
Sound: 8
Character: 3
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 4

I was crying during the credits of Belle because I was laughing so hard.

A review of this movie could go on for a long time because there is so much to unpack, but seeing that Mamoru Hosoda seemingly has no interest in unpacking anything that he presented to the audience I don't feel compelled to actually dive into things.

Nothing in this film happens for any reason. There is no reason for the Beauty and the Beast "influence". There is no reason for the overly serious turn in the final scenes. There is no reason for half of the characters and no reason given why ... anyone would throw themselves into the virtual reality world presented in the movie.

In The Matrix the reason for the virtual world was that humanity was blindly subjected to The Matrix. In a modern work about the social internet, Hank Green's Carl Saga, a virtual reality created by the Altus company essentially allows the user to participate in any human experience, either to learn and develop a skill or to merely take part in something from an expert's perspective that you would never be able to experience otherwise.

In Ryū to Sobakasu no Hime 5 billion users log on to U to .... go to concerts put on by V-Tubers? Or float through a vaguely futuristic fake city? A fighting ring is briefly mentioned for plot reasons before being thrown away and never seen or discussed again. But aside from that the audience is given no explanation for the draw to this virtual reality.

Something else that separates other works about VR and the social internet from Belle is that these other works have things to say. There are subtextual reasons for this setting, often to warn of the dangers of throwing oneself into a virtual life or to give cogent analysis of our current media habits and treatment of each other on the social internet. That is not to say that this subtext is something that has to be dug for but the writers of these works have given the virtual realities reasons to exist beyond mere set dressing. Mamoru Hosoda has not done this in Belle.

There is an "antagonist" in this movie. I do not know why this character has any motivation for hunting down the beast analogue other than to be an attempt at a Gaston figure? But through the entire length of the film it would seem that the worst thing the Dragon did was ... win a few legal fights and be ugly? Anyway this Gaston is named Justin, he has a metal beard jawline, and has a gun that can and WILL dox you. Hundreds of corporations sponsor Justin to use his gun to dox people.

I am forced to assume Hosoda thinks that such a device would be bad, as it is in the hands of the closest thing to a foil this movie has (until the last 10 minutes but at least Justin has a name), but the entire world that Hosoda has created seems to be very much on board with this gun existing and being in the hands of this one user of this game/website/virtual reality experience who is explicitly not one of the creators of this app/social media feed/virtual concert hall. And therein lies the crux of my issue with Belle. It doesn't say anything. Nothing exists for any reason other than to be set dressing. It has no interest in discussing how this may be an analogue for current social media habits. It has nothing to say about grief or abuse but it would very much like you to think that it has incredibly complex thoughts on all of this.

Sometimes I wish I was a kid, enjoy endless shiny surprises and never think to ask, how these things are even put together. Just enjoyment is sometimes beneficial to us, however people like me can't really get the kid side of themselves to work again, then enjoying stories like this, is going to be very hard.

When the movie played I took my phone, lay on the couch and started checking my socials till the anime begins. It did not take more than 5 minutes for Belle to captivate me in such way that I put my phone aside, grabbed my glasses and sat up right ... with four eyes to watch this show.

I am very glad to inform you guys that the opening to Belle is by far one of the best openings I have ever seen in an animated movie. With no mercy it will drop you into this vast world with zero explanation, gives you a rhythm that will pull your soul into it self. This is a grand opening for anything, an start like this will definitely follow with great mid and late grounds as well. Right?

You lost me half way there! Belle will give you this fascinating world right away, and that is it? Yes, it has great music, great voice acting, great animation, but are these the main parts of the story? When you are making an story in a fantasy, you have so much ground to work on since it is not real and you can do any adjustments to it, however it needs to follow some kind of criteria for it to be understood by the viewer. building a story on a world that has no rules or meaning to it will just confuse the viewer more and more and more as you go on with the story. Belle gave us an amazing world, but with no explanation and kept building its story on that, therefor not only the world made no sense, but the story and the characters also did not make any sense.

When watching shows like this I always wish I was a kid again, enjoying the environment without thinking whether it makes any sense or not. Then I would not have been bored half way through. I would have watched the characters crying, laughing, fighting and I would have felt the same, instead of cringing all the time.

If you don't mind a world about a game that has no explanation on the work process of the game, How it was made? Where it was made? Who made it? Why everyone plays it? What do you even do it the game? Then this movie is amazing for you! It will captivate you with its great music, visuals, and world I guess. over all I don't recommend it.

Jul 6, 2019 was the last time I logged on to MAL. More than two years later, I am compelled to awake from my slumber to warn all those who dare watch this movie. Do not watch it. No amount of expletives I throw at the movie will express how shocked I am by the absolute incompetency of the people who directed and wrote this movie. The only saving grace in the movie was the art and music, which were probably the best I have ever seen from a movie. However, this was far from enough to save the abysmal dogshit writing. Mark me completely ... surprised when I found that people were raving about the movie on MAL (a 7.8 rating???) and film critics were praising the movie all over. I hope to be one of the few voices of reason that highlight just how abysmal the movie actually is.

Art 10/10.
The art is really really well done. The 3d animation is probably one of the best I have seen out of other anime movies (although the standard is not high). It looks quite natural, and the lighting and surface textures are not at all unnerving. There were many times were the art style completely changed, however, the animation team was able to nail all of them perfectly.

Music 9-10/10.
The music was a banger, fits really well for the movie. In some aspects, the movie was trying to emulate those disney musicals. I must concede that the music is much better than what I would hear in those Disney musicals. I was bopping my head almost whenever the main character was singing. All in all, if the music sections of the movie were extracted and turned into music videos, I would have been completely blown away by them.

Story, character 1/10
Alas, all this good stuff was dragged to Tartarus by the shitty story. The counterpoint between art/music and story is extremely jarring, which makes the story even worse than it already is. The writing literally defiles all the good work that the animation and music team put into production. First the pacing. The movie was a literal freight train at the start, just cramming random plot points into the audience. Since there were multiple story-lines, there were also multiple movie climaxes in the movie. A grand audition (which ends with a Nausicaa-esque golden thing). A final showdown with an abusive parent. A half-baked (no, rotten) love story. The movie shifts from slice of life, to tv-show esque comedy, to sci-fi, to fighting, to just everything. This is not a good thing, because it just makes the movie a garbled mess. There are some moments at the start where I became excited for the slice of life, country life montage depictions (which were really nicely done). The art direction seemed on point. However, like every coherent idea and compelling part of the movie, it is immediately wiped blank from the writing team's mind. The movie attempts to shift between a virtual world and real world, but fails insanely hard at it. To illustrate, what the virtual world avatar did in the virtual world was literally different from what the real world character was doing in real time. Tf? So the virtual avatar could be singing, while the main character is scrolling through the internet, yet somehow they share a consciousness?? The stupid logic of the movie was damn annoying.

This should have been a sign to me right away that the movie was going to be shit. If cinema sins did a video on this, they would get copyright striked because they would literally broadcast the movie in its entirety. The story must be the worst I have even seen out of a movie, book, or comic. What the actual fuck. Characters have 0 development and are almost all forgettable. This is due in part to the clusterfuck amount of characters, and just the general unlikeability of the characters. You might have read reviews of other movies that talk about not being able to sympathise with the characters. This movie is that, but to a whole other level. At the end, you will hope that almost all the characters go to hell for their shitty choices. The main character is like a bootleg mary sue (I don't know how that even possible), except they run away at the sight of any challenge, and fucking cries all the time. Whenever they cry, I physically cringed in my seat, and wanted to go through the screen and kick some sense into them. Furthermore, the story had more plot holes than plot. Every decision made by the writers were unsatisfied and unjustified. Literally no questions were answered. To highlight this, the main character randomly wants to find out the identity of another person in the virtual world. This is literally a big part of the plot. There many other moments that happen in the story, "just cause". It will literally take me an undergraduate thesis worth of writing to point out all the movie's mistakes. It's like the writers were trying to emulate a super shitty bootleg kafka, or trying to recreate a super shitty paprika (the movie). There is no meaning behind anything, and no stakes in the story. All attempts at creating conflict is super artificial and falls flat. The whole movie is just a vacuous piece of shit. The 3/10 reviewer BigOat put it well. A gold covered turd is still a turd.

Now, the crux of this review. Should you watch this movie? I personally implore you to not watch this movie if you value plot coherency and logic; actually reasoned and justified writing decisions; and have at least some taste in entertainment media. This movie puts you through all 9 circles of hell and back again. Overall, this movie is a 1/10. Pathetic, as MAL puts it. If you somehow still decide to watch this movie, know that you will come out spiteful and vengeful - perplexed at how someone could fail so horribly at writing a basic story.

Belle takes place in a dystopian world where the technology is somehow allowed to transfer YOU to a SAO version of Facebook called "U", THROUGH AUDIO, it also somehow allows you to feel pain and fight, some people can dox you if they feel like it because "banning" people is never mentioned or even possible and so on and on.
The whole movie revolves around the "U World" and it's technology but it seems that the writer doesn't know have ANY knowledge about how technology works in the first place, some concepts problems go far beyond fantasy and are rooted more towards COMMON SENSE, it's like ... the writer just went for it because it was "Interesting" or something, unfortunately it doesn't always work like that.
And that's only the MAJOR concern, there are also other problems that together form this mess of a movie that aspires to be like "the beauty and the beast" but at the same time tries to go for popular trends while also not knowing some basic fundamentals of said trends while having very bland character on screen.
Overall didn't expect much from this movie and the beginning was a little bit generic but it went off rails really fast, overall the only saving grace about this movie is everything but the writing, which is pretty much the most important part of a movie with a theme like this. PLEASE DON'T WATCH IT, some generic isekais are more consistent than this movie and that's saying something.

This is going to be my first review on this site because of how painful of an experience this movie was.

It'd like to start by saying that the movie has MASSIVE good points but when you compare them to the bad ones, they are definitely x10 times smaller.

The visuals are a mix of CG and cells which both are very high quality. The work done on the CG side of things are a mix of good animation set in a terribly built world. The world design is so plain at times and lacks a clear concept explaining how the "virtual world functions". One might be ... surprised how it's not a chaotic anarchy yet despite the movie attempting to show us it has regulations moderated by Discord mod-like characters who were granted the power to "unveil" someone aka doxxing their real identity. It sure is bad writing but I certainly got a good laugh at it unlike what truly makes this a "painful experience" to me.

[MINOR SPOILERS ALERT]
I found the singing in this movie to be GODLIKE and really sends you the shivers every time which made this so painful to watch seeing such an outstanding performance having to lump with this massive pile of garbage romance story writing. I can't even criticize it since I'm still in confusion as to how the MC falls in love with the beast?? The characters behave likeable in the real world they sure do, but it's like when they get to the virtual world, they all become someone else, not dislikeable but sure dumb as hell.

Honestly, I can't go on with this review since it's really something that was hard to go through. Going 50 minutes in was torturous to me but the fear of dropping after spending that much time already and the singing is what kept me going.

i was going to just complain ad nauseum about the paper-thin characters, cringe-worthy dialogue, eye-roll inducing teenage melodrama, absolutely atrocious pacing, and uncanny valley-esque interpretation of internet culture that gets the macro-concepts mostly right but completely fumbles the details – culminating in a clumsy trainwreck of a film – but most of those things are present in most anime films (at least those involving high schoolers), and i'm usually able to (mostly) get past them, especially in the director's past works which i genuinely enjoyed. instead, i'll cut to the chase and say that this movie left me in a delirious state, wondering if the ... problem was with me, if i had changed, if the past decade of my weebdom had finally reached an end and maybe i just no longer cared for the medium.

turns out that's not true and this film just blows.

-a bit of spoiler i guess

3/10. This is the first time i write a review. Just finished the movie and went straight here to rant about it. First of all, i love mamoru hosoda’s work. But this particular movie just aint it.

Let’s get the good thing first. Best 3d animation I’ve seen in my life, best visuals, really good music.

Now for the meat. Story is shit. What i get out of this movie is “let’s sing the abuse and trauma out”. Almost like making fun of abusive household situation. I said this from a person who got through all of that stuff. And seeing this ... movie makes my blood boils a bit. It feels like i got slapped with a shovel in the face and got spit on in the mouth.

Now i know and do realize this is a damn anime. Im not a neckbeard who shit on anime that’s unrealistic. And i don’t usually give a show a bad rating. But come on, we talking about heavy topics here. At least It would be fine if the movie explores other part of the world instead of going for this “we (literally suddenly) need to find this beast who actually an abused kid and save him”. Like focus on the story of the main character or something. Mc’s trauma just went poof out of the window.

Now, if you enjoy it that’s great. I can see why people would like this movie. If you like disney movies you’ll definitely love this one. I just personally can’t stand the writing.