Amazon Prime Video held one this week Surprise for anime fans ready. Without having been previously announced in the monthly highlights, the sci-fi fantasy film Belle by director Mamoru Hosoda (The Boy and the Beast, Mirai) suddenly went online on January 20th.
The anime highlight of 2021 combines one of Beauty and the Beast inspired story with a virtual world. Hosoda explored a similar online space in his VR family drama Summer Wars in 2009.
Sci-Fi fantasy Belle on Amazon Prime: A cyberspace fairy tale for the social media age
Belle is the name of the online identity of Suzu (Kaho Nakamura), a shy 17-year-old student who lives in the country in the real world and has hardly any friends. In the virtual reality of the popular platform U, however, she becomes a superstar overnight as singer Belle. When their concert is interrupted by a legendary beast (Takeru Sato) who makes the online world unsafe as a dangerous fighter, a hunt begins that also extends to reality and the person behind the monstrous avatar. A great cyber adventure begins.
As in Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda not only sees the dangers of technology, but also the people behind it and, as in The Boy and the Beast, shows a heart for monsters and their motivation. This is what the 4-star review from our sister site Filmstarts says:
Mamoru Hosoda embeds his homage to the Disney animated classic in an imaginative world of avatars in which everyone can reinvent and live out themselves. At the same time, Belle also shows the pitfalls of VR and social media environments and ultimately stands up for the power of human community.Anime from the Hosoda brand: Lots of fantasy, lots of family
The visually stunning animation of the cyberspace adventure Belle was created in Studio Chizuwhich was launched in 2011 by Mamoru Hosoda and his co-founder Yuichiro Saito. The first film made under this roof was the moving anime family film Ame & Yuki – The Wolf Children about a human mother and her half-animal offspring. The topic of family was again at the forefront in his time travel film Mirai.
The next project of the anime director, who is often referred to as the “next Miyazaki” together with Makoto Shinkai (Your Name.), bears the title Scarlet and is supposed to revolve around a princess who moves beyond space and time.
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