BELLE is a movie that follows a 17-year-old Suzu Naito, who lost her
mother at a young age in an incident. As a result, the already modest shy
teen has found it difficult to relate to others and has become withdrawn,
having lost her ability to sing in front of others.
Everything changed when Suzu reluctantly joins the virtual world of
“U”, an online community that consists of over 5 million users all across
the globe, in which you can “start over” as a different person. When
Suzu first logged in , “U” generates a gorgeous pink-haired avatar for
her that she can hardly believe is her. She names the avatar “Bell”,
which is her name in English. As Bell, she finds that she can once again
share her singing with the world, and as she rapidly gains popularity, she
finds that having fame online has its fair share of ups and downs.
Enlisting the help of her only friend Hiro Betsuyaku, Suzu eases into
her newfound popularity, and starts to hold concerts. As time passes her
fans starts to call her “Belle” with an E, a reference to the word
“beautiful” in French.
During one of Belle’s most awaited concerts, a dragon looking avatar
nicknamed “The Beast” came and crashed her concert being chased by a
group of vigilantes led by an avatar named Justin, accusing The Beast of
destroying the peace in the virtual world of “U”. Belle is however
intrigued by this and goes out of her way to understand the actions of
The Beast, Belle eventually befriended the misunderstood beast. After
that, Belle is led on a wild ride between the real and virtual world as an
effort to find the “real” beast.
After discovering the “real” beast, she also found The Beast’s dark
secret. After finding out all of these Belle chose to help The Beast,
however, The Beast chose not to trust Belle. In order to gain The Beast’s
trust, she showed herself not as Belle but as Suzu to the world even
when she’s scared to do so, she eventually gained his trust and proceed
to help him.
BELLE is directed and written by Academy Award-nominated
Japanese director and animator Mamoru Hosoda and is produced by
Yuichiro Saito. Suzu/Belle and The Beast are voiced by Kaho Nakamura
as Belle together with Takeru Satoh who voiced The Beast.
BELLE is a animated musical film that I highly recommend, the
composed music is great, it has an amazing animation style, and
amazing storytelling. But this film feels rushed, right from the start of
the film we see suzu as Belle and there was not much interaction with
the lesser characters, which leaves us with lots of unanswered questions.
Overall I would that it is an OK anime that I would recommend people
to watch.
