I was surprised to realize this film was inspired by The Little Mermaid. More specifically, the Hans Christian Andersen tragedy, not the Disney fairy tail. Its highly symbolic world and setting is visually breathtaking and a total joy to become immersed in the beauty of, but it’s also deliberately mystifying. A giant bubble has formed around the city, and gravity has gone haywire, but never do you comprehensively understand why. The film provides the audience with the exposition necessary to understand what’s directly relevant to the plot, but otherwise, it let’s your imagination run wild, and it’s done not in a way that feels cheap and underdeveloped, but instead deliberate and magical. If Bubble had deep and memorable characters on top of everything else it has going for it, it could’ve easily been a genuine masterpiece, but without them, it’s not suddenly a bad movie, because everything else about the film suggests it might actually be one anyway.
Araki’s imagery combined with the thrill of Sawano’s music never fails to blow your mind. The artwork and animation is simply stunning, even for WIT, Obata’s designs are splendid, Sawano is rightly praised as a legend by virtually everyone, and Araki is one of my favorite directors for a really good fucking reason. With more and more studios desperately trying to copy WIT’s 3D environments, it’s worth reminding ourselves why WIT’s were so impressive in the first place. Yes, the renderings and graphics were perfect, but the real reason they felt so exhilarating was because Tetsuro Araki was the one directing the shots. If you saw the trailers for this movie and didn’t immediately think, “Well, alright. This is obviously just an excuse to have people parkour around a weightless and inventive cityscape with jaw-dropping animation and electrifying visual action.” Then, honestly, you need to do yourself a favor and watch more of Araki’s work.
Watching this felt like watching Promare in theaters. Around half an hour in, I realized it wasn’t trying to be Imaishi’s next Gurren Lagann or Kill la Kill; it wasn’t trying to be deep; it was just trying to be a visual feast, and it succeeded. GKIDS had a translated interview with some of the creative staff which played after the screening, and if I remember correctly it was Shigeto Koyama who kept talking about how the “movement” of the film was constantly bringing him to tears. Everyone laughed as if he was joking, including himself, but he insisted he was serious, and when asked to elaborate, he just kept repeating that same word. “Movement.” While Bubble didn’t move me to tears or anything, I completely understand what he was saying after watching it. I wasn’t terribly invested in the story or characters, but I understood and appreciated them, and with even such a simpleminded connection established, I was able to get swept away by Araki’s sheer creative vision.
People, generally speaking, think I’m a cunt. They think I hate anime, and I just make excuses to bitch and complain. They think I nitpick and overemphasize every tiny little issue I can find as a cynical excuse to hate on whatever anime I’m talking about. I insist this isn’t true. I insist my harsh analytical criticism is merely a product of my high standards, and should an anime meet those basic standards—a competent production, a competent script, a competent director, and so on—then I’m actually extremely generous. As long as an anime has a solid foundation and doesn’t actively annoy me, I’m very easily entertained, and Bubble is irrefutable proof. It’s not that the film is nothing special, because it is special; it’s that the film isn’t tremendously deep or complex. If, by the sound of things, you think you’re too good for something this fast and loose, then Bubble may not be for you, but I cannot say the same for myself. Indeed, this film may just be too good for me.
Thank you for reading.
