Bub­ble – first-look review

Tet­suro Ara­ki is prob­a­bly one of the most influ­en­tial Japan­ese ani­ma­tors of the last ten years. Start­ing his career at Mad­house and work­ing on pop­u­lar series like Death Note, it was his work as direc­tor at WIT Stu­dio on the Attack on Titan fran­chise that pro­pelled his name into the main­stream. The visu­als that blend­ed 2D and CG ani­ma­tion also helped to put the stu­dio on the map of ani­mé fans around the world, afford­ing them (and Ara­ki) the financ­ing need­ed to work on their own orig­i­nal series that helped to refine this visu­al style.

Fast for­ward to 2022 with a healthy dose of financ­ing from glob­al stream­ing giant Net­flix to pro­duce orig­i­nal series and movies, Ara­ki now has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to direct his first orig­i­nal movie project. Bub­ble is a sci-fi park­our ani­mé set in a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic alter­nate-era Tokyo loose­ly based around Hans Chris­t­ian Andersen’s The Lit­tle Mer­maid, filled with enough high-pace action set-pieces to play direct­ly into the studio’s strengths. As a tes­ta­ment to how impor­tant this first-ever orig­i­nal ani­mé movie is for Net­flix, the world pre­mière at the Berli­nale is the first time the stream­er has allowed any of their ani­mé to screen at such an event pri­or to its release on the service.

It’s a sur­pris­ing inclu­sion, as for all this is a major orig­i­nal ani­mé from WIT Stu­dio with involve­ment from major play­ers work­ing in ani­mé today like Hiroyu­ki Sawano, Gen Urobuchi and Takeshi Oba­ta, the film offers noth­ing that jus­ti­fy its place at such a pres­ti­gious film festival.

Five years ago, bub­bles of unknown ori­gin fell from the sky in Tokyo. Before long, the city was flood­ed and encased inside a giant bub­ble that dis­tort­ed the grav­i­ty of the city encased with­in its walls. Now a flood­ed cityscape reclaimed by nature, groups of orphaned teenagers take part in ​‘Tokyo Bat­tlek­our’, a 5v5 park­our rac­ing event where teams bat­tle one anoth­er for sup­plies like food and beer. One day, after falling while try­ing to climb the ruins of Tokyo Tow­er to inves­ti­gate a mys­te­ri­ous voice, he’s saved by a bub­ble that trans­forms into the young girl Uta. Their bud­ding romance threat­ens the sta­bil­i­ty of Tokyo and the entire world.

Bubble’s issues lie in its chron­ic lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty. The movie feels like a pick-and-mix of ideas exe­cut­ed bet­ter else­where; you have the musi­cal nee­dle-drops of a Mako­to Shinkai film, spe­cial hydraulic park­our boots that func­tion iden­ti­cal­ly to the mobil­i­ty gear from Attack on Titan, and a third act pieced togeth­er entire­ly from plot points found else­where. Any sub­tle­ty to the film’s romance between Uta and Hibi­ki is ren­dered moot by the explic­it nam­ing and repeat­ed tex­tu­al ref­er­ences to Andersen’s sto­ry. Even sec­ondary char­ac­ters like the retired men­tor sci­en­tist Shin and hot-head­ed best friend Kai are arche­typ­i­cal to a fault, with char­ac­ter arcs you can tele­graph mere­ly by look­ing at them.

This is not a bad film. Indeed, the ani­ma­tion is the movie’s strongest asset, with park­our action sequences in par­tic­u­lar being stun­ning for how they recre­ate 3D space with­in a 2D medi­um. Yet there’s no rea­son to watch this film if you’ve watched even just a hand­ful of recent ani­mé in the past, as you’ve most like­ly seen it all before.

Maybe that’s ok for Net­flix. With Bub­ble, they have a com­pe­tent film that plays things safe while con­tain­ing just enough crowd pleas­ing moments to tide over the major­i­ty of view­ers. But shouldn’t ani­mé fans demand far more than a project so unin­ter­est­ing and safe as this?