Bubble (2022) - Movie Review

 I was really looking forward to this one. Writer Gen Urobuchi is not only the mastermind behind one of my all-time favourite works of fiction in any medium with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but he’s also responsible for getting me into kaiju stories with the animated Godzilla trilogy. His knack for heart-crushingly tragic storytelling is something I’ll always be in the mood for… or so I thought, as his latest penned feature isn’t so hot.

The presentation certainly is, though. Director Tetsuro Araki and composer Hiroyuki Sawano, who have both worked on the Attack On Titan series, bring a similar sense of scale and grandeur to this story of near-future flooded Tokyo. It focuses mainly on the Blue Blazes, a parkour team that regularly participate in races and games of Capture The Flag across the barely-still-standing remains of the city, and they all come with a serious adrenaline rush. The combination of 2D and 3D animation with the energetic virtual camera brings a lot of energy to the action scenes, and with the constant presence of the titular Bubbles, there’s this strange uneasy beauty to the scenery.

Of course, we never really learn much about the Bubbles as far as what they are and, more importantly, what exactly they do. There’s a lot of talk about gravitational anomalies (which make for some particularly trippy sights), and we admittedly get just enough to explain the setting of a bubble-encased Tokyo, but they are still quite nebulous as far as… well, the potential danger of the parkour runners repeatedly jumping on them.

Essentially, the Bubbles are the result of this film being a reworking of Hans Christen Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, with a sentient Bubble (or perhaps they’re all just one big consciousness or several little ones, I dunno) taking the form of young Uta, who joins the Blue Blazes and falls in love with their star player Hibiki. As a reimagining of the original story’s seafoam conclusion, it’s certainly an interesting way of going about it, but the reworking itself takes an all-too-literal direction. As in Uta will just quote whole chunks of the original story, accompanied with storybook illustrations, just in case anyone in the audience doesn’t get the connection. It’s rather annoying.

And yet, not as annoying as the emotional deadness just under the surface of the fantastic animation. Along with how archetypal the characters are as it is (talented but brooding loner, mysterious magic girl, obnoxious best friend(s), war wound-sporting mentor, etc.), the characterisation never goes beyond those initial details. Because of this, the attempts at drama and possible romance between Hibiki and Uta fall flat, which robs the film of a lot of its power.

I don’t know whether the writing deficiencies are due to Gen Urobuchi having an off-day, or if co-writers Naoko Sato and Renji Oki watered things down, but considering the writing is what initially got my interest here, it’s rather disappointing that it wound up sabotaging the rest of the production this badly. I mean, it still looks and sounds incredible, and for animation enthusiasts, I can at least see enough here worth checking out on the surface. I just wish there was something more underneath it all.