Baited by the beautiful colours and music laid out upon my eyes and ears

Walking into the theatres for the first time, I thought this movie was going to be one that told the delicate story of a modern take on Beauty And The Beast with wonderful melodies and aesthetically pleasing anime backgrounds. I was right about the music and the animation but as for the story, I was dead wrong. Belle has a horrible storyline which feels like multiple different stories all just badly stitched together with yarn after a drunk night out.

First, a quick TLDR of the story from my perspective. Belle is VR Chat with the entire population of the earth in one server and the cops replaced with Xbox360 Call of Duty Modern Warfare doxxers who threaten to reveal your identity to the rest of the virtual world around you if you do not comply. Now, addressing the main storyline. Belle tells the story of Suzu, a girl who lost her mother and is trying to pursue a dream in music and singing but due to her trauma and anxiety issues, she could never sing. But once the online world is known as 'U' was introduced to her by her friend Hiro, her life changed forever. She could sing and she could be the person that she had always dreamed of being.

This would've been one of the top anime movies in 2021 for me if the story was kept simple and straightforward but it, unfortunately, is not. The starting part of the movie introduces all the side characters, Luka, the madonna and queen in Suzu's school, Hiro, Suzu's best friend and social media manager, internet genius and brainiac. Chikami, a canoe loving enthusiast and Shinobu, Suzu's very hot and very quiet childhood friend who had apparently vowed to "protect her" and have Suzu getting the wrong idea of that statement thinking it's a proposal when they were six years old. As charming and great as these characters may seem, it is a sad thing that none of them truly matter to the story in the grand scheme of things. The main 'Beast' in this movie, also known as Ryuu, turns out the be a 14-year-old domestically abused child who had been lashing out his pain and sorrow in U through underground fights, and bouts with the Xbox Doxx Police.

All the way up till the second third of the movie, none of the side characters except for Hiro have been properly built up nor established in the movie yet. But as the movie moves forward from this point on it leads into the Beauty and The Beast side of things. Showing a wonderful depiction of the old Disney gem through beautiful animation and wonderfully atmospheric music was amazing and quite simply breathtaking. But we soon realise that the 14-year-old boy behind the beast apparently loves Suzu? Here is how it all went down and what happened. Nearing the end of the movie the whole gang comes together, aka all the side characters are suddenly in an elementary school classroom with a supercomputer VR setup all ready to go. They realise that the 14-year-old boy is being held in Tokyo and Suzu takes it upon herself to travel all the way to Tokyo from one end of Japan to the central area via the train. In a couple of hours, she makes it there and a barrage of huffs and puffs are played as she struggles to find where the boy lives. Eventually, the boy and his younger brother comes out to a street right outside of their home and hug Suzu. As they are sharing this moment under the rain, the boys' father comes out of their home and demands them to return home. However, Suzu stands firm and continues hugging the 14-year-old boy and his brother. The father eventually loses it and in a fit of rage, pulls Suzu by the face and scrapes her cheek. All of a sudden, Suzu stands up and stares into the father's eyes as he raises a fist in the air and screams a couple of times. Somehow someway, Suzu manages to scare the father into scurrying back into his home and then goes straight back to hugging ' The Beast' which mind you, confesses his love to her. Immediately after that, it cuts to a scene of Suzu returning home with a bandage on her face and the whole gang wearing the same exact clothes, welcoming her home. The movie ends with a long shot of the whole group walking home by a river while saying they should practice for the upcoming concert and they should all sing together and out of seemingly nowhere, Shinobu then reinserts himself into the main storyline and says "You don't need me as a guardian for you anymore" and smiles at Suzu. She then looks back into the horizon and starts singing. The End.

None of the main issues was addressed, nobody knows what happened to the kid and his brother after that, Shinobu is just apparently okay with the whole situation despite knowing nothing up until this last arc of the movie and it all just feels so rushed and loosely put together.

It kills me to know that the only romantic interest or anything grabbing my attention was the adorable love between Luka and Chikami, that scene at the train station where they have a nice talk about whether they love each other to not is the only thing that made me feel like there was some sort of relevant story to follow through with.

Final thoughts, this movie was a letdown and my expectations were demolished, trampled into the ground.
my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.