Bubble

Bubble is a movie that takes place in Tokyo which had suffered from a supernatural phenomenon and left the capital of Japan uninhabitable with floods on the ground and bubbles in the air. The story starts off with introducing us to the characters, the characters are not too different from most anime movies that have come out in the past years, the main character is a stoic person who does not bother being with other people, an eccentric and energetic younger kid, a boy who seems to have anger issues, funny enough, it also features a story that seems familiar, a survival type romance which is taking place because of a supernatural phenomenon. For the first half, it becomes quite hard to be interested or care about the story or the characters as nothing new or special is shown, no character interaction that catches my attention and no development that I want to witness, just some parkour racing that the characters are involved in, which looks like something that would be more attractive to someone who likes 1) Parkour 2) anime like beyblade or bakugan. The story does take a turn when our stoic protagonist encounters a near death experience and gets saved by this bubble girl who turns out to be someone who took a shape of a singer or actress and is originally a bubble that looked like it had a soul. Our protagonist and the girl start to form a relationship and this relationship is what starts the development of our protagonist who gradually starts to care more and show more emotions. In the second half, things became more interesting with the protagonist: Hibike and the bubble girl: Uta, as they take part in a race together to save another one of the characters, this race was one of the more interesting parts which was uplifting and enthralling however as the story continued the pacing did not get better, switching between high action scenes to normal conversations, not maintaining a balance and often forcing me to zone out. It introduced side characters that had a role in the movie but their roles were not much fun either and it failed to make the characters seem important to the story. Now with a good deal of pacing issues, boring characters and story, we move on towards the ending which I think suffered the most from all the previous issues such as pacing and being able to make anything seem important, with some backstory which made me think that things are more interesting now, with bare explanation to the phenomenon and my lack of interest for the parkour concept and a declining interest in the main couple I did not enjoy the final part enough, there are movies like Weathering with You in which I felt more attached to both the story and the characters and enjoyed it throughout, this movie barely had anything fun or interesting for the first 75 percent that what was supposed to be the best part of the movie, I could not be invested in it. I still give credit to the main couple who had backstories and development complemented with beautiful animation and sound that made scenes with them together more beautiful and had more feeling in it.

The animation was my favourite part of the movie, with amazing camera movements during parkour scenes, beautiful and vibrant colours that you would just want to frame on your wall. The movements were fluid and dynamic, the camera following the characters created a great cinematic experience. Some of the shots which closed up on Uta and Hibiki's face were cocaine to the eye with the colours and the details. The sound was top notch, great soundtracks which were used well and created a deadly combo with the animation. These were the things that gave scenes in the movie more feeling to them and more joy to watch when things were at the best, although at some points these elements did not match the feeling of the scene, or at least it tried to force the feelings on to the viewer.

Personally, someone who is less invested by the parkour races and a story and characters that look like a repeat of other films, the style was not enough to make up for flaws, even the state of the art animation and sound only partially helped. I'm convinced that Netflix original anime are now to just try things out that's it, no one on this platform wants to make a complete story with a good idea put to use.