Bubble review: Netflix gives The Little Mermaid an oddball sci-fi anime spin

Much of the narrative of Netflix’s original anime movie Bubble revolves around a group of radical young people who take part in “Tokyo Battlekour,” a team parkour game of capture-the-flag set amid the submerged ruins of a metropolis. As a post-apocalyptic riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, it’s an outlandish, willfully silly approach to literary adaptationIt was almost entirely straight. Not to be mistaken with Judd Apatow’s immediately forgettable Netflix original The Bubble, Bubble is tender, even meditative. Its best ideas, however, are lost in a sea of already-formed thoughts.

Taking place in a future Tokyo that’s now mostly underwater as the result of a strange “natural” disaster characters call the “bubble fall,” Bubble(directed at Attack on Titan AndKabaneri from the Iron Fortress’ Tetsurō Araki) follows an introverted young man named Hibiki as he encounters a mysterious girl, Uta, who may have a connection to that apocalyptic event and the magic floating bubbles left lingering in its wake.

Even in occupying a flooded and abandoned city, Hibiki and his friends and rivals run the risk of being evicted by the authorities — the dogmas of the old world cling to what little remains. BubbleIt would be interesting to explore this more, particularly considering the positive ending. Instead, it focuses on its fairy-tale retelling, falling back on narrative cliché: A young man, disconnected from the world around him, meets a mysterious young girl who knows nothing about that world, but still pushes him to live in it more fully. (It’s a tale as old as time: a boy meeting and falling in love with a sentient bubble who dresses like a Japanese pop idol.) The classic coming-of-age, boy-meets-girl fantasy romance is charming enough, and so is Uta learning about the way of life for Hibiki’s “Blue Blazes” parkour team. It’s easy to fall back on something familiar. BubbleIt sells the most compelling story angles in a short time.

Image courtesy of Netflix

The clumsiness of the film’s world-building doesn’t help. Details of quiet and isolated Tokyo after the bubble burst, as well its inhabitants are presented through heavy-handed exposition. This is also why the film’s timing issues make it difficult to convey the details. Viewers only learn the status of Tokyo in one monologue even though they have seen the entire city. Even though most of the supporting cast are archetypes, the overcuts and partly cornrowed hairs of their radicals remain endearing.

Although the plot beats might be tedious, the platformer-esque scenes are very engaging. The characters’ freerunning let the most overt hallmarks of Araki’s direction shine through — the zooming and swooping through digital environments and the incredibly cool first-person perspectives that often feel video-gamey in the immersion they provide. While the film isn’t exactly an homage to the thrill of platformers, it’s hard not to think of them as Hibiki puzzles through finding new and unexpected routes and footholds.

It’s honestly funny that writers Gen Urobuchi, Naoko Sato, and Renji Ōki chose parkour to differentiate their Little Mermaid riff from other anime inspired by the story, like Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo or Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall. But it’s a choice in keeping with Araki’s previous directorial work — particularly Attack on Titan — The camera tracks the action as they leap and run through the city, creating a sensation of vertigo.

However, the film constantly reminds viewers of its inspiration. What? Ponyo And Lu In order to chart their creative paths, BubbleUta is literally the origin of Uta Little MermaidStory as a factor in her decision-making. There’s a tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy to her engagement with that story. It was a sacrifice role she felt obliged to fill, and not a real life. However, this one part feels like it is missing a lot of flavor.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Again, Urobuchi, Sato, and Ōki make absolutely sure this theme doesn’t pass viewers by. Uta actually hears one character read the fairy tale. She has some interiority, but a lot of it is defined by Andersen’s text, as she relays how she feels like Andersen’s unnamed mermaid. The writers overexplain the story’s most obvious parts while leaving several crucial and baffling threads dangling — like the ominous, masked group of freerunners who repeatedly intrude on the teens’ “Battlekour,” then unceremoniously disappear with little explanation. The film’s failure to establish its main threats ends up feeling unintentionally funny — the idea of “evil” bubbles doesn’t land, and neither do those interfering freerunners, who essentially wear supersoakers on their feet. As a result, it’s mostly the action that sticks in the memory.

There’s some genuine visual poetry to BubbleHowever, it does include a sequence that explains how to find spirals in nature. The eternal pattern of the universe is shown by a shimmering light from a bicycle wheel. (It’s one of a few BubbleMoments that are easy to recall Gurren Lagann’s similar obsession.) The same applies to this: Bubble’s flirtations with psychedelia and the metaphysical stand out from its more earthbound action sequences, as the film conjoins nature and the cosmos through song. Such moments bring in vivid, almost hallucinogenic color, especially compared to Araki’s previous works, defined by rust, metal, and blood.

That downtime is nice, especially as the film’s editing begins to place the characters in tune with the natural world around them, cutting in quiet moments to flora and whatever fauna remains. The story is at its best in these moments, as it reconciles Hibiki’s struggle with agoraphobia and his comfort amid such scenes, contrasting the overwhelming noise of past city life with the hypnotic, rhythmic sounds of nature. When this character study is pushed more to the forefront, all the film’s elements dovetail perfectly — the post-apocalypse drama, the fantasy romance, and the extreme sports.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Hibiki and Uta make use of their athleticisms to create a new place in a city where they wouldn’t otherwise live, as well as to escape the streets. While the film’s parkour matches begin as competitions between rival teen gangs, Hibiki and Uta make them resemble a dance instead. The depiction of the primary couple in motion is striking, but so is the painterly detail of the close-ups on characters’ faces. In the less kinetic, more meditative moments, the film’s aim in telling a somewhat tragic, ephemeral love story feels clearest. It’s captured in glimpses of serenity amid the film’s chaos, so it’s hard not to mourn that the rest feels so unfocused by comparison.

Bubble is at its best when it’s dealing with its main character’s psychology, rather than the dramatically inert threat of angry magic bubbles. It illuminates more about its cast when it isn’t dealing with its ridiculous “Tokyo Battlekour” rivalries. And the film’s conclusion is beautiful, no matter how unformed the ideas behind it are. It’s a handsomely animated film where the Little Mermaid learns parkour. It’s a testament to the tradition of anime taking literary adaptations in totally unexpected directions.

BubbleNetflix streaming available now