Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
1stDecame4Danime
Morally and emotionally bankrupt trash with no sincerity whatsoever. This is a staggering display of emotional immaturity/delusion from the writer. It feels like it was written by some rich tiktok-for-brain idiot ipad kid. Or rather just some insulated delusional rich idiot trying to larp as what they think the kids are like these days.
This shallow movie is an unwitting display of hypocrisy, a monument to vanity (despite explicitly superficially wearing the abused corpse of Beauty and the Beast as it hollowly parrots a mockery against being vain), of greed (as they churn out this soulless facsimile of emotionally bankrupt propaganda slop), of pure vitriol seeking to normalize itself.
The MC is a self-insert of escapism. The writer attempts to convince through appeals to the viewer's vai…
Read at the sourcechai333
Mediocre movie. Even from the beginning I was skeptical of how it would turn out. I was left with too many unanswered questions, and there were still unresolved conflicts of the story. The storyline kept going one way then another and it just feels unrealistic. Spoiler alert: Some things I questioned were U, the reality you can travel to; the storyline of Beast, and the main characters’ friends and family.
I was in some disbelief that U would really have that many users, especially users who genuinely cared about the drama. Basically, the world building/setting definitely could have been better developed. Beast’s storyline was also questionable. I did not understand why Suzu and her friend along with the entirety of the U users cared that much about Beast. In the end, why would Suzu drive…
Read at the sourceflexboxgamer
Apparently this film won an award and a standing ovation for 15 minutes but after watching it with a group of friends on discord, I realized it was severely overhyped. The plot moves too fast with very poor world building. Remember the old saying, "Show don't tell"? This film tells a LOT with a shit ton of exposition dump. It was to the point I was glad the discord stream was lagging a bit so I could take some time to understand what was going on instead of the characters talking 10 words a second on wtf was happening behind the scenes. Also, for a film praised on its visuals, some of the CG was really awful. The metaverse police guys with the exception of a few leaders like Budget All-Might have the same character models that are poorly animated in the fight scenes. The film also laughabl…
Read at the sourceKadius_
Mamoru Hosoda can't write. The Boy and the Beast, Mirai and now Belle lack a significant amount of charm compared to his older works. The thing these feature films all have in common is they're the only ones written by Hosoda himself. Belle, in particular, showcases Hosoda's immensely bad habits as a writer more clearly than any of its predecessors.
The story of Belle is heavily inspired by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 version of 'Beauty and the Beast' with even the main characters sharing the same pseudonym. However compared to Disney's animated adaptation of the same tale, this feels like a jarring attempt to reinvent the wheel, devoid of any of the original's charm. Beauty and the Beast is a story that does have interesting themes; while it isn't subtle about them in the sl…
Read at the sourceYukino_Agria
Absolutely appalling.
Rushed with a horrible story throughout. You should most certainly NOT write a movie about a futuristic world if you're incredibly out of touch with reality and technology.
My first bone to pick: the Beast.
Why does everyone hate him so much? Because he beat a few people up? You expect to tell me there's 5 fucking billion people on the app and only one is famous for beating people up? Ridiculous. How did he even enter Belle's concert? Y'know, logically, there'd be shit programmed around the "stage" and you wouldn't be able to get near her. This is already implemented in every game, a few standout ones being ROBLOX and Animal Jam. Kid's games. So.
And, for some reason, people are obsessed with his identity? What did he do that makes him stand out? You're telling me…
Read at the sourceMaatchaa
I went out of my way to make an account on this website just to write about how bad this movie is. The only redeeming qualities of the movie were the visuals and OST. However, those alone weren't enough to carry the horrible character development, continuity errors, world building, and lack of exposition.
There were too many plot devices that served little to no purpose and conflicts that never got a satisfying resolution. Additionally the romance aspect of the movie was complete garbage. The movie teases you with some semblance of romance here and there but never grants a conclusion. You can't just throw something like that into a movie and have it go nowhere.
This movie made me very angry for some reason. I just don't understand how anyone could call something so void of content suffi…
Read at the sourceSingleH
I used to love Mamoru Hosoda films. Wolf Children and Summer Wars always made me cry like a baby, and while The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Boy and The Beast were less charming and therefore less enjoyable, their universal emotional triggers still managed to touch me, and their awe-inspiring imagery never ceased to amaze me. However, something in my brain must’ve changed between 2015 and 2018, because when I watched Mirai no Mirai, I felt nothing but cynicism, and upon rewatch, many of those earlier films which I just named came across as feeling tired, boring, and more than anything else, manipulative. I will now detail the template structure of all his films and explain why they’re all fundamentally the same movie. Each one begins with the main character in a place of low self-es…
Read at the sourceKhunime
Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime is a movie that surprised me. It is visually stunning and truly a work of art. Before watching this, I have seen the official release of the song that will be used in this movie a few months ago. I was shocked at how good the song was so I decided to give it a watch. What I noticed while I was watching, was the way the art is made. My eyes were so full with the beautiful scenes especially when Belle was inside the virtual world. Then as the songs were played, I got goosebumps. The first half of the story was what really piqued my interest then as I discover the mystery and the wonderful world of U, I started following the characters. Suzu is totally a normal girl that you could find anywhere outside the world but inside U she is Belle which is a famous singer. The…
Read at the sourceDjKagamine
Great Music and good animation, Would definitely re-listen to many songs from the Movie Soundtrack
Though the story flows poorly, And the obvious solution to the problem presented really breaks the whole premise, Makes it seems like the director or writer doesn't really understand how the internet works.
In simple terms a good story would present a problem and have the characters go about finding and executing a solution, The problem presented in this movie had such an obvious solution that it breaks all logic to do it the way the MC decided to, Like they even go on to make a stupid excuse why the obvious solution doesn't work,
At the end the solution chosen wasn't even a solution, Like nothing happened we just have to assume that the problem has been resolved off-screen.
The charact…
Read at the sourceMonogatarui
I'll get straight to the point: I don't like this movie. It's somewhat nice to look at and listen to at best, and downright painful to watch at worst.
Here's a spoiler warning as it's a bit hard for me to explain myself without pointing out specific examples.
Belle is a movie that follows Suzu and her experiences with the world of "U", a virtual environment where everyone can be the best versions of themselves, bringing out their true, hidden potential from within. As the name may somewhat suggest, another major part of the plot is its parallelism with another popular work, Beauty and the Beast.
To give credit where credit is due, the concept is not bad. Virtual worlds can be done very well and there is a lot that can be explored with this premise. Part of this is fully realized with th…
Read at the sourceold-toasty
My friend told me before we watched this movie that it received a 14 minute standing ovation on its debut. After watching this terrorist attack on the soul of a movie, I'm only left asking, "How?" The worst movie I have ever seen, period. That includes the likes of 'The Room', 'Birdemic', and 'Battlefield Earth'.
The story is hollow, boring, does not earn its climax in the slightest, predictable, jarring, had countless plot holes, and lifted most if not all of its ideas from the director's previous works and 'Beauty and the Beast'. In almost every scene, I felt as if I had seen it done much better before. The themes were more undeveloped than an aborted fetus. I get what Hosoda was going for, but he missed the mark and impales the audience's patience with his arrow.
The 3D art-style was…
Read at the sourceLotaAquari
ART
The visuals were amazing. I'm not quite sure if it's considered CGI, or if it is, what kind of advanced insanely smooth CGI was used, but the difference between the virtual world and the real world was easily distinguishable without having that clunky, goofy appearance like in some other anime that use CGI.
SOUND & STORY
The use of subtle hints for many of the main points of the movie, and musical accompaniment to really drive the emotions up, was immaculate, to the point where I only really understood what I'd understood after watching it again (I've watched Belle 4 times in the last 27 hours, 3 of which were basically back to back). To clarify, the first run through was a little confusing at parts, and the story appears at first to be strangely paced and have weird cut scenes, but…
Read at the sourceOddGrim
Let me preface this review by saying that I love Mamoru Hosoda. I've seen the vast majority of his directorial output from the silver screen to the small screen. He directs with a deft hand, making the absolute most of any budget he's given. The episodes he's directed in TV anime, imbued with his distinct sensibilities, are the high water mark of any series they're a part of.
But Belle is simply baffling.
Belle makes for the third time Hosoda has revisited the concept of an virtual world. A fact that worried me before the film was even released because I don't believe Hosoda has any real grasp of the internet. Oz, his previous depiction of a virtual space found in Summer Wars, felt like a fantasy setting rather than speculative fiction. But oh how I miss Oz when I compare it to Belle's wo…
Read at the sourceBigOat
Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime reinforces the idea that a gold-covered turd, is at the end of the day, still a turd. This sorry excuse for a Beauty and the Beast inspired film falls short in many vital aspects, calling into question exactly "whose idea was this?" and "did anyone really read the script?".
Watching this film felt as though the director had cut out chunks from the storyline at random. Frequently, scenes would fail to adequately flesh out the narrative, resulting in an extreme lack of explanation for character motives or general functionalities of the world. Also present, was an excessive absence of continuity. In one scene, the main character, Suzu Naitou is running while putting on her device that allows her to connect to the world of "U". As it turns on, she continues running, d…
Read at the sourceDsMasterBR
As a big Mamoru Hosoda fan, his new movie "Belle" signified a return to what, in my opinion, had always been the director's strongest suit. After Wolf Children's depiction of a single mother's struggles, Bakemono no Ko's story about raising a kid on a magical world and Mirai no Mirai's four-year-old protagonist's tale, Hosoda was back at directing stories about high schoolers and high school life by extension.
Belle's protagonist Suzu is a depressed 17-year-old girl that ends up hitting it huge as a mysterious singer on a virtual reality life simulator called "U". I don't want to delve too much into this, but I feel it might be necessary to as it does account for a huge portion of Belle's screentime. The digital hub people connect to in the movie feels very much like an afterthought. It's…
Read at the sourceElqBell
Another amazing movie by Studio Chizu.
ART: 10/10
This is the best 3D animation in an anime I've seen in my life, the 2D backgrounds and scenery were on part, if not better than from movies like in, or similar to Kimi no Na Wa. This movie is definitely a graphical wonder.
SOUND: 10/10
One of the main things in the movie is singing and music, and trust me when i say they made the sound part on par with the animation, just captivating.
STORY and CHARACTERS: 7/10
The story and the characters aren't really the strongest points of this movie. It's not a movie that's meant to be watched multiple times to understand the deep meaning behind it or to think about it for days after watching about the complex and deep story in it. No - it's a movie about singing, it's meant to be felt, not analysed…
Read at the sourcekingswill
In the first half of the movie, it was great, but then it lost me and things started making less and less sense by the end, which left me outright confused and at a loss for words. I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed, so disappointed that I'm making this "review". The writing for this was just bad, there's no other way to really describe it. It's like the director/writer combined all his movies into one at the end and created this jumbled or convoluted mess. This is my first time seeing a story devolve like it did. It was like I was watching a completely different movie by the second half of the movie. At first, I didn't even realize this was directed/written by the same person as Bakemono no Ko, Ookami Kodomo, Summer Wars, Digimon Adventure Movie, etc. Those movies are probably one of…
Read at the sourceDomsa
Belle is a surprising anime. No, I'm not memeing. Yes, I'll further develop. Might be because I wasn't all that informed about it and I was expecting a standard take on Beauty and the Beast, basically a remake of the classic where the relationship between Belle and the beast is the focus of the movie... or maybe because I didn't expect to get invested in a story of how J-Pop could save the world. Of course, it's far from flawless, it juggles with too many ideas and concepts for its own good and, at times, I couldn't help but 'ugh' at the rather underdeveloped take on cyberbullying or other topics. I wouldn't call it tone-deaf tou. It is still a delicate one when it comes to these matters (plural here because I'm also talking about loss, parental abuse and the like) and despite the idea of…
Read at the sourcenineup
Watched this in theatres today. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience.
Story:
6/10
The story was pretty confusing with a lot of holes, but it served its purpose and held the movie together well enough.
Art:
9/10
The visuals were appealing. I particularly liked the contrast between the online world and the real world.
Sound:
9/10
The soundtrack went really well with the visuals, especially in a movie theatre. The sounds reverberating had a nice impact on me as I was watching. Character:
7/10
I didn't really like the protagonist, but she had her fair share of character development. The side characters were all pretty entertaining though.
Enjoyment:
8/10
I walked out of the theatre satisfied and thought it was a worthwhile 2 hours. However, I feel like most of the enjoyment came from th…
Read at the sourceThe_Ruise
Disclaimer that I am conversational-but-not-fluent so there were parts I didn't understand. That being said I also didn't entirely get what was going on in Summer Wars even with English subs and this is very much Same Energy. Anyway maybe it would help if I saw it again, but I found the story difficult to follow. It cuts between scenes really abruptly at times and things just seem to happen without a whole lot of buildup (Belle's fame and her/Suzu's relationships to Ryuu and other characters for instance). Also what are the mods doing? People are just getting doxxed left and right and no one is having their account frozen. The future is wild? It was also strange how in the ending, Suzu's friends and adult figures let her go out and do the Thing That Will Not Be Spoiled without any backup o…
Read at the source