The only thing I know about anime is that it’s weird. I watched a few episodes of Dragon Ball Z when I was a kid, but I’m told that claiming you know anime because you’ve seen Dragon Ball Z is like claiming you’ve been to Italy because you threw up outside a Sbarro’s once. Close, but no panini. However, I know what I like, and I like when jagged shards of pure emotionality are thrown with accuracy if not precision at the icy black cockles of my heart, opening that grim organ to what the Oxford English Dictionary tells me is called “love.” And, brother, by that deeply upsetting metric, this movie is a success.
I Will Now Serenade You With Plot
I always forget that just because I’ve seen a movie it doesn’t mean you have, which aside from revealing a lot about my struggles with solipsism also means that nobody has any idea what the fuck I’m talking about half the time. So to make sure we’re all on the same page:
Suzu is a young woman going to school and living out in the boonies somewhere in southern Japan. Years earlier, her mom was hit by a pickup truck that had a bumper sticker on it labeled Plot Necessity so mama bear’s six-feet inaccessible and as a result the formerly effervescent Suzu is now a wall-flower in public and straight-up morose in private, and most important of all has lost both the will and the ability to sing because the activity reminds her too much of said late mother. The usual trappings follow: Suzu only has one friend at school, who conveniently is a tech genius; her former childhood buddy is now the school hunk; her dad wants to connect with her but she’s too hard-up to try and repair their relationship; she’s accumulated enough hours staring miserably into the distance to become a licensed songwriter for Adele; and the obligatory twist: Suzu can sing when she’s anonymously plugged into U, an enhanced version of the internet that you can physically move around in, The Matrix-style, in her case in the form of her avatar, Bell. A neat gambit to tell a story against, but you’ve seen this all before.
Except you haven’t, because holy fuck this narrative is like if someone who doesn’t experience time in a linear fashion tried to explain an episode of Gilmore Girls to you. The narrative components of this film are thrown together so wildly that you’ll spend a not-insignificant amount of time wondering if anything is happening on purpose or if the movie is succeeding in winning you over entirely by blind fucking luck.
In order to attempt to do justice to all this narrative madness, this fascinating incongruity of stuff, I am going to debut a segment I like to call:
Why is Sucks/Why it Doesn’t Matter That it Sucks
Why it Sucks: There are too many fucking characters! This film is filthy with people, many of whom start out filling a role you’d expect – the rival singer who doesn’t like that Bell is supplanting her as U’s most famous diva, the goofy guy at school who we all assume will be the real object of Suzu’s affection after she realizes that the generic hunk she’s been crushing on is actually a huge douchebag, her dad, whose stilted relationship with Suzu sets up so much of the film – so you understandably assume we’re setting the stage for some big and important revelations later on. But fucking nope: most of these weirdos are just introduced and then promptly wander out of the frame, like even they’re not sure what they’re supposed to be doing.
Why it Doesn’t Matter That it Sucks: This movie is a goddamn tidal wave of sincerity, and all these extra characters are here to be flotsam caught in an effervescent upthrust of child-like glee. Their real role is to be charmed by Bell and to support Suzu and to give in to the promise of U as a vessel of connection instead of toxicity. And fuck if it doesn’t work – as I watched Rival Pop Lady sing along with Bell near the end of the movie I thought to myself, “I have no fucking idea why you’re here, Rival Pop Lady – you don’t seem to serve any narrative purpose, and if I had it my way you’d be edited out of this movie harder than God edited Lilith out of The Garden of Eden, but damned if your tearful singing isn’t giving me all kinds of emotions.”
Why it Sucks: There is no internal logic to U, and as a sweaty man-child who can only derive pleasure from pettily debating nerd-lore I am offended by the flippancy with which my digital escapism platform within my digital escapism platform is presented. Some of us have wikia articles to write, movie, and we can’t do that if you don’t present us with a coherent movie-world.
Why it Doesn’t Matter That it Sucks: Nobody except hairy man-children actual cares about the internal logic of a fake internet stand-in. For instance, the Internet Police show up midway through the movie, with the Head Officer having a gun that doxes people. None of this makes the slightest bit of sense (why does only one person have access to a doxing gun? why do the Internet Police fight suspects with karate? why does the Head Officer have sponsors, and why is that talked about like it’s something we should be envious of?) but those details don’t matter because the point is that the internet will forever be the worst thing ever unless we, the people, demand better of it and are willing to work towards that betterment. The doxing gun is there because the threat of being exposed as your true and shamed self on a platform whose primary appeal is the ability to create an impossibly flawless version of yourself is everybody’s greatest fear, and it doesn’t matter that a doxing gun doesn’t make any fucking sense.
So when the Head Police Officer dude loses his sponsors at the end of the movie, even though we have no idea what the fuck that means, we understand through the unspoken Rules of Movie Logic that this is basically the scene in the movie when the school jock gets a big ol’ pile of manure dumped on his head as comeuppance for being so mean all the time.
Just appreciate a bad person being covered in poop. That’s all you need to do.
Why it Sucks: The pacing and editing and basic narrative choices are weird as shit and at times make it feel like the entire movie is an awkwardly-condensed version of an entire season of a television show. The very existence of U isn’t mentioned by anyone in this tech-dominated society until Suzu’s friend from school texts her about it, but when Suzu signs up there are already billions of users. Suzu remained completely unaware of the most groundbreaking piece of technology since the wheel until her friend told her about it? And it’s not like Suzu is some debutante; she’s on her phone more than anyone.
And then Suzu’s avatar Bell becomes the most famous figure in all of U after Suzu’s first-ever login, but shortly after this rather meteoric rise Suzu’s friend from school talks about how long the two of them have worked to cultivate Bell’s appearance and persona and build up her fanbase. This is objectively not true!
And how about the climax of the film, when Suzu needs to go to Tokyo and her newfound collection of friends – fellow students and adults alike – send her alone on a train to confront what is a, uh, fairly grim situation. That is weird! There is no reason why her small army of friends can’t come with her!
Why it Doesn’t Matter That it Sucks: Suzu’s the gat danged protagonist, and the climax of the movie has to be hers and hers alone so she can apply what she has learned and display the growth she has experienced!
“But, shouldn’t that happen in the context of logical decision making, thereby making the movie’s narrative as technically complete as it is emotionally complete?”
See, that’s what I thought, but that was before my heart grew three sizes that day. This movie is such a sugar-rush of sincerity that it simply doesn’t give a fuck that its narrative is baby-simple. We’re riding the waves of sheer emotionality here, now, and petty hand-wringing over things “not making sense” bounce off this film’s iron confidence like my fists bouncing off Chuck Liddell’s chest that time I drunkenly challenged him to a fight outside a P.F. Chang’s.
Alright, So What’s the Point, Here
If you’re gonna be dumb you gotta be tough. Each stupid thing offered up by this sugar-pop of a movie is a kind of creativity tax levied against minds trying to get by on pure empathetic storytelling, and that willingness to incur the wrath of the narrative police – or just outright make an ass of yourself – in the service of doing whatever the fuck you want is nothing if not admirable. Sure, there are times when Belle pivots away from The Formula and directly into a brick wall with NO written on it, but there are times when those otherwise graceless waltzes away from the quotidian fucking cook:
When Suzu is coming back from another miserable day at school and lamenting her lot in life, for example, she takes a tumble on the bridge leading back to her place and eats shit. At this point in, say, a Pixar movie we would segue into a bittersweet musical number about being alone, or maybe the camera would pull back into a shot from high above to quietly present our hero’s isolation, but instead Suzu just throws the fuck up over the side of the bridge and then curls up into a ball, crying hysterically. I feel weird saying that I like this moment so I’ll specify that I like the sudden left hook that is this moment: we think we’re about to get pathos expanded upon but also assuaged slightly in the form of a musical number, or a whispery montage, but instead we just get sheer fucking misery.
Or when we get the story of what happened to Suzu’s mom and you’re nodding along at the familiar beats of this particular component of the film, and then the flashback suddenly ends with voiceovers from random strangers on the internet callously offering their douchey opinions about what happened to the dead woman. Another left-hook, another hit well-earned. Moments like these aren’t many but their weight is disproportional, and if some clunkiness in the rest of the narrative is the price that must be paid for their inclusion, well, that’s money well spent.
The End
This movie is like a preschooler writing a note urging you not to commit suicide. Sure, it’s written in crayon, but the complete absence of guile blindsides your physical defenses – the warmth is just too close for you to leverage any ironic detachment against. Maybe the world isn’t as grim as you’ve come to believe. Well done, movie, you weird motherfucker.