Bubble trouble
Anime film Bubble combines parkour and The Little Mermaid in a dystopian Tokyo.
WHAT do you get when you roll a dystopian Tokyo, The Little Mermaid
and parkour all into one?
The answer is Japanese anime film Bubble.
The movie is set in an abandoned Tokyo, after mysterious bubbles upended the laws of gravity on Earth, making the city uninhabitable.
But young delinquents have sneaked in and made it their home and battleground for gravity-defying parkour tournaments.
The story follows star player Hibiki, who is saved from drowning by a peculiar girl, Uta. The two soon develop feelings for each other.
In a video conference interview, director Tetsuro Araki (Attack On Titan, 2013 to present) says he incorporated the sport of parkour – getting from one point to the next by traversing obstacles through running, vaulting, jumping, climbing and rolling – because of how it comes across on screen.
“It looks really attractive in animation and I’ve used it in my previous works like Attack On Titan.
“This time, I wanted to express it in a more straightforward manner at a higher difficulty setting and, thankfully, the production team responded well to my idea.”
The parkour element is the most unique part of the movie, Araki says, which is at its core a classic love story.
The 45-year-old adds: “Those action scenes with that sense of bounce and motion set against the joining of hearts between a boy and a girl is what makes the film special.”
And the love story here – between Hibiki and Uta – is based on the Danish fairy tale The Little Mermaid
by Hans Christian Andersen. Uta’s character is also a creature who changes into a girl to be with the boy
she is in love with.
Producer Genki Kawamura (Weathering With You, 2019) and Araki came up with the idea for the story after seeing a picture of a mermaid sitting above a sunken Tokyo.
Kawamura says: “A lot of anime films in Japan are manga adaptations and this is a completely original story with a Little Mermaid motif. Simply coming up with a storyline that everyone could agree on took a year of discussion.”
And the resulting romance is something the 43-year-old is very pleased with. Referring to the film’s emotional climax set at Tokyo Tower, he says: “I think it’s a rare thing when a movie can make you cry during a big action sequence.”
Both Kawamura and Araki believe the movie, which is released globally on Netflix and in theatres in Japan, will resonate with viewers.
“We’re updating, modernising and giving our interpretation to an old story – The Little Mermaid –andi think there is something universal about that effort which can connect to audiences all over,” Araki says.
Kawamura says Covid-19, which left an indelible mark in the making of Bubble, makes it that much more resonant.
He adds: “In the process of working on this project, Covid-19 came about and Tokyo became, in a way, an isolated city.
“Everyone around the world had to stay home. It feels almost like the times caught up with our story, as if the bubbles falling from the sky are like the virus travelling among us.
“It made the movie feel even more like a product of its time.” – The Straits Times/asia News Network
Bubble is available on Netflix.*