A pink-haired pop star soars on to the screen riding a giant blue whale. The crowd cheers as her dress explodes, raining multicoloured petals. In this gorgeous, big-hearted anime from Mamoru Hosoda (Mirai, Summer Wars), Belle is the virtual avatar of Suzu (Kaho Nakamura), a grieving teenager and “mousy country bumpkin”, according to her best friend. We soon learn that her mother, who taught her to play the piano, died when she was a child. Suzu hasn’t been able to sing since. U is a virtual reality she accesses via an app on her phone. It’s here, inside this twinkling digital metropolis, that Suzu becomes Belle and rediscovers her voice.
When one of Belle’s concerts is interrupted by a mysterious horned Dragon (Takeru Satoh), U’s self-appointed police step in, threatening to catch him and expose his true identity. Understanding the protection afforded by adopting an avatar, Belle goes out of her way to protect him.
The floating city of U sits suspended in an infinite starry sky; Hosoda imagines the internet as a glittering expanse of endless possible connections. In the synthetic world, the camera is dynamic, with the animation rendered in 3D. Suzu’s reality is flatter and hand-drawn. In U, avatars are automatically generated based on their users’ hidden strengths. Belle sings, because Suzu has something to express. The film’s message is a beautiful one: to integrate our real-life vulnerabilities with the persona we project is to become all the more powerful.
