Belle

Never tell anyone that you can't heap on the empathy in virtual reality by singing incredibly sappy and cheesy pop songs...

There's a part of me that wants to rate this even higher, or even possibly lower. At times this is staggeringly gorgeous - and I'm not sure if I'm in a minority opinion that the scene scenes taking place in the real world are much more eye catching and appealing than those in the U Dimension (except for the climax, where it walks a tightrope of like Care Bears energy and one of the most heart-soaring moments in modern film, but again animated with emotional gusto, like that thing at the end of movies where everyone is there to applaud/say goodbye to the hero) - and at other times it's that mopey-dopey teenage girl stuff that's not my thing. Have you ever seen an Anime where the teenage heroine freaks out because (gasp) a boy maybe looked her way or (extra gasp) people may know who she is from a virtual reality world in the real one? Lots of that here.

It's also completely open about it being so all-in on being Cornball and I admire and was involved by that. It may not address abuse and trauma and even grief necessarily in the most mature or well-rounded sense, but who would my old ass be to argue or look down if some young kid or teen somewhere found the messages about overcoming such rancid figures productive and meaningful (in real life as well as the web which is where all the horrors of the world multiply)?

It manages to use the main empathetic meat of Beauty and the Beast, primarily the Disney one (they even copy, brilliantly, that one image of the Beast showing regret after kicking Belle out), while not making it so verbatim it neglects its own characters. I guess this is to say if an anime has to do an homage to that, might as well do it with a pop singer and a giant dragon!

I'm not sure if it's great overall, and it's message about a daughter following in a mother's moral footprint is heavy - if, again, presented with a go for broke attitude for its emotional compass (this is BIG, and it's fitting if possible to see it in IMAX as I was lucky to do). I also wonder if it could bother to reckon with people living as a New Body in U. But I'll surely remember that little and pivotal scene where Suzu comes up with the song and how that is animated and edited is staggeringly good.