Belle in the social media platform U (Studio Chizu/GKids)

Virtual worlds can offer both escape and unforeseen complications. Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura), the teenage protagonist of Belle, finds both when she creates her persona for U, a fictional social media platform. U looks like a giant, futuristic city, though it has many other locations, such as castles, and is populated by a combination of weird little critters, many of whom are bots, and idealized humans. It is also patrolled by a forbidding police force that seeks to eradicate violence and terror. The platform promises its participants the ability to choose their own identity that will draw out concealed talents. The very worst thing that can happen there is to have this chosen identity stripped away.

Suzu chooses to become Belle, a gorgeous, talented singer who quickly rises to unprecedented popularity in the virtual world and makes headlines in the real one. Her surprise success is a source of pride and anxiety, since she is unsure of how to handle this new change, and her life quickly becomes more complex when, as Belle, she meets the Beast. He is something of an outlaw in the world of U, but he quickly elicits her sympathy, and she gets in over her head unraveling the mystery of his real identity.

Suzu is painfully shy. She lost her mother many years ago, and lives in a dejected looking rural town. Her specifically adolescent pain comes across clearly, and as a result, there is an appealing compassion for this underdog, whatever reservations the viewer might have later. While U is certainly appealing for its wildness and the variety of figures that populate it, the real world is much more affecting in this animated film. In compositions that almost seem like something out of realist cinema, director Mamoru Hosada (Mirai) evocatively conjures up a slow, small town, full of sleepy train stations and nearly empty waiting rooms, haunted by teenagers like Suzu who are glued to their devices. One of the strongest scenes is brief. It simply depicts Suzu waiting to receive “likes” after she’s invented her persona, only to see that there are not as many as she wanted. It is in this small nod to the gap between Suzu’s world and U that this film is most poignant.

The story explicitly winks toward the “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale, and is, more or less, the story of two lonely people finding connection and salvation across vast distances when they peel back their masks to reveal who they really are. It is also not afraid of sentimentality. The arc of the story is more than a little tear gushing, and the film is optimistic about the power of social media to help people find one another in a way that I had some trouble taking seriously. I’m guessing it will be most engaging either to early teens or to those willing to suspend their cynicism.

The film also suffers from the fact that no characters apart from Belle are fully drawn and, more than once, leave the audience confused about their motivation. Furthermore, in the third act, the narrative develops what feels like nine plots and more ideas than it knows what to do with. In its faith that people can truly connect through a virtual platform, the script abandons what made it compelling in the first place: Suzu’s emotional life and the gap between her world and the virtual one. Younger audiences might be much more forgiving, yet it is disappointing to see a film with potential go off the rails. Nevertheless, the animation, in its embrace of both fantasy and realism, is very beautiful, and it is hard to hold much against a movie with this much heart.