She takes selfies and live-streams, squeezing products into her postings, with “Smile for me!” as her bubbly catchphrase. Yuki is the ever-grinning, always-upbeat “Smile,” a social influencer on Curiosity, a social network. Often the poetry in it is in images and word pictures drawn by characters, not in “action.” Anime is typically under-animated, leaning heavily on drawn and painted images and thus a tad less fluid in character movements and the like. Yui is the boy all the kids call “Cherry.” He’s obsessed with haiku, the simple, minimalist Japanese poetry that has a lot in common with anime itself. And they should more with the pop music element, seeing as how an old record store and a missing record are big parts of the plot.īut this simple story told simple engages and and should keep you - and perhaps the Young Adult audience its aimed at - interested, start to finish. We’ve seen prettier animation and stories with a more vivid sense of place. “Bubble” folds cherry blossoms, haiku, self-consciousness, “communication disorders,” sentimental memories, old age and J-pop into its teen romance tale set in modern day Oda City. But this featherweight made-for-Netflix film gets by on charm and “cute” and the water colorish pastels the medium is famous for. Like a lot of midrange anime, it’s a tale that more easily have been told in a conventional feature film, with actors and sets and no animators. “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” isn’t an instant classic and doesn’t have the bloodlines of the anime greats, filmmakers mostly associated with Hiyao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. Japanese history, Japanese folklore, Japanese fads like steam punk, styles of dress, teaching methods and styles, cuisine, you can get a pretty good taste of the culture through the animated art form they call their own. Because, you know, “Iron Chef,” “Godzilla,” J-horror, “Hello Kitty,” etc. I can’t say everything I know about modern Japan I got from anime.
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