Belle

Belle (竜とそばかすの姫, 2021) is Mamoru Hosoda's animated feature you can watch online on iFILM. Suzu is a 17-year-old who lives with her father in a quiet Japanese town and hasn't sung a note since her mother died. Her voice only comes back inside U, a vast online world.

U holds five billion avatars, and Suzu builds herself the opposite of who she is: a dazzling singer named Belle. Nobody connects the shy schoolgirl to her, yet online she draws crowds of millions. One concert is crashed by a brooding user shaped like a dragon, hunted by the whole network. Suzu sets out to find the person behind the beast, and in doing so uncovers a hurt that mirrors her own.

Hosoda threads Beauty and the Beast through a story about online bullying, anonymity, and the second self people wear on the internet. Belle's musical numbers were built by a separate team of 3D artists, and the gap between that gleaming world and the warm hand-drawn village does real work. The film opened a strand at the Cannes Film Festival. If you loved Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, this is for you. Stream Belle online on iFILM.