First look at Mamoru Hosoda’s new anime film Belle

Announced last december, Mamoru Hosoda (Summer wars, wolf children, and The boy and the beast) released a new animated feature this year. As already reported, the film is called Belle and tells the story of a young woman in today’s Japan who enters a huge virtual world.

Below is the first 30-second teaser that gives a glimpse into the film:

Notice that the title is in Japanese Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime or “The dragon and the freckled princess.”

The movies official page has this description of the film:

The protagonist of this story, Suzu, is a 17-year-old high school girl who lives with her father in a rural town in Kochi – her town is a textbook definition of depopulation in the Japanese countryside. Suzu is wounded by the loss of her mother at a young age and one day discovers the huge online world “U” and plunges into this alternative reality as her avatar Belle. Soon all of U’s eyes are on Belle (Suzu) when one day the mysterious and notorious dragon-like figure appears before her.

“Belle is the film I’ve always wanted to make,” says director Mamoru Hosoda in one official statement

“And I can only make this film a reality because of the high point of my previous work. On the one hand I deal with romance, action and tension and on the other hand with deeper topics like life and death. I expect this to be a great entertainment spectacle. “

Hosoda added that his previous films have studied the effects of the internet and how The youth can change the world. “At the same time, the internet has a more negative side, where people slander others without a second thought and fill them with misinformation,” he adds. “Still, I believe it is a miracle that will expand the possibilities of humanity. I wanted to portray this massive change in our relationship with the Internet in a way that paves a way into our future. “

In the studio earlier announcement Regarding the film, reference was made to the 2020 difficulty, which Hosoda still seems to care deeply about this image.

“The unprecedented events of the past year have accelerated the paradigm shift in our online interactions with one another, be it in the workplace or in our personal lives,” he continues. He calls the way this era continues to change “an inevitability”.

“Still, the things we need to estimate remain largely the same,” says Hosoda. “Legacies that we inherited from generations past will continue to exist and adapt to the new age and tools that will shape it now. This shift is more evident than ever because of the time we are currently living in. “

Belle will be released in Japan this summer.