Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle and Densha Otoko’s Internet Dream
Belle is pretty comfortable in her provincial life in this version, animated with sheer beauty.
Belle is not the first Mamoru Hosoda film I have seen, I recall liking The Girl Who Leapt Through Time a lot when I was younger, but I missed out on Summer Wars and his other acclaimed features. I’ve heard his virtual worlds grate against the sensibilities of some people, yet I am not among these detractors, as Belle took me back to my teenage years trying to navigate the online open steppe where barbarous trolls reigned supreme and my unfortunately named Asperger’s Anime Blog (Hans Asperger was a Nazi, I’ll be seeing him in paranormal rehab if the Taoists are right about the afterlife) became a magnet to my ex-cyberstalker demanding that I return to the forum where our feud originated to apologise to him and his peers for my trying to pull a Densha Otoko by asking out some girl who looked like Yomiko Readman who I saw at the bookshop once. My imaginary girlfriend backup plan when she vanished into the ether of those shelves which used to house the manga volumes of Shonen Jump infuriated my ex-cyberstalker who dragged his heels about helping me until the girl in question was no longer there. I’ve learned a fair bit since then regarding the tendency for young anime fans to fetishise Asian women who are now being murdered by psychopaths in the United States, and I’m not proud of values I held when I still owned a trilby hat, but I kept Densha Otoko in my heart even though the dream of internet forums being a place where inept nerds could be given dating advice faded. My attempts to retrofit the values of Train Man onto message boards with pre-existing communities who were doing their own thing were met with either confusion or hostility. The translated 2chan threads have since been consigned to oblivion, but my paperback copy of Train Man I bought at Abbey Bookshop in Sydney remains as an eternal reminder of that phase in my life where I wanted to be a hero so bad. Even if I did get with that pretty Asian lady with glasses and a red tartan jacket who enchanted me from a glance, I would have rescued her from nothing. I had no Train Man leverage to warrant pursuing a relationship with this human being I projected my feelings onto, no fairy-tale romance where I saved her from a drunk on public transport. When I think of Train Man now, I think of his story as modern day folklore, a Robin Hood figure who may never have existed at all, but the idea he represented captured my imagination. It was a simple ethos, the idea that anyone, even a hopeless otaku in love, could be a hero when the situation required one.
Which brings me back to Belle, which is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast done in cyberspace. There’s no Angela Lansbury singing about tales as old as time, but the music in this film is top notch and drives the story forward with ballads of both joy and regret. Poor Suzu is a mousey schoolgirl whose mother sacrificed her life to save the child of a stranger when she was a kid, and she feels abandoned by her female parent through this fatal decision. Yet she gets hold of VR technology and becomes a new woman in the digital world of U, rendered in stunning animation which makes Facebook’s Metaverse look like the dog-shit that it is. U is a feast for the senses, a delight to behold, and even though it is populated by social media mavens and certain users faking their whole family with kids identity, it’s never a cess-pit of corruption like the real life 2chan is. Every Western iteration of 2chan multiplies by two like 8chan and strays further from Densha’s light, not to mention the Kiwi Farms and Onion Farms which documents the torment of Sonichu creator Christine Weston Chandler for the sick amusement of curious onlookers. Mamoru Hosoda instead treats us with a dazzling utopian dream of the future with no NFT scammers or “lolcow” bear-baiters to menace this PG rated wonderland. Sure, there’s a little bit of drama when an artist who tattoos himself with bruises (a red herring when trying to identify the mysterious beast) is called out by his apparent ex-girlfriend for faking her death for social media attention, but we are spared the worst of online horrors like SWAT-ing and revenge porn. In a world where mass shootings are live-streamed on Twitch, the charming fairy-tale of Belle may seem naive and divorced from harsh reality, but there is enough truth in the fiction to move audiences.
Suzu’s virtual concert is interrupted by both the Beast and the U version of Reddit moderators gate-crashing into her event where she would’ve sung on a CGI whale with speakers implanted in it, which provokes her curiosity as to who the Beast is. Like her, the Beast is an anonymous figure with both haters and defenders. Belle’s anonymity masks her deep anxiety rooted in the grief of losing her mother, whereas the Beast cloaks himself in the fugitive identity of a stranger to protect himself from the harshness of his home life. Suzu juggles her responsibilities as both an ordinary schoolgirl and a v-tuber sensation well, even though sudden online fame gives her panic attacks. Her friends at school are part of music programs or kayaking clubs, but when Suzu tries to express herself IRL she hides her voice from the shelter of a glockenspiel instrument she’s curled up in a ball behind. There is a popular girl who’s just as nervous as she is, despite being beautiful and good at saxophone. Everyone is going through their own struggle to survive, even a successful baseball player who bears the scars of childhood surgeries to save his life.
The Beast’s castle is a gorgeous digital treasure, decorated with roses and gothic architecture. There are pictures hung on the wall with shattered glass. The Lend Me Your Voice sequence apes the Disney Beauty and the Beast ballroom scene which is entrenched in Millennial childhood memory, but does its own thing when Belle leans in for a kiss only to be refused and be permitted to rest her face against this creature for comfort on its own terms. Unlike Densha Otoko where the plot hinges on a scruffy nerd going on a quest to earn the love of his fated Hermes (named after the designer teacups sent by the woman he adores in gratitude for being her saviour), there is not really a hint of romance between these two entwined digital personas. Suzu is cornered by mods looking for the Beast, and she refuses to snitch on her vulnerable companion. Somehow, Suzu gets hold of a live-stream where the Beast’s IRL counterpart and his brother are being verbally abused by his father. The Beast’s avatar cloak is covered in bruises, as the biometric data suggests his user has been hurt several times over. When Suzu tries to contact the Beast and her brother IRL, the Beast shuts her down with a speech about how everybody says they want to help, but they never do. I watched this scene with a bitter reflection of recognition of how my online shenanigans trying to be the shining white knight affected people back in the day, where I was being a real Don Quixote tilting at pre-bipolar disorder diagnosis windmills. Suzu then decides to earn the Beast’s trust by being unveiled by the moderators in front of everyone, which she does at the shock of her millions of fans. She’s just an ordinary schoolgirl with freckles underneath her attractive avatar, but her heroism is yet to reach its climax. The moderator subplot reminded me of the saga going on with popular anonymous Twitter account PR Guy, who was accused of conspiracies that he was working for Australian Labor Party figures like Dan Andrews, but he turned out to just be some dude who had negative opinions about Liberal Party policies. The people didn’t love him any less when they found out he was just an ordinary man with a Troy McClure avatar.
Unveiling herself as just some schoolgirl does not diminish Suzu’s power, as her fans sing along with her in unison. Which brings me back to old Densha Otoko, and the two times I have seen his internet dream in action, albeit modified to suit the times. I was in a Google Plus hangout once with some Japanese cartoonists who were drawing things suggested to them by the chat, at one point I brought up that Australia has Christmas in summer which lead to one of the Japanese mangaka saying “SURFIN’ SANTA?” and drawing that mental image. There was a translator, but I somehow managed to communicate to these artists the identities of the legendary creators Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy and Kimba) and Tatsuhiko Takimoto (Welcome to the NHK) through the device of holding up tiny LEGO men I had constructed of them. Just by looking at these tiny minifigures, the artists could identify my tribute to their men of culture. I then sung Alanis Morissette and Kenny Loggins songs to them through my iMac’s web-camera. My mother interrupted me in the middle of belting out “IT’S LIKE RAIIIINNNNN ON. YOUR WEDDING DAY…” and was mortified as to where she went wrong as a parent. Years later I would see Alanis herself in concert, and among the tragics I was accepted when the crowd began to castigate their collective ex-boyfriends shouting the lyrics of You Oughta Know with group intensity you’d expect from a Manowar show. I totally buy the idea of the world being united in song via a live-stream that transcends national boundaries, because I’ve lived it, and the second time I saw Densha’s dream fulfilled was when HBomberguy did a stream for the transgender charity Mermaids to spite the once respected TERF Graham Linehan. I don’t understand how someone who could create something as hilarious as Father Ted could sink so low as to spend his entire online clout bullying trans youth, but for some reason there was a mass-gathering of spite throwing money at trans charities while streaming Donkey Kong 64 for a worthy cause. It felt a bit mean-spirited at first, perhaps a diversion from what Densha Otoko intended, but in its own way it felt righteous for the Western internet to experience the Densha vibe while shitting on the legacy of a prominent transphobe with archaic video game software. In that moment, it felt like the internet shrugged off its cynicism to prove via Chuck Tingle’s involvement that love was indeed real, and we weren’t stupid for believing in ourselves. Densha would’ve been proud of us, wherever he is now.
Belle’s finale involves Suzu going on the train far away from the countryside she inhabits to Tokyo’s urban district to save the Beast from his abusive father, because social services won’t intervene fast enough, and when they are united IRL there’s a sense of relief that they both trust each other now. The awful asshole dad who mistreats them rears his head, and Suzu protects them with her own body as a shield. She is scratched on the cheek by his fingernails tearing and clawing at her, but she stares back into his empty soul with accusatory silence. Such a powerful moment of visual storytelling, in a film full of imagery which might make you dismiss it as style over substance. Suzu goes home physically and emotionally changed, regaining a sliver of her former confidence when her mother sacrificed herself for a stranger. The Beast’s brother said “You’re my hero” - a title only offered to his own sibling prior to this. She sacrifices the scar on her cheek to help a pair of siblings who grant her no reward except goodness of the heart, some real Girl Guides shit.
I remember the first time I met one of my dearest online friends in person, I was going interstate up to Queensland to catch a GoMA screening of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards in 35MM. I didn’t really know what my buddy looked like prior to this, so when I met him at the airport with my father escorting me there, it was a surprise. He took me to an arcade bar where we played the X-Men cabinet and to Rocking Horse Records where I picked up disco LPs by The Village People and this obscure recording artist identified as Witch Queen. Our friendship grew ten-fold by the hour, and we saw the movie together. Even if my friend Rhys disliked the Bakshi film, I was glad I was there to see it before Disney locked up the print in their 20th Century Fox acquisition vault forever. We began our bond through mutual autism, and it continues with our fixation on antique media preservation. I made some of my best friends I’ve ever met online, and although I’ve been hurt in the past and have become shy about oversharing certain details of my lore to strangers, I am fortunate to exist in an era where technology has allowed such relationships to exist. Belle reminds us that the internet, with all its problems, doesn’t need to be ugly or cruel. It can be fabulous.
