Sometime last week my friends and I decided to get together and watch Bubble together, over Discord.
The premise of Bubble: strange bubbles appear one day, destroying Tokyo, leaving it submerged, uninhabitable, and encased in a dome bubble away from the rest of the world. Within this dome, amidst the ruined buildings live a ragtag group of parkour runners who would rather be here than anywhere else. They compete in an especially high-stakes sport, “Battlekour”, that sees them leaping over giant whirlpools and navigating falling rubble to reach their destination – sometimes, even hopping across the bubbles – all to compete for a prize pool of food and other supplies such as gas.
The action within these Battlekours are splendidly captured – from how the camera tracks the characters, how the light rays reflect and refract, and the music by Sawano Hiroyuki that drives the action forward. No less can be expected from the team at Wit Studio that also animated the members of the Survey Corps zipping around Titans on their vertical maneuvering kits in Attack on Titan.
When the proverbial bubble pops
Right from the beginning, it is hinted that there’s more to the reticent, lone-wolf protagonist Hibiki – who constantly wears a pair of headphones, expresses a strong dislike of having it removed forcibly, and often goes to a partially destroyed Tokyo Tower, the core of the bubble phenomenon which remains propped up by its gravitational anomalies. On one such expedition he slips up and falls into the water where he is then saved – by a girl who seems to have formed itself from the very bubbles that surround the place, marking the start of a budding relationship.
However, around this point is where the bubble pops. The girl, whom Hibiki has named Uta, picks out several books, one of them being The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Here, Bubble makes it clear that it is a re-interpretation of The Little Mermaid, pigeonholing itself in the process. Every development from then on left me wondering if it was trying to keep within its source material, or go beyond. To be fair, the way Uta integrated with the rest of the cast, and how Hibiki gradually opened up to everyone, was enjoyable to me, even if it isn’t something that I haven’t already seen in other series.
There were many elements that were introduced. Hibiki’s life prior to becoming a resident in an abandoned Tokyo, the origins of Uta, and the origins of the bubbles themselves, all leading up to the chain of events prior to where the characters currently are. These are plot threads that ultimately not explored, in order to keep in line with its source material. Throughout the runtime, and particularly in the build-up, Bubble constantly reminds you that it’s going to keep to its source material – even having Uta “know” what is going to happen to her with flashbacks to the copy of The Little Mermaid that she read onboard the Blue Blazes’ ship in their downtime. And thus, she acts out what happens in the source material in a self-fulfilling prophecy, making a fairy tale the rationale of her decisions. At the end, the payoff leaves us wanting, as we are spoon-fed a learning point right after coming out of a questionable thought process.
Round-off
The production values of Bubble cannot be faulted, but its eventual execution is unfortunately hampered by its inability to move beyond its source inspiration and then material. Bubble is aware of this shortcoming and plays with elements that try to break out from this at one point, but ultimately never sees any of them to fruition.
Final score: 5.4/10
Note: I haven’t been posting much. I’ll try to post more if I can! Mostly been caught up with work for much of my waking hours. Hope you enjoyed this!
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