SPOILERS

The beauty and the beast in scifi.

While Belle works as a great musical it often touches topics that it never explores. The writers clearly show that they thought about a virtual reality and that they actually understand the struggles of it.

At first the VR promises hope and to start over again. In Belle this happens with Suzu not being able to sing in the real world cause of the trauma of losing her mother. She viewed her mother as a role model and the mother taught her -it seems- everything about music.
When the mother died to save another child Belle took it to heart and it seemed to have broken something in her.
But in a VR world she doesn't have to face her fears so she is able to sing there. And she sings beautifully. She is the definition of going viral.

Till this point the story is logical even if not original. It is gorgeous to view at and the music is fantastic. But this is were the movie breaks.
It shows Belles rise to fame and what could happen to a person. Suzu is more interested in the haters than the fans of her, she is more engaged in being critical than appreciating herself. These are modern problems that arise out of social media and the movie touches this well and very understanding. But it drops this plot line completly. Suddenly we have a beast and watch a fairy tale about a beauty and a beast. The story jumps around with no connection, suddenly we are at a concert. The Dragon invades that concert, suddenly fights. Then we jump to a castle while in the real world Suzu is experiencing typical teenage problems. Back to the castle, the beast rejects Belle. I have to admit here my expectations were played but more about that later. We have AIs and digital Castles and a digital Police but they are just vigilante and some weird Gods (the creators of the VR) called Voices. All of this is so much for such a short time that the movie can't go into any of these plotpoints and continues with the story about Belle and the Dragon.
Suddenly the movie changes tone. It's not about romance but domestic abuse and how a bigger brother protects his small brother. This again is a compelling plot line that falls short cause the movie does just not have enough time.

This movie touches many topics that are often unspoken. This is great and I applaud Hosoda for this. All in all its a convoluted mess with no character development that has the right intentions, a beautiful score and a world that just is beautiful even though it stays a complete mistery. All of this movie comes with no explanation or reason. I know movie fans hate this but I believe this would have been better as a show to the likes of Ano Hana. It could have been a masterpiece. I'm still giving it a 7 out of 10 because it does enough right that you cannot hate this movie.