Bubble (2022)

Bubble - Dir. Tetsurō Araki - May 13, 2022

Happy 1 year anniversary to my favorite anime movie of all time. Everyone should go watch bubble right now. Why you ask?

10 Reasons Why You Should Watch Bubble:

Two autistic main leads

Said autistic leads fall in love

The female lead has fluctuating verbality throughout the movie

There's an amputee

The animation is beautiful

The soundtrack is a banger

Uta's voice is so captivating (I watched sub idk about dub)

PARKOUR PARKOUR

It's an anime retelling of the little mermaid

It's a found family

Go off my dear readers and enjoy the magnificence that is Bubble

Bubble on Netflix

I am obsessed with Bubble at the moment

The way the camera turns and pans during the parkour scenes. It always jumps from one place to another, changing perspective every time the characters land. They capture every beautiful angle of a sport I really want to play now. 

Not to mention the animation, it’s so vivid and fluid. The way each bubble moves feels surreal. The movement of each body feels ethereal, as if they’re walking on air. It stunned me until I was in awe.\

And the music, Uta’s song to Hibiki is so many things at once. The way her voice makes every thing seem like a fairy tale. It made me want to jump and never come down. I longed for a place outside of time and space when listening. I wanted to do the impossible. In those few short minutes of the song, I wished I was them. I wish I was a Bubble

on bubble 2022 parallels

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA just finished watching bubble again and oh my godddd the scene where kai was like. yeeting hibiki over the antlion pit!! they do a parallel of that w uta and hibiki later on in the tower when he hugs her after they fly away from each other like.

okay i know kai is portrayed ‘inferior’ to hibiki and that’s why in their scene kai is ‘left behind’ by hibiki- there’s even a part that shows when hibiki jumps away, the concrete beneath kai’s feet crumbles away and he barely hangs onto the road, further pushing that ‘hibiki is better than kai’ message -but the way how in their scene it was all ‘the heat of the moment’ thing they wouldn’t think too much about it it was just part of their routine, just what kai had to do to get makoto back...

but in uta and hibiki’s scene, they both play a part in escaping from the collapsing tower (hibiki’s parkour and uta’s bubbles launching them away) and there are multiple moments where their abilities are equal (the scene where they run up to makoto- ironically its just after when hibiki left kai behind HAHHAH IM FINE) there’s a moment where they FUCKING SMILE AT EACH OTHER ONCE THEY HUG like. like-

im just thinking about how kai had a recurrent metaphor for ‘flags’ and how he had assigned himself the role of the one to get that flag, but in the end he sacrificed that opportunity to get it to hibiki because he knew hibiki was more capable than he was. and then he had to watch hibiki throw uta up to get it instead- which is fine! they get makoto back in the end its no big deal! but surely hibiki knew what it meant to kai, to allow hibiki to achieve that final goal-

and then in the tower when kai once again has to act as hibiki’s ‘assist’. im just thinking. kai calls it being a team but being a team isn’t blindly supporting one person- its everyone supporting each other. kai helps hibiki get his ‘flag’, helps him save uta. kai has to ask hibiki for help to get makoto back. 

there’s something there, something about how kai has always been trying to be seen as an ‘equal’ to hibiki, how he didn’t want to be reduced to just a member of the blue blazes while hibiki gets titled their ‘strongest player’. there’s something about how kai always caves and sacrifices the flag to hibiki, whether its the chance to reach the top of the tower or to get makoto back.

fucking hell. he is always trying but he knows he doesn’t compare

Bubble (2022), directed by Tetsuro Araki

Studio: Wit Studio

UTA & HIBIKI

So I just watched Bubble and now I am a broken shell of a person who will never be whole again. The art. The sounds. The characters. I feel like something inside of me has been scooped out. It's taking everything in me not to sob like a baby.

Reaching out

Bubble (2022)

i was going to throw him violently into your inbox but i cant add images so here are some more tiny kais for your tiny kai needs @ithurielkeepsgettingkidnapped

The movie Bubble means a whole lot to me, and many of my friends. Bubble is a movie that me and my friends keep jokingly calling "And Autistic Retelling of The Little Mermaid" and while we are joking about this, we're also not wrong.

The main character, Hibiki, is without a doubt autistic. It's not just his struggles with noise sensitivity that are indicative of this. Some of the tests we see him undergo when he is a child remind me of the diagnostic tests I underwent when I got diagnosed. Then there's him getting put in a special needs center. Then of course theres the way that it's very obviously hard for him to connect with people, so he distances himself from them. He comes off as very much in his own world.

Then we have Uta, who can be read as autistic. Specifically an autistic who would be categorized as having higher support needs. She is a semi-verbal and essentially only speaks in short sentences or quotes from her favorite book (the one exception to this is the very end of the movie, but at that point there is many pauses in what she is saying). She has a tendency to act very cat like (climbing up things, hissing at stuff she doesn't like, etc), we see her exhibit both Echopraxia and Echolalia, and she is very to the point. We also see her exhibit a fascination with spirals, and do much research on them. All of that mixed with her managing to get an idea of her identity via her favorite book, really all adds up to being able to read her as autistic.

I've seen people criticize this movie for Uta and Hibiki not having enough lines of dialogue together, and because of that their romance is underdeveloped. Honestly? I could not disagree more. As an autistic, I feel as though falling in love for me goes much different from what allistics say love is like, or at least the way it's portrayed. I often find myself simply falling into a sort of sync with them. Now of course I cannot speak for every autistic, this is simply my experience. But I do know multiple autistics who feel the same way. That's why I love those moments where Uta and Hibiki just fall into sync with eachother while doing what they love. To me that's the height of what it's like to fall in love. There's no particular point that it occurs it just. Happens.

There is an utter joy in watching two Autistic people fall in love on screen and it's one of the many reasons why Bubble means so goddamn much to me!!!

Another extremely notable thing is that for once there is an autistic who does sports! Can you believe that!? Academics are not brought up even fucking once!!! Hibiki's special interest is parkour, he enjoys it and it makes him feel as if he's in his element!!! I've never seen a representation of autistics who excel at things other than school!!! Let alone sports!!! As an autistic who has done sports their whole life that made me so fucking happy!!!!

Then there's the fact that Hibiki, when talking about his noise sensitivity issues, talks about how the noises outside when he's alone are so peaceful. He enjoys listening to them!! What makes him overwhelmed is the sounds of the city!! Of too many people! And then he says that he doesn't want to hate sounds!! There is just!! I find it very hard to word but it's something that I felt was so utterly relatable!!

I have never before been able to see an autistic character and legitmately felt that I related to them more than just a little bit!!!!! Its such an important movie to me and it makes me so goddamn upset that so many of the people reviewing the movie are allistics!!!

Anyways I don't know how to end this just like you guys should watch Bubble.

They’re gay, your honor

Are there seriously only ten fics for Bubble on ao3?? That’s criminally low and I might need to write something to help out the numbers…