Review of the animated film 'Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop' (2021)

[Postscript]

I spent nearly three hours talking endlessly with a friend about my thoughts on this movie. Most of what I say is written down in the text below, so reading that would be faster (better "time performance"), but if there are any eccentric people out there who want to listen to it in audio format, feel free. I suppose there's a certain charm unique to conversation, though I wouldn't know for sure.

[End of postscript]

6/19/23 Mon
Rented it as a semi-new release from TSUTAYA

Wooooooo, amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I should have watched it in theaters!!!!!
A very skillfully crafted, straight-up youth animation. I can welcome summer again this year with this...

Below, please enjoy my thoughts, which have lost all vocabulary because it was just too amazing.

The visuals, locations, and storyboards are all truly wonderful.
When it comes to youth anime films featuring a large shopping mall standing in the middle of a rural area, I'm reminded of 2018's 'FLCL Alternative' (it has a bad reputation, but I like it well enough), but this is seriously good...

Up until the beginning and middle, the events and accidents that occur are limited to the main boy and girl meeting and getting closer because their smartphones get swapped (like 'Your Name'! - wait, no, that's not it), so I was praying desperately while watching, 'Okay, okay, please, I beg you, don't let the scale get any bigger, just let it end as a modest story like this~~~'.

My prayer was answered, and even in the second half, a modest goal was set—'finding the grandfather's lost record' (which, moreover, has nothing to do with the two protagonists directly), and the biggest accident/serious development was 'accidentally breaking the record they finally found,' which was exquisitely trivial and modest (though serious and grave to the people involved), and it was just truly wonderful...

The confession scene at the summer festival at the end involves him going out of his way to climb a watchtower (or something like it) and blurting out a haiku confession in front of the surrounding unrelated local residents. Doing the most private act of a confession while exposed to the masses has a flash-mob-like unpleasantness to it, but oh my, what a surprise: 'fireworks,' the symbolic sign of summer love, go off, and all the local people who were looking up at the boy protagonist turn around at once to focus on the fireworks. Now, only she is looking at him. It's such a forced, acrobatic restoration of privacy. I never knew there was such a way to use fireworks... Instead of looking at the fireworks together, they secure their own space by 'not' looking at the fireworks.

Also, to begin with, it's good that the two protagonists aren't that helpful in finding the record. Well, Cherry is the one who finds it behind the refrigerator at first, but it doesn't feel like their search 'bears fruit'; if it's behind the refrigerator, someone else would have noticed it tomorrow anyway, and as for the wall clock at the day-care center, it's just a 'Blue Bird' case where you can't help but feel deflated and go, 'Oh, I see...'

What this means is that if you lay out intricate foreshadowing and make a plan so that their efforts bear fruit, it becomes a variation of a well-crafted mystery or detective story. That won't do (for my personal taste). It has to be more trivial, to the point where you don't know if it had any meaning or not. After all, they are just taking it upon themselves to look for someone else's lost item, and it's a story/history that has nothing to do with the protagonists, and youth is all about that kind of randomness and lack of restraint. I truly love the image of youth that this movie expressed. (Especially the protagonists who are useless and marginalized from the 'story'... 'The Rolling Girls' is the best!)

The depiction of social media was also wonderful.
She tries to 'like' a haiku posted on social media, but then hesitates, thinking that perhaps this is a love song about her (and her insecurities), and that it might be problematic to 'like' it... so she doesn't press it!!!! Has there ever been such a brilliant depiction of social media? You can reflexively and shallowly 'like' something without even understanding the quality of the haiku. That is precisely why the act of 'not pressing'—the negative action—gives meaning to the animation.
And the moment she tries to press it, the smartphone screen goes dark, and her own face... her teeth are reflected!!!! A smartphone is a mirror in the modern age ('We Made a Beautiful Bouquet'). I see... so the feature where a smartphone screen turns off after a certain amount of time exists for this very scene...

Also, the fact that the mysterious female-like account that frequently 'likes' his haiku posts—despite him only having four followers—turns out to be his mother is just too good. My mother often 'likes' my posts on this Note or Instagram, so...

The use of split-screen direction is incredibly skillful.
The digest part where the two meet and gradually grow closer (like in 'Your Name.') was executed perfectly...

I was deeply moved by the depiction of streetlights flickering on, which reminded me of the final scene in Jacques Tati's 'Playtime'. (Though I wasn't moved at all by 'Playtime' itself...)

A genius combination of shopping mall x haiku x tagging (street culture).
The element of an elderly day-care center inside a large shopping mall is also genius.

I should mention that if people who take haiku seriously or those struggling with dental insecurities feel furious watching this movie, I completely understand why. I'm just able to enjoy it innocently because I'm not one of those people.

The way the male protagonist, Cherry, speaks felt very realistic for a 'socially awkward character' in fiction. It doesn't go as far as a stutter, but he uses a lot of energy just to vocalize, and even when his voice comes out, it follows a weak trajectory, yet it doesn't feel like an overly symbolic exaggeration. The skill of the voice actor, Somegoro Ichikawa, really shone through.

As symbolized by Cherry's character, this story ultimately has a theme that, if taken out of context, would be incredibly annoying: 'It's important to put your thoughts into words and say them out loud.' However, contrary to (and perhaps because of) that theme of 'putting into words' and 'saying out loud,' it is an animation where the parts that aren't put into words are incredibly eloquent. I love that. Looking in the mirror and worrying about his front teeth, wearing a mask, shutting out the outside world with headphones while writhing in agony from the unspoken voice echoing within himself—the characters' subtle gestures are drawn with such care. The same goes for the way the passage of time in the rural landscape, which is gradually fading away, is expressed with vivid lines and colors. In any case, the direction is so skillful that this eloquence is not at all overshadowed by the pretentious main theme of 'put it into words and say it out loud.' If anything, I'd even go so far as to say it paradoxically captures just how eloquent and wonderful emotions, scenes, and gestures that cannot be put into words truly are.

From the opening credit sequence, I loved the part where the background art changes while the grandfather just stands there blankly in the center of the screen, rather than the two protagonists. It's great to have fiction that puts grandparents in the foreground. I want to make a visual novel where the main characters are all grandparents.

The fixed long-take shot where Smile tries desperately to fix the record she broke in her room at night, fails, and starts crying, and the two sisters (I assume they are sisters?) hug her from both sides—the use of the fixed long-take was just so good. It's also great that it's not a very wide long shot, partly because it's indoors.

・Shopping malls and historicity
The idea of going on a 'ginko' (strolling to compose haiku based on the scenery and season) inside a shopping mall, or the fact that it used to be a record pressing plant, is so blatant that it makes me laugh, but that's what makes it good.
Since the two protagonists themselves lack historicity, the choice to focus on the history—the story—of the elderly man who uses the adult day care service is excellent.
The character design of the female protagonist and the elderly man's wife as seen on the record is so similar that it creates a sense of reproductionism, which might be my only complaint. It couldn't be helped since they had to share the buck-toothed trait, though. Actually, if I start talking about that, it's a very heteronormative film and I should criticize it, but... no, I lost to heteronormativity for the first time in a while... (though I've always been incredibly weak to heteronormativity, to be honest).

To be a bit more critically serious, I thought there was no other anime as well-made as this one as a post-'Your Name.' film. As I wrote earlier, that includes the part where the main boy and girl 'swap' smartphones and become friends, and in terms of the missing historicity, there's the shopping mall and the record pressing plant, the cracked record, and the act of tagging (graffiti) haiku onto the shopping mall and rural landscapes, literally rewriting the 'scenery'.

It is truly amazing that it's not the boy or the girl who says something like Taki-kun, 'I can't... remember... the important memories...', but that elderly man. It's the best. That's right, young people have already lost those 'lost memories/scenery' themselves. That's why there's no need for sci-fi fantasy elements like time leaps or flying (or falling) through the sky; they just have to free-ride on the 'story' of two generations ago, do things that you can't tell if they were helpful or just a nuisance, and in the end, they have no choice but to run full speed through that cliché, modest development of having to confess before moving away, while the sound of fireworks echoes in the night sky and the festival music still hasn't stopped ringing...

[Postscript]

Friday, 6/23: Watched it for the second time.

Even though it didn't have the same impact as the first time, I thought it was a really good film with skillful visual direction that makes you feel pleasantly moved.

Cherry-kun calling them 'Mom' and 'Dad' is cute.

The sequence of getting a like from a popular account -> getting tons of them -> getting a follow-back is seriously the best. Even though the whole SNS follow thing should be sleazy, how are they able to depict it so refreshingly? It's amazing. (Though, conversely, you could say it omits and conceals the realistic dangers and guilt of SNS and live streaming... If you actually did a mall stream like that in reality, your address would be identified and your identity exposed in an instant -> fans would swarm. And if it got out that you were dating Cherry, you'd be canceled... it would be a miracle if you didn't have to retire from streaming.)

The skill of the split-screen digest part that follows is incredible!! And at the end of that, the title drop. There aren't many title drops that are as direct and satisfying as that. The perfection of the shot where Cherry is sitting alone in his secret base on the roof.

Actually, the way the screen was composed in the opening scene where the secret base appears—with Cherry, Japan, and Beaver each moving around—was incredibly well done. The same goes for the earlier digest part, where smartphone SNS screens were lined up to show actions stacking up snappily like 'Haiku post -> Like -> Like notification.' They are just too good at vividly depicting multiple things moving and interacting on the same screen.

I corrected the note about the discovery of the wall clock record, as it wasn't Smile.

I didn't even realize on my first viewing that the festival was set in a shopping mall parking lot!!! That's amazing... Isn't it quite rare to depict a summer festival in the countryside without a shrine appearing? Basically, the locations are just around the mall, the two protagonists' homes, Fujiyama Records, and that one-time trip to the radio tower mountain.
By the way, according to Wikipedia, the model for the setting of Oda City is Takasaki City in Gunma Prefecture.

Also, since it's a story about summer vacation, it's rare—or perhaps modern—for a youth anime to have no school scenes at all. In fact, I don't think any 'school friends/acquaintances' appear at all. Cherry and Smile are supposedly high school students (second and first year?), but that doesn't really matter, and the friends Cherry hangs out with—Beaver, Japan, and Toughboy—are not high school students. As for Smile, the only friends who appear are her sisters, and her social circle jumps to a global scale all at once via CurioLive. The same goes for Cherry, who keeps posting haiku to CurioCity from an account with four followers, and the fact that he wasn't bothered at all by moving away symbolizes this unique way of maintaining human relationships (the absence of a school space).

I mean, on the official website, they only use the labels '17 years old' and '16 years old' without specifying what grade they are in high school, which shows they are consciously distancing themselves from the concept of 'high school' or 'school,' which usually carries such strong gravity in the context of anime.official websiteand it's clear that they are consciously distancing themselves from the concept of 'high school' or 'school,' which usually carries such strong gravity in the context of anime.

That's why school uniforms never appear either. Has there ever been a summer youth anime film (set in modern Japan) like that before? Even in 'Summer Wars,' there's a school scene at the beginning, and his friend Sakuma is accessing OZ from the school club room the whole time. And in the first place, Natsuki-senpai is the 'school idol,' and the story is packed with the romance of getting close to someone like that over one summer... so even if the main setting is an old house in the countryside, it still hasn't escaped the gravitational field of school. In 'The Boy and the Beast,' Kyuta is quite promising, but eventually, after Kaede appears in her school uniform, the story heads toward subordination to the institution of school. (The fantastic, wild world of Jutengai is contrasted with the real world symbolized by school.) 'Spirited Away' doesn't have any school or student elements either, but is that even summer? And it's basically an isekai story anyway.

Anyway, what I want to say is that I love youth anime, and that is almost synonymous with loving student/school stories. But that is only 'nearly equal' (≒), not 'equal' (=). This film is one of the very few exceptions, and I'm so happy that it made me think, 'You can make a wonderful youth anime film even if you completely exclude school/student elements.' I still love school/student stories, but it's great that it set a precedent that there is another path.

Cherry and Smile don't go to the same high school, right?? Are there multiple high schools even in such a rural area? Oh, Smile's smartphone case had something that looked like a transit IC card in it (mentioned in the novel), so she must commute by train. But the station never appears either~~~ The only means of transportation are walking or by car (or skateboard)! No trains or bicycles appear!! How rare.

Cherry-kun, he's too shy to speak in front of people, but he's not at all embarrassed to dance the Ondo in front of others. Well, it's not like all the attention is on him alone. If he has a slight stutter but doesn't hate dancing, I can feel a sense of kinship. Anyway, I feel like I could build an argument from this.

In the final scene, the way Smile takes off her mask as if slamming it onto the ground is truly satisfying. A sense of exhilaration.

In the shadow kiss scene after the end credits, the haiku 'Yamazakura, the teeth you hid, I like them too' is tagged right where the teeth are, but since it says 'I *too* like them,' it's been changed from Cherry's original haiku. It's reasonable to think that Beaver shifted the subject to himself and wrote it down (using his own words for the first time). If I check the other haiku written on the ground in this scene, maybe something else has changed. Maybe everyone besides Beaver wrote something too. The handwriting seems quite varied.

Before the theatrical release, the director himself was doing a full-blown YouTube channel for promotion!

I've only watched this self-pilgrimage video so far, but it seems like they explain each process—such as drawing, direction, and cinematography—very carefully. It's a channel that seems extremely enlightening for an anime otaku, showing a lot of enthusiasm.