Tokyo flooded by a rain of gravity-defying bubbles and isolated from the rest of the world becomes a playground for lost children doing battle in team-based parkour competition. It sounds like a game. Instead, it’s a new original anime movie called Bubble, written by Puella Magi Madoka Magica scribe Gen Urobuchi and directed by Attack on Titan’s Tetsurō Araki.
As pointed out by Polygon, the first trailer for Bubble could very well be the animated opening for a wild, open-world platforming game. Perhaps some sort of evolution of the free-running action of EA’s Mirror’s Edge series. Wrecked by these mysterious bubbles, Tokyo twisted towers make for the perfect parkour proving ground, with teens running up collapsed towards, sliding through the rubble, climbing upended train cars, and bouncing off the bubbles lingering in the air.
Of course, there’s more to Bubble than just teens running around looking cool. The film focuses on Hibiki, a young parkour ace with a reputation for recklessness. When the thrill-seeking teen takes a tumble into the ocean he is saved by a girl named Uta with mysterious powers. The whole thing is a unique twist on the original Little Mermaid fairy tale, only instead of the girl falling in love, having her heart broken, and turning into bubbles, here a bubble falls in love and becomes a girl. Stranger things have happened. Well, stranger things have happened in anime, at least.
Bubble, which debuts worldwide on Netflix on April 28, has what sounds like an interesting story, a kick-ass trailer, and a pedigree that also includes Death Note artist Takeshi Obata on character designs and Attack on Titan composer Hiroyuki Sawano handling music duties. All it needs now is a video game tie-in so I can play along with Hibiki and friends.