‘Belle’ Review: A Feminist Beauty and the Beast Fable for the Digital Era

With “Belle,” anime master Mamoru Hosoda has reimagined “Beauty and the Beast” for the metaverse set — that young generation of social media users who switch identities comfortably between the physical world and a more inviting online one. Roughly half the movie takes place in the “real world” (which is to say, a traditional cartoon rendering of modern-day Japan, where hand-drawn teenagers worry about who’s popular at school and how to get noticed by the classmates they find cute), while the fairy-tale portion is set on an ultra-popular virtual platform called “U,” where the main character appears as a slender… Read Full Article