Director Tetsurō Araki Interview: BUBBLE on Netflix
Warning! Minor spoilers ahead for the Netflix anime movie Bubble!
If the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming anime film Bubble wasn’t enough of a clue, the storyline and overall tone diverge a great deal from Tetsurō Araki's previous work. Before directing his newest film by WIT Studio, Araki burst into the anime scene early on with his adaptation of Death Note, which starred a protagonist most fans would more accurately describe as an antagonist who sought to build a new world order under his twisted ideals of justice. Araki would later explore worlds much farther along the dystopian spectrum, with terrifying monsters roaming desolate post-apocalyptic wastelands in Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and Attack On Titan.
In Araki’s Bubble, set to premiere worldwide April 28 on Netflix, many of these themes and settings are still present - but they’re definitely not the main focus nor are they portrayed as severely. Bubble explores Hibiki and a group of orphaned teens who use the remains of Tokyo as the perfect playground for parkour competitions, the city having been ravaged by gravity-defying bubbles and terrifying maelstroms known as Spiderwebs or Antlion Pits. But Hibiki’s life soon changes dramatically when he is saved by a mysterious girl whom he later names Uta.
Screen Rant was lucky enough to virtually “sit down” with Araki along with a translator to discuss his partial shift into this new type of realm where these darker themes and images from Attack On Titan and Death Note serve more as vestiges than main drivers.
Screen Rant: Looking at your past work, it's clear that you have an affinity for post-apocalyptic worlds or worlds that are just about to be. In contrast, the post-apocalyptic setting in Bubble is much lighter in tone for the majority of the film. I’m interested in knowing how important this quasi-post-apocalyptic setting for Bubble was in choosing this project, and if you had to “darken” the original tone of the film to match your obvious aesthetic preferences.
Tetsurō Araki: Yes, I personally really favor derelict ruins in post-apocalyptic landscapes because it’s really picturesque. It is something I really like. This time around, however, we are telling something quite different. In other words, we are telling a very ephemeral love story, something that slips through our fingers, isn’t it? So, we wanted to tell it in a very colorful landscape, and although the landscape is dystopian, we wanted to present it in a way that it could present itself to you as a sort of utopia.
Screen Rant: I’m glad you brought up the fact that it’s a love story. The relationship between Hibiki and Uta was the main highlight for me. What was it like shaping how those characters acted and reacted to each other, especially in comparison to how relationships are usually portrayed in other projects you’ve directed, like Light and Misa in Death Note and Mikasa and Eren in Attack on Titan?
Tetsurō Araki: What we wanted to depict here with the relationship between Hibiki and Uta is this sense of meeting someone and falling in love, and how that can instigate us to break out of our own shells. That’s what we aimed for this time around. This was a kind of love story that I felt really drawn to telling. It is really true that, in these action sequences that you see, the characters are breaking through their own limitations and really emotionally coming together. It’s told through the action scenes.
Screen Rant: Probably the one notable comparison to Attack on Titan in Bubble is how the parkouring - especially the equipment the Under Takers use - looks a lot like how ODM gear is used in Attack on Titan. Were you actively hoping to capture this same type of movement in Bubble to mirror Attack on Titan? Or did it just come out that way?
Tetsurō Araki: So, indeed, it does really pull from Attack on Titan in that the action sequences are a hybrid of 3-D, CGI anime and 2-D sakuga or animation, and this is an element we definitely wanted to bring into this film Bubble as well.
However, the motivation of the action is very different. In other words, the action in Attack on Titan is to kill someone, battle someone, knock someone over, but in this film, we are using action sequences to really tell the coming together of these two characters who are in love. This was a very deliberate decision, and I also think it’s what makes these action sequences unique and not like any other.
Screen Rant: In an earlier interview about Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, something you said really resonated with me. You said that you enjoy “stories about the audible crumbling of ordinary life under the effects of a calamity” and people “who are driven into corners by the adversity they face." It’s interesting that Hibiki and other Battlekour players in Bubble have embraced their own adversity by choosing to stay in Tokyo. Can you tell me about what drew you to Hibiki and Uta’s characters in regard to the adversities they each face from their respective worlds?
Tetsurō Araki: In all honesty, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind to try to delve into these adversities that the characters face; not this time around. It was really more about just telling a beautiful and ephemeral love story through the action. That was what I was most aware about in this version of storytelling.
Bubble is set to debut worldwide on Netflix on Thursday, April 28.