Belle (2021). Image: Studio Chizu/IMDb
During free computer periods in Year 5, my classmates and I waddled the snowy breadth of Club Penguin. In the miasma of my adult memory, those plateaus and cosy villages are as tangible as that damp-smelling classroom. I don’t remember the screen or my hand moving the mouse, but rather the feeling of waiting on a shore with a sea of anonymous, near-identical avatars, waiting for a rare pirate ship to dock. Like any other regular visitor of the island, I recall the many rumours surrounding the iceberg—which supposedly could be toppled if enough penguins massed on its tip. And I remember the brushes of intimacy, even in a world where dialogue options were narrowed by a Child Safe chat.
After skiing down the Ridge Run slope with a penguin wearing a Hawaiian shirt, we spun around to face each other.
Friend, their chat bubble read.
Friend, I replied.
The term ‘metaverse’ was first coined in the 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, where author Neal Stephenson imagined an immersive, computer-generated realm where citizens of a dystopian world could escape the crush of their lives. The main character—wryly named Hiro Protagonist—is an impoverished gig worker who, in the metaverse, can transform himself into a sword-wielding hero.
Meanwhile, in reality, metaverses solidified from chatroom role-playing into dimensional MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) where I spent my formative years. Along with Club Penguin, I’d log onto Runescape’s medieval world of Gielinor. I’d travel in clans of pigtailed and lavender-haired friends who were also (ostensibly) nine years old, but lived in locales I considered more exciting than suburban Sydney: Uppsala, Vancouver, Mumbai.
yea vancouver rocks, typed an avatar who agreed to be my boyfriend if I coughed up enough spirit shards. we got mountains!
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As I came of age within digital societies, the films of the early millennium voraciously capitalised on their dangers. Japanese techno-horror Pulse (2006) and its American remake depicted cursed online images that triggered suicides (hanging via Ethernet cable!) and the apocalypse. I became addicted to schlocky thrillers like Chat Room (2010), and uwantme2killhim? (2012), where online indulgence led to sadistic behaviour—a sensibility that’s echoed through the past decade, with recent tech-focused titles like Clickbait and Black Mirror sharing the same cynical DNA.
Distantly, I knew this anxiety was not unfounded. Within the span of my online adolescence, I’d witnessed catfishing scandals, racist harassment, and saw so much unfiltered gore that I became desensitised to images of bodily trauma. But despite this, every piece of media that tried to be definitive about the dangers of the internet felt outré, cartoonish; a slight step behind.
Then, I watched Momoru Hosoda’s 2009 film Summer Wars.
Hosoda, an anime director known for his humanist storytelling and hyper-kinetic style, created the first metaverse that felt deeply familiar to me.
Hosoda, an anime director known for his humanist storytelling and hyper-kinetic style, created the first metaverse that felt deeply familiar to me. In Summer Wars, the virtual world of OZ—a metaverse accessed via computer and smartphone—has become so central to society that global corporations and space stations depend on it to function. Its aesthetic is marked by a keen awareness of the nerdy detritus of online spaces: in an early sequence where characters select their avatars, colourful grids of bobble-headed figures and their unlimited clothing options fill the screen, reminiscent of platforms like Animal Crossing and The Palace. In gravity-defying fighting matches, buff bunny avatars spar with lightsabers. OZ is a boundless space, teeming with technicolour users and floating island communities, disparate but revolving around the same totemic centre.
Here, Hosoda is wary about the metaverse: the film’s main storyline involves a demonic virus called Love Machine, designed by the US military, that wreaks havoc on the OZ’s encrypted data—with real-world effects including catastrophic traffic disasters and the faltering of healthcare technology. The disasters of OZ lead to palpable loss, causing not only public chaos but personal tragedy: the disruption of a heart monitor leads to the death of a beloved character.
But the unique element of Summer Wars is its choral nature. The ‘real world’ scenes are set in the Japanese countryside, where math genius Kenji is spending the summer with his crush Natsuki’s sprawling extended family. Though Kenji is ostensibly the protagonist, the film foregrounds its ensemble cast and the dysfunctional clutter of their lives—which inform much of the goodness found within OZ. Kazuma, the withdrawn tween of the family, is able to defend OZ as the famed King Kazma due to martial arts philosophies passed down from his uncle; Kenji’s battle against Love Machine is enabled by the community building a makeshift supercomputer, and worldwide users banding together in support.
Like Hiro Protagonist, Kenji and Kazuma can escape their gawky bodies and fulfil their true potential in the metaverse—but their virtual selves are not a fantasy; they are the zenith of real-world desires, histories and connections. If the metaverse inevitably replicates the oppressive strictures of our reality, it’s also a space where people can innovatively evade these structures, strengthen communal bonds and be truly seen.
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Hosoda’s tentative optimism echoes the initial hopes for the internet. Media scholar Jesse Daniels states that, during the early days, academics theorised that the customisable fantasy bent of virtual environments could overcome the barriers of race, gender and class.
During the early days, academics theorised that the customisable fantasy bent of virtual environments could overcome the barriers of race, gender and class.
This sentiment was bolstered by the creators of Second Life, an online virtual platform that was once hailed the future of the internet. In a world where everything you saw—vampire castles, beaches, concerts, beautiful avatars—were constructed by real people, Second Life was seen as ‘a utopia connecting people from all over the world—across income levels, across disparate vocations and geographies and disabilities.’ Leslie Jamison’s interviews with Second Life users reveal that this ideal was true for many: Jamison details the formation of a ‘cross-disability virtual community,’ where users who were excluded by the real world’s lack of accessibility could explore archipelagos, build aquariums and express agency. Seraphina Brennan, a trans woman, tells Jamison that Second Life gifted her ‘the opportunity to appear as [she] truly felt inside.’
For these users, there was no hierarchy between their online and physical forms—both dimensions allowed a holistic expression of self.
But the Second Life, like all metaverses, eventually came to reproduce the constraints of the real world. Lori Kendall states that most virtual platforms privilege ‘a particular form of white masculinity’ through systemic over-representation, stating: ‘The predominance of white men online can…limit the inclusiveness to “others” who can fit themselves into a culture for by and for those white men.’ In Second Life, slender, white bodies dominated, and those who choose darker skin tones faced harassment, surveillance and exclusion.
The platform also replicated the capitalist conditions of the real world: ‘[Second Life creator Phillip Rosedale] told me he thought the landscape of Second Life would be hyper-fantastic, artistic and insane, full of spaceships and bizarre topographies,’ writes Jamison. ‘But what ended up emerging looked more like Malibu. People were building mansions and Ferraris.’ As real businesses traded within Second Life, where virtual currency could be exchanged with real world money, users turned their focus to becoming billionaires.
Second Life never became the future of the internet; it still exists, but its daily users stalled and dropped around 2007, just as Facebook burst into prominence. The promise of escape was overridden, as identity and self-branding became entrenched, rather than transcended. ‘It seemed that people wanted a curated version of real life,’ theorises Jamison, ‘more than they wanted another life entirely.’
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Despite the decay of Second Life and early MMOs, online gaming platforms have continued to grow, with live service games like Apex Legends, Fortnite and Roblox replacing earlier iterations. The tech world has recently revitalised discourse about virtual realities: late last year, Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook was going all-in on the metaverse model, mirroring the aims of companies like Microsoft. Drew Austin suggests that this pivot is a way for tech companies to create a ‘robust facsimile of public space where a broader range of social expression can be more readily captured and monetized.’ In contrast to the feed-based limitations of social media, ‘this version of the metaverse aspires to be its apotheosis, an environment where “presence” itself is proprietary.’ Within new metaverses, owned by tech giants, employers can better surveil their employees, branded NFTs can be better hawked, and digital rights can be maximised.
It’s into this context that Mamoru Hosoda releases his latest feature BELLE, where he presents a new vision of the metaverse: the land of U. In contrast to the abstract plains of OZ, which juxtaposed earthy colours against the debris of reality, U is rendered in 3D computer animation, evoking a hyperreal, more tactile universe. OZ’s dreamy expanse is eschewed in favour of Manhattan-esque skyscrapers, disrupted by vibrant parks where families of avatars congregate. Clothing is less alien: dresses are adorned in roses, cloaks are ripped and soiled, alluding to how barriers between the virtual and the real, and our conceptions of what is organic, have become definitively blurred.
In Summer Wars, the demarcation was clearer: the world of OZ appeared on pop-up windows, fenced in by clunky and inconvenient computers. Connections formed in the real world took centre stage, enhanced by online excursions. Twelve years later, Hosoda recognises that the internet has become so integral to our notion of reality that people can no longer simply log off—in BELLE, the metaverse is immersive and diffuse. Characters activate their VR headpieces while running to meet their friends; romantic squabbles are resolved via group chats and gaming servers. And the main characters of BELLE are strangers, who meet in the world of U. Doubling as a modern adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, the plot follows grieving schoolgirl Suzu, whose online alter ego is a world-famous pop star, as she forms a connection with a mysterious and wrathful avatar named The Dragon.
This time around, Hosoda’s intentions are fully utopian, his previous anxiety appearing only in brief flickers. Sure, corporations attempt to exert control over U, and there’s the self-righteous antagonist Justin—a somewhat muddled metaphor for internet vigilantism and mob harassment. But, ultimately, these elements are thinly explored. Hosoda’s chief focus is on the way grieving, abused children can use the internet to collapse the boundaries of space and find one another, giving voice to feelings that are untenable in the outside world.
Twelve years after Summer Wars, BELLE recognises that the internet has become so integral to our notion of reality that people can no longer simply log off.
In BELLE, the radical freedom of the metaverse lives on, due to the persistence of genuine intimacy and creativity. This idea resounds in the very conception of the film, where Hosoda was able to fulfil his ‘borderless’ ethos to filmmaking by sourcing key artists online—approaching everyone from London-based architects to Irish animators.
‘That’s the beautiful thing about the internet,’ states conceptual artist Eric Wong in an interview with BBC. ‘It could have been anyone in the world. But he somehow found me.’
What strikes me most about the film is the textured, individual nature of its online pockets: The Dragon’s castle references the shadowy lighting and rococo influences of the 1991 Disney film, while also being marred by his internal suffering—marked with hazy glitches, smashed photographs, and minimalist floorplans that resemble the site of his trauma. These chimeric environments, which meld cultural and personal memory, aren’t so much a projection of a Big Tech metaverse, cluttered with advertising and branding. Instead, they represent how much of our real, innate selves we’ve funnelled into online spaces in the past decades, and how vulnerable we are willing to be, in this strange plane where people can connect across oceans.
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Wrapping up her deep dive into Second Life, Jamison questions creator Phillip Rosedale on his enduring belief in the metaverse:
Did he really believe that our corporeal selves weren’t fundamental to our humanity? I was surprised by how rapidly he conceded. The sphere of family would never become obsolete, he said—the physical home, where we choose to spend time with the people we love. ‘That has a more durable existence,’ he said. ‘As I think you’d agree.’
When I turned 20, I took my first solo trip to Toronto, Montreal and New York City. I’d never travelled alone, and my friends and family were worried about my notoriously slapdash decision-making. When I approached Canadian customs, the bored officer asked: ‘Reason for your visit?’
Panicked, I blurted the truth: ‘I’m visiting my online friends—I’ve never met them in real life!’
And when I met them all, spread across cities and suburbs apartments, everything felt remarkably normal. We binged anime and complained about people we knew; J held back my hair while I chundered over the side of the road, woozy from a karaoke night. After watching Spider-Man: Homecoming at the Alamo Drafthouse with A, I pointed at the Staten Island Ferry and said, mostly to annoy her, ‘Wow, it exists outside Marvel movies!’
That night, I wondered if meeting my friends IRL rendered them more concrete: a meat-space christening. No, I decided, they felt as real as they have done for decades, where we witnessed every stage of each other’s lives from adolescence to adulthood, and shared tracts of digital memory that no one else knew. Sometimes we still linger on the fading sites where we met; but mostly we text, send each other mail, and spend time with the people we love.
Hosoda’s films are not so much a mirror of reality but an acknowledgement of the visceral, emotional impact of being extremely online—they offer an alternate vision, a hope in the durability of human connection.
With the sophistication of VR technology and the increasing desire to escape a pandemic-ridden reality, Zuckerberg’s metaverse may very well come to fruition—and writers have suggested that the long-established social intimacy of gaming metaverses provide a lucrative way for conglomerates to sell their new models and consolidate power. This can be seen in Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s assertion that the social aspects of games like Halo and Flight Simulator promise the success of corporate VR conferencing, and Chinese conglomerate Tencent’s goals to create a ‘a gamified social media experience’ to increase global profits.
Amidst these monopolistic driving forces, Hosoda’s films may seem naive. But his films are not so much a mirror of reality but an acknowledgement of the visceral, emotional impact of being extremely online—it offers an alternate vision, a hope in the durability of human connection and its ability to circumvent optimisation, imposed algorithms and control. It’s through the remote castle, away from the consumption and fame-seeking that characterises much of U, where Suzu comes to understand The Dragon, and where he realises that hope for real care isn’t dead. This transcendence, this transformative capacity of the online is a rarely-captured, magical truth—distilled in Hosoda’s ode to internet friendship.
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When the first iteration of Club Penguin officially the shut down in 2017, its famed iceberg finally tipped. I felt ecstatic at the absurd sight of joyful, dancing penguins, a potent emotion that couldn’t exist if I hadn’t shared this world with hundreds of people, right here, right there.
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BELLE is now showing at select cinemas nationally. Summer Wars is available to rent on Apple TV and Google Play.
