I thought the first 20 minutes was utterly fantastic! In general the movie looks and sounds amazing, and the story beats in the first 20 minutes concluding with Suzu finding happiness for the first time in years was ridiculously good. I'd compare it to the opening of Pixar's Up. It had that same "they could have just done this and had a massive success!"
The middle was fine. Good even. There were plenty of entertaining moments from Suzu's new friendship with Luka to the long, hilariously awkward pauses where she tried to get her two friends to admit their feelings for each other. To Suzu's friend apologizing when she accidentally mentioned her mother then realized that Suzu's was (still) dead. Just all sorts of great moments that were really well done.
The ending was... vastly disappointing! For a few reasons:
1. Why was the public unveiling of someone such a big deal. No, I get it in some sense. I operate as Ragashingo on the internet almost exclusively. I don't particularly want anyone to have access to who I really am. But if you all found out my real name and location and occupation... eh... so what? Sure, if I was super famous online or offline it might complicate my real life. But the movie was treating it like an online death sentence. At one point Justin (the guy with the unveiling weapon) even commented he was surprised that Suzu didn't vanish as if separating her virtual self from her real self would disconnect her from U or something... At best, I felt the stakes weren't set very well. At worst, I think we simply weren't told why it mattered.
2. Speaking of mattering, if unveiling someone was such a powerful act, something that would ruin careers, destroy fame, and possibly disconnect someone permanently or delete their avatar... why the heck was it even allowed?! And why was one unruly avatar (the Beast) so disruptive that what were implied to be a large number of major corporate backers were willing to unveil him?? As far as we were told the Beast just beat people really badly in virtual fighting tournaments. Why was it even acceptable to unveil him?! The privacy violations alone should have made Justin a villain. The Voices of U (its creators / leaders) should have banned Justin for having that kind of power which he himself said was only possessed by the Voices. And he was gonna use it on a kid whose only sin was taking out his pain of being beaten in the real world in virtual fighting games in the virtual world. This part of the plot... mostly that Justin would wield such power against such a innocent and insignificant target... was really messed up.
3. What did Suzu accomplish with regards to Kei, the boy who was being beaten by his father?? We weren't shown!! Kei said he'd fight back from now on. Does that mean he... was going to injure his father?! Did he actually go back to that man?! Did no one ever separate those kids from their physically abusive father?! We simply don't know! I thought the plot was going to go the direction of Belle abandoning her fame in exchange for saving the brothers. That she'd reveal herself to be a nobody and be rejected by the peoples of U but would save a life and in doing so learn some of why her mother did what she did. Or, that Suzu would do all that but in doing so would use the popularity of U to focus the world's attention on the abuse the brothers were being subjected to. But none of that happened. Instead of leveraging the virtual world... Suzu traveled across Japan to confront a man twice her size all by herself??! And her friends and family let her!?!
4. Finally, I didn't understand everybody singing and getting the glowing ball of light. Yeah, yeah... it kinda represents singing from the heart and letting ones true feelings shine... or something. But that's the problem. The "or something." What did it really mean besides people were moved by Suzu's song. They didn't understand why she was singing or why she unveiled herself or the trauma she suffered as a child and was overcoming. To them, it should have just been a pretty song, right? It kinda felt like something... like the public of U at large understanding Suzu's situation... got lost in a rewrite and never made it back into the plot.
I enjoyed the heck out of large portions of this movie but man the more I think about the ending the flatter it seems to fall for me. Art, animation, music, and characters were generally Best of the Best quality until the end... but yeah... there were some major gaps in the final third of the movie.
