From director Shoji Kawamori, creator of Macross, comes Labyrinth, a strange and curious tale akin to Alice in Wonderland, except Wonderland is in your smartphone and the world wide web! Labyrinth is produced by Sanzigen and distributed by GKids in the U.S..
It’s the story of Shiori Maezawa, an ordinary high school girl who is jealous of her best friend, Kirara, who is very popular on social media with hundreds of likes on her posts. One day, Shiori and Kirara try to film a dance video together in a shipping yard to post online. Shiori accidentally trips down from a staircase while Kirara is still filming, exposing her under garment at the bottom, much to Shiori’s chagrin. Shiori’s smartphone also cracks from the fall. Shiori tells Kirara to please delete the video, but instead of deleting the video, Kirara posts it online where it goes viral! Now everyone at school and even outside of school is staring, whispering, and giggling at Shiori where ever she goes! Shiori is humiliated and embarrassed beyond belief and doesn’t understand why her best friend Kirara would do that to her!
Shiori tries messaging and calling Kirara to no avail or reply back. With the increasing stares and giggles from the people she passes by along with weird video glitches that pop up randomly around her, Shiori reaches her breaking point. She runs and hides in a stall in the girls restroom where her smartphone cracks even more, and suddenly, Shiori also becomes cracked and is split into two! The real Shiori, the one who is shy, insecure, jealous, and anxious, is transported inside the shadowy parallel world that exists within her smartphone and the internet. Meanwhile, ideal Shiori, who is outgoing, bubbly, confident, fun, and super talented, takes over Shiori’s life and body in the real world! Ideal Shiori dons a pink and blue wig and changes her name to Shiori@Revolution and becomes a VTuber star, racking up thousands of likes across the net! Meanwhile, the real Shiori is now trapped in her smartphone inhabited by other lost souls who have turned into flat emoji smartphone stickers after being trapped for too long.
Real Shiori now wonders if Kirara is also somehow trapped in smartphone world too after Kirara ghosted her when she posted the embarrassing video of Shiori falling, so she sets out trying to find Kirara who may now be an emoji smartphone sticker courtesy of a large machine that flattens 3D bodies into 2D stickers. It’s not all cartoony though since red digital text comes out with each press of the machine. The only thing preventing real Shiori from being turned into a sticker is the charge on her smartphone! When it reaches zero, she too will become a sticker!
Along the way, real Shiori meets a sticker named Kimori that can actually talk to her unlike all the other stickers. Kimori is a pink bunny with 3 eyes who somehow knows how the smartphone world of stickers works after being stuck there for 7 years! Like real Shiori, Kimori is full of self-doubt and regrets of who he could be too. After being stuck for 7 years though, his memory is fuzzy, and he doesn’t remember who he really is.
Meanwhile, Shiori@Revolution is racking up the likes on all her videos, attending events all over town and ingratiating herself as an online celebrity. Her goal is to get 100 million likes at which point she will become the real Shiori and fully take over Shiori’s body in the real world! Can real Shiori escape the smartphone world and take back her body and life?!
This whole movie is very bizarre and difficult to follow in places. The plot is very nonsensical and complex just like Alice in Wonderland, and sometimes you wonder what exactly is going on. It does give an insightful look at oneself as well as the relationship between you and your smartphone. Before being sucked into her smartphone, Shiori had an unhealthy relationship with being online. She constantly checks her posts for likes and hides behind emoji replies. Shiori even has a secret anonymous account called DonkeyEar where she vents what she really thinks of certain posts. Shiori is obsessed for validation online from strangers while hiding her true self. It’s only when real Shiori is acknowledged by her real friends in real life does she become confident enough to defeat outgoing Shiori@Revolution.
I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on at times, and I think I probably would have to sit through the movie several times to have a vague sense of what I actually watched? Yes, I was definitely confused several points in the movie. I wasn’t even sure how to write up this review after watching it. There were several fun moments though including a cameo of Popuko and Pipimi from Pop Team Epic as stickers in the crowd Shiori first meets in the smartphone world. There’s also a cool mecha battle that somehow got written into the script which might have been Kawamori’s idea. There’s a catchy song Shiori@Revolution sings called “Sailor, Sail On” performed by Suzuka of Atarashii Gakko! that screams pop idol and Hatsune Miku vibes.
Also, the movie was actually animated in 3D CGI and then mapped to emulate traditional 2D animation. It looks a bit weird upon closer look since it looks like 2D pictures pasted onto 3D character movements. Imagine a jointed paper doll pasted onto a real 3D doll, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Yeah, the movie could have been written more comprehensively, but the same could be said of Alice in Wonderland, which also confuses me. Moreover, the first and second half of the movies seem like 2 separate plots that were smushed together to try and bring about some sort of grand ending to everything. Even though I should try to watch it again when there’s a dubbed version available, I’m not sure it would help with me understanding anything even better. I guess if you like Alice in Wonderland minus all the nuances, symbolism, and hidden meaning behind the story, Labyrinth might be your movie.
