‘Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop’ Review: An Effervescent Celebration of Love and Art

Following its premiere at the 2020 Shanghai International Film Festival, the animated adventure “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” was released in Japanese theaters and Netflix on July 22. The teen dramedy follows two high schoolers — shy haiku poet Cherry (voiced by Ichikawa Somegorō VIII) and popular social media influencer Smile (Hana Sugisaki) — who meet on a summer day. In a genre as saturated as the film’s neon-heavy color scheme, Kyōhei Ishiguro’s cinematic directorial debut makes a splash not just with its bright palette but also with its reinterpretations of romance tropes.

Ishiguro employs many recurring visual elements that verge on the surreal, from endless acres of fluorescent green farmland to perfectly inert clouds with unusually sharp outlines. These intricate landscapes contain many of the specific details in Cherry’s rich haikus on the four seasons, reinforcing and bringing to life his writing in luscious detail. The interrelatedness of the visual and verbal poetry brings home Ishiguro’s earnest message on art’s ability to reveal new ways of seeing the world.

Slow-motion shots and subtly glowing lighting heighten the drama of Cherry’s meet-cute with Smile, nodding to timeworn depictions of first encounters. As their friendship progresses, Cherry’s haiku effectively function as both visual motif and narrative device, punctuating the story’s otherwise fluid cadence with signposts of his personal growth. Introducing scenes that at first appear to conform to clichés and then enriching them in light of the central duo’s pastimes enables the film to contemplate deeper questions about art’s role in our lives while retaining its lighthearted charm.

At times, Ishiguro evokes his past work. The search for a lost vinyl record that occupies much of the film’s second half becomes a bittersweet representation of the links between music and memory — a theme “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” shares with “Your Lie in April,” the first TV series Ishiguro directed. The central duo’s impending separation, while far from a novel source of conflict in teen love stories, allows for inventive and nuanced comparisons: Symbols of summer’s end, like the formal brevity of a haiku or the fleeting seconds captured on livestream, accumulate with increasing urgency as the days pass. The film continually layers portrayals of creativity from the past and present, reminding viewers that art can preserve memories in vivid detail at the same time as it attests to their impermanence.

Uncertainty about the future builds throughout the film like bubbles in a shaken soda can: The intense emotion so evident in Cherry’s poems and Smile’s videos belies their struggles to communicate openly with one another, which their imagination eventually helps them overcome. A concluding musical moment releases all the stored tension in an outpouring of sweet, but never saccharine, affection. Singer-songwriter Taeko Onuki’s airy acoustic ballad “Yamazakura” stands in heartfelt contrast to the largely electronic score, narrating a chance meeting that leads to love as the very events it describes unfold onscreen in time to the beat — uniting music, poetry, and film in a final celebration of expressing feelings through art in any form. One of the plot’s most prominent messages lies in its refusal to needlessly elevate either art or love as a vessel for unattainable ideals: By rejoicing in the everyday, “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” attains all the iconic effervescence of its namesake drink.

— Staff writer Clara V. Nguyen can be reached at clara.nguyen@thecrimson.com.