Suzume

The premise was truly intriguing with several doors at abandoned places in need of getting closed in order to stop the gigantic worms from causing natural disasters. Ancient Gods are the keystones holding these worms back and there is a closer who has taken up this important job to keep these doors closed. Then there is Suzume, a girl raised by her aunt after she lost her mother during 2011 Tsunami. Suzume is gifted to see the ever after and her love at first sight Sota who is the closer, leads her to join him in the mission to close the doors as well as save the world.

The animation is what caught my eye and I am not that much into anime. The story remained captivating for the most part and the narrative style kept the intrigue intact. I was drawn into the world of Suzume even before the fantasy part began. Chasing Daijin while closing one door after another, relating it to a major natural disaster from the Japanese history was a nice touch. However, despite couple of jokes working, the sub plot involving Serizawa felt dragged and the introduction of Sadaijin lacked the desired impact. Overall, Suzume is still a worthy watch for it's unique premise.

A love at first sight, seeking past, fifty thousand people used to live here now it's a ghost town, unlikely villain, phenomenon driven mystery, parkour, a race against time and chance, past meet future, today's sacrifice tomorrow's keep, great humor timing, strong voice acting, magical, captivating visual art animation & a music to fall in love, with nostalgia sure to hit a Makoto Shinkai's masterpiece ! When I left the theater I feel like wanting more I regretted for not having watch Kimi no Nawa and Weathering with you on cinema but not this time and I am so glad I captured this one. Ittekimasu Itterasshai.

This is one of those movies, which just makes it really tough on me to write about it. Because if I talk about the problems I had with the movie, it seems a bit unfair because it is in fact a good movie. But if I don't, that seems unfair too because I did have some problems with this movie. Here's a little background on my impression of the director (and the writer and the editor) - Makoto Shinkai. "Your Name" is one of the best movies I've ever seen (not just in anime). And I absolutely adore "5 Centimetres Per Second" and "Garden of Words". I sort of have a love-hate relationship with "Weathering With You". I can write a long paragraph about it, but long story short, I absolutely love the direction, animation and soundtrack of that movie, but I really don't like the script and the plot.

Ok now to Suzume. I do think this is a good movie. And I think people are going to have a great time with it, because of Shinkai's masterful direction and the RADWIMPS' breath-taking soundtrack. But I'm disappointed with the plot. Well, not exactly disappointed, but let me explain a bit more. I had a lot of fun with the first half of this movie. In fact, I loved the first 80% of this movie. And that's also because the movie continuously kept adding more and more unanswered questions, which made the plot more and more mysterious and it was great, until I started realising that the movie doesn't have enough time left to answer all those questions. And it didn't. When the end credits rolled, I was disappointed because so many answers felt missing. So much supernatural stuff happened in between that just wasn't explained. And now that I think about it, even Your Name didn't exactly explain its supernatural stuff. But it worked because of its characters. Because even though those plotlines didn't have a logical reason, they surely had an emotional one. This movie didn't seem to have both. Here, I can see that shinkai is trying to fit these themes like moving on and death but they didn't seem to fit into the movie.

You know, I can't help but feel that after the success of Your Name, Shinkai is trying to repeat some of the same formulas in his stories. Some similarities with Your Name in both Weathering With You and Suzume are very evident. Like a natural disaster looming over the characters, a romance that turns very dramatic in the second half. The romance in this movie actually felt a lot more natural than it did in Weathering with You. But the problem is that just like Your Name, Shinkai makes these romances take a very dramatic turn. And romance, being a delicate emotion, can't be forced so dramatically until a certain level of familiarity has been reached in the first half.

He did this flawlessly in Your Name and that's because that movie is built around its romance. Whereas in this movie, it feels that he's trying to add a dramatic romance to a plot that could've done without it. Look that's why it's tough on me, you might think I hated this movie. Not even close. I had a good time with this movie, because it is in fact a good movie. It's just that it could have been a lot more than it is, which is why I have to say the things I said above. But like I said this movie is directed MAJESTICALLY. I mean Shinkai's direction is just insane. He makes you feel emotions that aren't even there to feel xD.

And the animation is so, so gorgeous. As good as it was in his previous movies (maybe even better). And RADWIMPS is now 3 in 3 with this soundtrack. This soundtrack is just as good as Your Name and Weathering With You, and that's saying something. I mean there is a sequence, where a certain supernatural entity covers the city of Tokyo and it's like one of the most mesmerizing scenes I've ever seen. The way Shinkai shows that scene, with the breath-taking shots, brilliant animation and jaw-dropping soundtrack, I mean it brought tears to my eyes. Give this man an oscar xD.

This is also Shinkai's funniest movie. There are some very funny sequences here. 1 specific hilarious plot point that continues throughout the movie was just genius. The movie starts off very quickly and seeing these characters trying to catch on with what all is happening just made it even more entertaining and funny. There are also some very touching moments, mostly because of how brilliantly they were directed. Shinkai's direction and RADWIMPS' soundtrack is a combination that's capable of completely taking over it's viewers. But that 1 part of my brain which was thinking about the plot kept pulling me back.

Overall though I had a good time with this movie but I'd say Shinkai is capable of much more than this in terms of the plot. I certainly like it more than Weathering With You though.

I love movies like 5 Centimetres Per Second and Garden of Words. They were great movies in their own right, and they were nothing like Your Name. Those movies explored deep emotions like separation, alienation and growing up and did it brilliantly. So any movie can be great in its own right. I have a lot of faith in Shinkai as a filmmaker and I'd like to see a different movie from him.

(Btw you're going to get goosebumps when the title pops up at the beginning of the movie, trust me)

I always wait patiently for the next Makoto Shinkai movie. He always delivers on beautiful animation and an interesting fantasy story and Suzume delvers on that. There are a few things I didn't like, some things I loved but overall I felt this to be a bit on the bland side. This story felt already told by Shinkai and while I always want to watch what he dose next, I always hope he´ll push himself just a little bit more to do something different. He still delivers a charming and moving movie here, but the impact wasn't really there this time for me.

After following a young man to the ruins near her town, Suzume accidently awakens a demon thar protected the world from an evil that creates earthquakes. Suzume most now help Souta who has been hexed into a chair save Japan.

I really love the characters in this movie. They all feel alive and independent. The movie has this road trip vibe where Suzume meets more people and see more of Japan, and every person feels like their own, even if they barely impact the story. Suzume is a character that needed more time to really shine and shown the way she feels and why she acts the way she dose but to me the creative and weird decision of turning Souta into a chair that can walk and talk is a stroke of genius. It makes the story more memorable and really shows the magical capabilities of this world. And the chair is cute no doubt.

What Shinkai often do best is the mix of serious and real with magic and fantasy. This movie can be seen as a fun fantasy road trip, or a look at the abandon culture of Japan as well as the horror of earthquakes. The movie is kids fun, while talking about orphans and even mentioning the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, showing it in a moving and gut wrenching way. This is where Shinkai shines, and this movie moved me to tears at the end. It has this very impactful scene with a kid calling for her mom and it really is devastating. The very end is kind of just there and while interesting doesn't really impact the story too much. In general it feels like the movie was written by multiple people with multiple visions and too much they wanted to say, but there is only 1 writing credit, Skinkai himself. I think he wanted to do too many things this time around and the middle of the movie really slows down to me and some plot points only shine in one scene and is then abandoned. The story also felt like something I had seen before and the hopeless romanticism of Shinkai feels done to death now. It had Weathering with you (2019) vibes, another Shinkai movie, and the plot points were a bit too similar to me. It´s still a good story, but I would love to see Shinkai move out of his comfort zone.

The animation is as always absolutely glorious and incredible. Shinkai has this eye for the small and mundane which he always but energy into as the side of an eraser that is highly detailed with logos and text. Not only the but there are these just picturesque frames that are so beautiful and detailed. Shinkai has been experimenting more and more with the crossing of 2D and 3D animation and now I feel like he is leaning more into 3D. This is for better and worse as the 3D looks incredible and some frames are still absolutely stunning, but I miss his 2D charm. It´s still here, but a bit more in the background comparably.

The score and music is pretty good and cute, not as memorable as it used to be but it works for this movie.

The voice acting is pretty good too and especially love Suzume´s voice actress Hanoka Hara. She brings so much natural voice work to her role and her acting is effortless. While I am not criticizing Souta´s voice work, I noticed his voice sounded recorded. You could really hear it was recorded sound and it created this cheap and unnatural sound to the character.

Suzume is a good movie and I can´t wait to watch it again, but it will take a bit longer for me to return to this compared to Shinkais other works. This movie just lagged a little bit everywhere and while still being enjoyable it just isn't as perfect as I´m used to from this director.

1 Comparison with past works

Suzume is completely different from Your name and Weathering with you.

This film does not have plot twists that Your name has.

Additionally, this film may not contain the willpower portrayed in Weathering with you.

However, this film may contain something necessary to live in this world.

2 Contents

This film evokes memories of a serious incident in Japan for the present generation, and also allows future generations to inherit those memories.

This film may teach us something necessary to overcome that incident.

In my opinion, this film may be comparable to Your name.