Shinkai's "Suzume" Delivers on Charm and Lens Flares
My hot takes on seeing Suzume in IMAX
SPOILER WARNING! Slight spoilers ahead if you want to watch this movie with a completely clean slate, but I don’t give away much.
Since I heard Makoto Shinkai had a new film coming out last year, I have been anxiously waiting to see what new mind blowing visuals his team would produce. Suzume continues Shinkai’s style of blending fantasy with modern reality to tell tales about growing up with the difficult challenges of imperfect families and relationships.
The title character, Suzume, is a teenage girl living with her aunt due to the sudden loss of her mother at an early age. While riding her bike to school one day, Suzume is compelled to stop when she sees a handsome stranger wandering up the hill with nothing but a backpack and anime locks to die for.
The man says he’s looking for a door and asks if there are any ruins nearby. Naturally, Suzume lets out a confused “Ehhhh?” but tells him the only ruins she knows are around the corner where an area of town was abandoned (I think. The subtitles may have gotten by me a few times.)
Suzume continues to school, but the pull of this tall, dark stranger’s mystery is too strong to resist. So, she skips class to search for him and manages to locate a strange door in the ruins surrounded by a shallow pool of water.
Suzume (like the audience) seems to presume, this being an anime, that’s got to be the door he’s talking about. Sure enough, upon opening it she sees one of those Makoto Shinkai star-lit skies we’ve all been waiting for since sitting down in the IMAX.
During this scene, Suzume accidentally frees a “daijin” (roughly translates to “minister” in Japanese, but in this context represents a sort of guardian spirit.) The daijin’s full purpose has yet to be revealed, but all you need to know for now is, once freed, this stone relic turns into an adorable yet creepy cat that runs around finding more of these doors that are opening and releasing impending disasters.
To make matters more complicated, Suzume’s hot crush, Souta, is turned into a three legged chair by the daijin’s magic, severely hampering his ability to do his sacred duty and keep these portals closed.
For Souta to get his man-body back and save Japan, he explains they need to get that cat back to it’s stone form as a key-stone to protect Japan from these supernatural forces threatening to be released. It is therefore left to Suzume to help catch this stray daijin who’s uncanny ability to travel quickly on public transportation would make any Japan tourist green with envy.
I know, it sounds like a lot of typical, cheesy anime tropes, but all of it is delivered with the highest level of skill, beauty, and fun that has become a hallmark of the previous Shinkai films. While the emotional arc of Suzume isn’t quite as powerful as some of his previous characters, the really moving part of this story was the larger theme about the unstoppable forces of nature and the indelible impact such disasters have on the lives of so many victims.
Shinkai has expressed in interviews that the 2011 tsunami disaster had a devastating effect on his life, and he made it his mission to express the effects of that disaster in his films. You can see elements of this theme in Your Name, also, but in this film, the focus seems more directly on the larger population rather than on an affected individual or family. In every location a disaster is about to take place, part of the magic Suzume and Souta must call upon to close the door is hearing the voices of all the people from across time at that particular location. I found myself more moved by those moments than some of the more personal moments about the lead characters.
All in all, I had a great time watching this film in the theater. If you are new to Makoto Shinkai films, I think you will still be thoroughly struck by the beauty of the visuals in the theater. But you should definitely make your way back to Your Name, Weathering With You, Garden of Words, and 5 Centimeters per Second to experience more of his incredible visual beauty and storytelling.
BONUS: I’m not sure if I really agree with all of this list’s rankings based on the animes I’ve seen, but this article gives you a good summary of Shinkai’s body of work:
Sterling Martin is an artist and designer living in Chicago, IL. His background includes drawing, writing, theatre, teaching, improv & sketch comedy, and whatever else he can get his hands on to be creative. You can find him on the internet at:
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Website: sterlingmartin.design
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