Spoiler warning for Suzume
Suzume is great. The latest animated feature from writer and director Makoto Shinkai is a surprising departure from predictable teen romance into an unexpected realm of collective grief over lost family and natural disasters that rock entire countries. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Weathering With You proved to be an underwhelming retread with ౠfan service that treated viewers like fools, while Suzume deliberately subverts those shortcomings by creating something far more poignant.
Yes, it has a teenage girl falling head over heels for a dreamy boy, but this romance quickly takes a backseat to far more prescient thematic ideas. Shinkai has flirted with modern youth and the displacement teenagers in Japan can feel for years, but instead of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:swapping bodies and navigating the climate cri✤sis, Suzume hopes to be far more direct with its messaging.
Suzume is a young girl who finds herself floating through life. With her parents long dead, she was raised by an 🌠aunt who has given up much of her time to take care of a kid who isn’t even hers, but had nowhere else to go. Like many of Shinkai’s films, the coming revelations line the periphery and don’t feel obvious at first, but inform each new character arc and moment in ways that make repeat viewings all the more rewarding. Suzume is much the same, and what begins as an apocalyptic romantic roadtrip to close fantastical doors ☂poised to destroy the world evolves into a tangible drama of human emotion I never saw coming.
The film is also firmly grounded in the genre of fantasy, with natural disasters rocking Japan depicted as crimson worms from another dimension that only beings known as Closers are able to see, or those of us who have crossed into a ♍magical world known as the Ever-After where departed souls go to find peace. Suzume is one such person, as is Souta, a dreamy boy she chases into an abandoned district of town instead of going to school because he is just that handsome, apparently.
She finds an interdimensional door, leaves it ajar, and frees an ancient god whose task was to keep💞 this place sealed and the human world protected. This god is also an adorable little cat who kickstarts a nationwide trip to close these doors and restore normality. It isn’t long until Suzume is forced to leave her hometown of Kyushu in pursuit of several cities dotted around the country. Each one has her making new friends, learning lessons, and coming to terms with an overriding griefℱ that has dominated so much of her short life.
Shinkai intersperses this grief with near constant expressions of whimsy though, taking us through countless luscious environments with characters not afraid to teach moral lessons that don’t always pit Suzume in the brightest light. I also forgot to mention that love interest Souta is transformed into a tiny wooden chair after being cursed, hobbling around on a trio of little legs aꦛs a disembodied voice springs forth. At f🎀irst, I feared it would be a forced gimmick for an eventual romance, but Shinkai somehow turns an inanimate object into a crucial plot device that doesn’t just represent a burgeoning love, but all the people Suzume has lost.
A prominent male love interest spending most of the film as a piece of furniture is a bright source of comedy, and one that takes on additional meaning when it’s revealed Suzume&🐠rsquo;s mother left it behind shortly after passing away. Its missing chair leg isn’t a character quirk, instead symbolising how many of the people we encounter are inherently broken by myriad hardships, yet are able to shape their future in the name of this grief instead of letting their existence be defined by it. We never see the chair repaired, or have its tattered condition explained, and this exposition isn’t necessary to decipher how𓄧 vital its meaning really is.
Suzume pulls from Japan’s 2011 Earthquake for its world building and character writing. At first I thought this inclusion was distant on purpose as humanity came to reclaim past losses by wip🍰ing out supernatural creatures capable of unleashing natural disasters. It’s much more deliberate, however, to a point where the entire film can be considered a bittersweet farewell to those who left home that day to never return. Suzume’s mother was one of them, with her occupation as a Nurse keeping her in the trenches until it was too late. Suddenly a young girl is🅷 left with nothing, and stumbles into the Ever-After in search of a loved one who is never coming back. Your Name and Weathering With You put teenage romance ahead of a deeper story, and suffer in retrospect, while Suzume strikes an infinitely more effective balance.
Doors are not only found in abandoned places the world has forgotten, but specific ruins that were never repaired in the aftermath. Entire districts, schools, and family homes are collages of discarded memories and decaying comforts, and for Closers to banish the crimson worms, they must recall the experiences of those who once called these places their own. Forgotten spectres taken from the world far too soon, left behind out of necessity as Japan tried to pick up all the pieces it could. Suzume is a respectful tribute to a generation-defining moment in the lives of millions, delivered in a way that displays grief as a universal constant nobody is immune to. It feels like Shinkai is returning to his more introspective older works, where the human condition is discussed amid surrealist renditions of 𓄧fantasy that expertly blend its romance with the inner plight of characters that manage to feel real in all ways that matter.
Now a decade has passed, and a new generation comes into view, Suzume asks us not to forget a tragic event that changed Japan forever, and how the loss of thousands might be a reason to grief, but also to celebrate and find new love in ways that honour them. I am so glad that Makoto Shinkai went against my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:initial fears and created something specia🍎l here that only occasionally leans on tried-and-true anime trop⭕es. It is a strong, confident, and beautiful film with a message that resonates deeply, and one that will definitely stay with me.