As if Your Name was a hard enough act to follow, Makoto Shinkai managed to successfully follow it up with the stunning Weathering With You in 2019, and once again with Suzume. Given his tendency to present us with otherworldly teen dramas, chance encounters of a mystical kind, and potent environmental messages that bind everything together, Shinkai continues to explore these familiar trends in Suzume, perfecting his coming-of-age narrative and tropes with yet more gorgeous animation than ever before.
“Divine Gods who dwell beneath this land. You have long protected us for generations. Your mountains and rivers, that we have long called our own, I return them to you!”
Suzume is in part another beautiful coming-of-age tale, told through a Ghibli-esque fantasy adventure complete with a talking cat and animated chair, that doubles as a historical memorialisation of environmental disaster in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Suzume fulfils the role of titular schoolgirl heroine who gets wrapped up in a mission to cross Japan to seal portals to a hellish landscape, preventing an entity known as the “worm” from causing an apocalyptic event, in turn returning travel companion Shouta human again after being cursed by a talking cat and transformed into a three-legged chair. It’s a fast-paced journey across Japan – even with a three-legged chair along for the trek – with a greater emphasis on fantasy than past Shinkai movies, though retaining many of his narrative hallmarks we’ve all come to love – including the return of J-Rockers RADWIMPS, whose title track about the protagonists aunt inspired Shinkai to incorporate her more intrinsically in the story. Vitally, Suzume continues to present us with a young romantic protagonist, beautifully rendered modern setting with lush rural landscapes, and captivating if comically doomed romance-turned body-swap dilemma which seems to trouble many of his YA protagonists. Though the transformation into a less-than stable chair is certainly new.
While Your Name’s take on a Freaky Friday body-swap romance and Weathering With You’s spiritually powered weather maiden make use of a more nuanced style fantasy in a grounded setting, Suzume allows itself moments to embrace more fairytale, high-stakes situations with a giant Calamity Ganon demon called the “worm”, and references to the Japanese mythological Namazu – a catfish who can cause earthquakes – which coincides with real-world drama and continues to express poignant environmental messages Shinkai is known for. It reacts to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, where Suzume lost her parents to a similar disaster at a young age, while exploring themes of repressed memories, national trauma, and the positivity of communities and people coming together.
“Gates open in lonely places where no human hearts are left.”
Along her way, Suzumi meets an eclectic range of characters – Daijin the rebellious cat totem; Rumi, a hearty bar owner and mum of chaotic twins; and Shouta’s endearingly clumsy friend, Serizawa – with whom she forms lasting friendships. In particular, the people Suzume comes across each have a connection to the disaster that claimed the lives of her parents while offering moments of comic relief that help to develop her character and are represented by a cast of excellent voice actors, including Your Name star, Ryunosuke Kamiki as Serizawa.
Through this journey, Shinkai gives himself ample opportunity to show off his brilliantly detailed set pieces with vivid modern Japanese settings stretching rural countryside and cityscapes, overgrown, abandoned theme parks and buildings, as well as apocalyptic spirit worlds, combining the gorgeous city greenery of The Garden of Words with Princess Mononoke’s swirling demon corruption. There’s a strong Ghibli charm to this one, notably referencing Shinkai’s favourite Miyazaki productions throughout, and an animation quality that lives up to his previous works. There’s a sort of irony in how, as a self-professed Miyazaki fan, Shinkai’s more recent works have been attempts to distance himself from the mantle of being the “new Miyazaki” yet the charm and blend of fantasy in a modern setting presented in Suzume make this an apt comparison, though certainly with enough of his own unique stylings to distinguish himself from this analogous relationship viewers have commented on.
“The ever-after is where all souls go to rest. It’s not somewhere the living can reach”
Suzume is an expressive road trip that is at times funny and charming courtesy of the unlikely duo of a schoolgirl and her struggling three-legged companion. Though surprisingly spry all things considered, managing to leap great bounds the way only an anime chair could. Shinkai continues to demonstrate how he can remain emotionally attuned to his ultimate message and character heartaches within a bubbly, fun journey that sees his characters push through their hardships and create meaningful connections not only with the characters they meet, but also the world around them. With Your Name and Weathering With You, as well as an impressive back-catalogue that spans The Garden of Words and 5 Centimetres per Second, Shinkai is undoubtedly one of the most prolific and consistently excellent anime directors currently out there.
