Suzume

Not a fan of the age gap, its just slightly too big for my comfort. If I ignore that then the main pair was pretty cute. After watching so much Anime this is pretty easy :|
The worm is… kinda phallic. I wish the monster had a different design or texture to reduce that feeling.
Soundtrack top tier as always. ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-.
- Main theme Suzume is great, and actually feels different from RADWIMPS’s other works. I’m sad it wasn’t totally used in the movie (I think it was a simplified remix).
- Sky over Tokyo captures the mystical feeling of impending doom really well - it was super well utilized during the Tokyo scenes.
- Closing the Door is a slow orchestral version of the main theme, but damn it hits just right, both standalone and during the movie scene it’s used.
- Tamaki wasn’t used in the movie itself, but despite its simplicity its a nice listen and its cool to have a dedicated song for Tamaki’s feelings.
Visuals are also top tier, as always. I’m a slut for starscapes and the Ever-After’s starry sky and mystical vibe fulfils that fantasy perfectly. I also purposely took the time during the movie to look at the backgrounds and foregrounds of certain shots instead of focusing on the character (specifically young-Suzume while she was wandering the Ever After).
Stepmom and mom are both based. Backstory is tragic but Suzume is really cool. The “parent died and family takes over as parental figure” backstory is relatively common and while this movie didn’t do anything special in that front, it was still well executed.
Suzume’s initial journey from Kyushu to Ehime to Kobe was really fun to watch. It was pretty exciting when I realized the duo weren’t going to go back to Kyushu. The living chair was dumb in a fun way, and carried the comedy. It was also cute to watch Suzume meet new helpful people (Suzume and Chika girl-talking at night was cute, and babysitting Rumi’s kids was also comedic with the chair adding to the chaos).
The Tokyo boss fight was very cool (ignoring the phallic worm). Pretty good climax, and Suzume’s internal conflict over saving the lives of everyone in Tokyo vs sacrificing Souta was sufficiently tense.
ROAD TRIP WOOOO
- I’m glad Tamaki got in the car too. I thought for a moment that Suzume and Tomoya were gonna drive off and leave Tamaki behind, which I think would’ve been both a bad message and deprive us of a lot of conflict/feelings resolution.
- Suzume getting told by Tomoya that the ruins of the countryside were beautiful was nice. I’m a sucker for “remnants of civilization”-vibes so seeing the visual of an abandoned town overrun by greenery was cool.
- The songs during the road trip were great, and Tomoya’s slightly bad singing was fun. Really captured the road trip vibe and reminded me of Final Fantasy XV.
- The showdown in the rest area parking lot between Tamaki and Suzume was pretty generic as far as step-parent drama goes. That being said it wasn’t bad, so it filled its purpose of making some tension. I’m a bit dissatisfied that Tamaki’s outburst is blamed on Sadaijin’s influence, rather than purely her own emotions boiling over, but I do give props because the moment when Suzume notices Tamaki acting strange did give me a bit of a spook with Sadaijin appearing behind Tamaki to reveal what was causing the outburst. That tension gets resolved in a slightly unsatisfying way but they made up pretty realistically during the conversation on the bike so +1 for that. I’m glad they acknowledged that Tamaki did feel those feelings some of the time, rather than just saying it was all a lie.
Suzume finding her old diary with all the blotted-out pages was a little unnerving. Props to that idea, felt like the stakes got raised a lil bit from that and made the deduction of where the door is a bit more interesting than simply reading the diary.
The time loop thing was alright - the words of encouragement that Suzume gave her younger self were a little cliche but the moment itself was pretty heartwarming and got me hyped when I realized Suzume was the person who had given younger-Suzume the chair. Time loop stuff is always a bit dumb if you try to analyze it too far so I’m gonna just go along with my initial moment of hype and say it was cool.
The final climax was a bit weak - I don’t think the music sufficiently carried the action, and I have some gripes about the keystone cats which I’ll talk about in the next section. The climax itself didn’t use the Suzume song, which was both a bit disappointing because I’ve been listening to it for months and also relieving because I might’ve overplayed the Suzume song a bit too much for the song to properly hit (the slower orchestral version Closing the Door was an amazing substitute though!). As far as the actual fight goes - it was as good as it could’ve been given the enemy was a big phallic worm. This really makes me sad because I think I’d be way more into the fight if it wasn’t a worm. Synchronized keystone stabbing was cool and the burning Ever After was pretty spooky.
The cats were a bit weird - I think they detract from the magic a little bit. This isn’t specific to this film, but I do think Makoto Shinkai walks a really fine line with the supernatural parts of his stories. I’ll probably write a deeper analysis of magic in Makoto Shinkai films later, but for now I’ll say that the sentient cats, the family line of Closers, and the passed down literature surrounding the Ever After made the magic feel too within reach. It felt like there was a mystery around the worm and the Ever After that we weren’t able to solve. Your Name and Weathering with You’s magic was a lot more abstract and less understandable, which for me makes those movie’s magical elements far more “magical”.
- Daijin felt a bit inconsistent in their role as a minor antagonist-turned-ally. They start off as this chaotic force that’s seemingly causing doors to open everywhere, but later on the movie tries to justify it by claiming that Daijin was leading Suzume and Souto to the open doors. If Daijin’s goal was to make sure those doors stayed closed, why did they curse Souta to limit his ability to close doors? Is it simply because Daijin took a liking to Suzume, and wanted her to be the one to close the doors? If so, the movie didn’t do a good job to make me sympathize with Daijin. Their conversations with Suzume felt entirely too taunting to turn around and go “Daijin was trying to help all along.”
- Next up is Sadaijin. My issue with them is that they add to the inconsistent feeling. They just show up at Souta’s grandfather’s hospital window and get told to help take care of the situation. Is that because Sadaijin is the bigger, more disciplined of the keystone deities? Shouldn’t Sadaijin still be a keystone, and not in cat form? Did Daijin wake Sadaijin up from keystone duty, and if so, isn’t that a way more indefensible action for Daijin? How are they on the same side?
- The short of it is that the cats just felt off to me. They have all these different motives going every direction from trying to help, trying to play, trying to get in the way, and yet they’re both on the same side and also helping Suzume all along? The writing doesn’t feel consistent enough for me to sympathize with them, despite the film clearly showing Daijin being sad when they get rejected by Suzume.
Overall, this was a pretty great movie. It feels distinct from Makoto Shinkai’s other works, which is relieving to see after Your Name and Weathering with You were so similar. I consider this one below Your Name but solidly above Weathering with You.