“Suzume”

Movie Review

CoMix Wave Films is the creator of the Japanese animated fantasy adventure movie Suzume. It shows a high school student and an enigmatic young guy attempting to stop a string of catastrophes in Japan. Makoto Shinkai wrote the script and also served as the director.

Along with character designs by Masayoshi Tanaka, animation direction by Kenichi Tsuchiya, art direction by Takumi Tanji, and music by Radwimps and Kazuma Jinnouchi, the movie also contains the voices of Nanoka Hara and Hokuto Matsumura.

Release day for Suzume was November 2022. The movie went on to earn the fourth-highest box office total in Japan for 2022, the fourth-highest total in all of Japan, and the highest total ever for a Japanese release in China.

High school student Suzume Iwato, 17, resides with her aunt in Kyushu. She has a dream one night about looking for her mother when she was little in a demolished neighborhood. The following morning, while she is making her way to school, Suzume comes across a young man who is looking for doors in abandoned buildings. She informs him of a neighboring historic onsen resort before accompanying him there. Suzume discovers a door that is perched alone on its frame and that looks out upon a starry meadow she is unable to enter. She stumbles over a cat statue that transforms into a real cat and runs away. She returns to school after feeling scared.

Suzume detects a blaze-like column rising from the location of the onsen at lunchtime that no one else can see. When she gets back there, she sees the previous man attempting to shut the door. Suzume goes to help after observing him struggle and suffer damage. However, not before silently colliding with the town and wreaking damage akin to an earthquake, the red column vanishes.

Sota Munakata is brought by Suzume to her house so she can patch his wound. He claims that in order to stop a massive supernatural "worm" from triggering earthquakes, he searches abandoned buildings across Japan for doors and locks them. Sota and the child's chair he was sitting on are fused together when the resort cat makes an appearance. Suzume follows Sota, who has turned into an animated chair, as he chases the cat to a ship going to Ehime. The worm was released after the cat was moved away from the abandoned entrance, according to him, who also refers to the cat as a keystone.

From Ehime, the couple follows the cat across Shikoku using cues posted on social media by residents who have photographed the cat and given it the moniker "Daijin." They locate the worm and block its entrance into an abandoned school with the assistance of Chika, a local resident. Thanks to Rumi, the proprietor of a nearby tavern, the two find the worm reemerging at a deserted amusement park after following Daijin's path to Kobe. Daijin refuses to comply with Sota's request that he change back into a keystone since he prefers to "play" with Suzume. She closes the worm's portal with Sota. According to Sota, the portal goes to the Ever-After, where the souls of the dead reside. It becomes clear that Sota is losing his sense of self in his chair shape as they spend the night at Rumi's pub.

Sota arranges for Suzume to transport Daijin to his flat after tracing him to Tokyo. He describes the fable of the Namazu worm and how two keystones were placed in eastern and western Japan to calm it. The location of the eastern keystone is unknown, and the western keystone has evolved into the cat Daijin. Tokyo could be completely destroyed if the worm invades the metropolis, much like the Great Kanto earthquake did in 1923. Returning, Daijin informs that he had transferred his role as the chair form of Sta's keystone. When Suzume discovers the resurrected worm, Sta transforms into a keystone in her hands, allowing Suzume to contain it. She awakens in a cave that contains Tokyo's entrance. She notices the keystone Sta while looking into the Ever-After but is once more unable to approach him. At the hospital, Suzume pays a visit to Sta's grandfather. He reveals that Suzume had previously mistakenly visited the realm since she was able to glimpse the worm and the Ever-After via the doors. Additionally, the entrance she used was the only route for her to return to the Ever-After and save Sota.

Suzume visits her childhood home in Tohoku, which was damaged in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, to reunite with her aunt Tamaki, who had followed her from Kyushu. Suzume learns that Tamaki is controlled by Sadaijin, the eastern keystone, at a rest stop along the journey. Suzume visits the wreckage of Tamaki's former home, where she once resided with her mother and Tamaki's sister, a nurse who perished in the tsunami. Sadaijin and Suzume find her old door and go inside. After the earthquake-tsunami, she resurfaces in the Ever-After, which takes the form of her village. Suzume awakens Sta, transforming him back into a human as Sadaijin diverts the worm. Daijin accepts defeat and resumes his role as a keystone. Suzume and Sta lock the worm once more with Daijin and Sadaijin, keeping it from exiting the Ever-After.

Then Sta finds a young Suzume from 12 years prior in the Ever-After. Suzume recalls how, after her mother passed away, she went to the Ever-After as a young child. She gives her younger self the chair she used to sit in as a child while informing her about her future in the "Ever-After" version of her house. Tamaki discovers Suzume after she leaves the Ever-After with the chair, 12 years earlier. While Suzume and Tamaki return to Kyushu to meet the friends she gained along the road, Sta leaves the Ever-After and heads back to Tokyo. Later, back in Miyazaki, Suzume is returning to her daily routine when she once more encounters Sota as they are both strolling up the same street.

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