Review of Suzume

Somehow, this and Your Name happened to be a watch my non-anime fan family wanted to watch. And, initially, I didn’t feel compelled to watch it since I didn’t want to watch another Your Name. And, well, since it’s been some time since I watched it, well, perhaps my memory’s failing me, but it was notably worse than Your Name. STORY (???/10) Pacing was excruciatingly slow. What I thought was the turning point ended up being an hour in. Motifs and subplots lead to nothing. It was worse than being red herrings (like Spirited Away). They had no build up. The subplots were not tied up nicely,nor had any basis to exist. I don’t know who greenlit this, because this is not writing that would be found in a western children’s movie. No, it wouldn’t even be found in 7/10 anime known for its inconsistent writing.

ANIMATION (9/10)
Animation was, unsurprisingly, their main strong suit. As a stickler of bad 3D, it blended in nicely with the rest of the animation, making it much more bearable than other writing. Nothing stuck out weird and it was beautifully done.

SOUND (6/10)
Well, the music was decent, but not as hard hitting as in Your Name, which I can’t exactly blame Radwimps for. The theme song, Suzume, came only once, without any of the lyrics despite it being the title song practically. In a lot of anime, I can pick up on music and be like “wow, that really is catchy” but the only cool thing was a jazz-like song, which, was, unique, but didn’t mesh with everything else. The SFX sounds were smooth, even if the content that was being shot was questionable.

CHARACTERS (5/10)
Wow, were the characters ordinary. Even by anime archetype standards, we have a pushover who suddenly dislikes their only family member, and a hardheaded college student who seems dumber than rocks. And, for the other main character/rival/antagonist thing, they seemed to exist to force the story forward rather than explain their existence. Which, was how the other two main characters felt like to me. Especially toward the ending, MC was not only an idiot, but a selfish idiot. And that was praised for. I felt Emily in Paris (for our non-anime fans) level of awful. And, somehow, Belle’s MC had better character development than whatever we got here.

OVERALL (5/10)
If you want a typical anime movie that does the typical things and tries to do too many things at once, but fails at successfully doing any of them in the whole 2 hours, go for it. But, if you need a starter anime, just go for Your Name (even though that has its own set of issues). Or even the first episode of Oshi no Ko while you’re at it.

Well, I now have a reason to avoid this studio and be wary of their stuff. Which sucks because their animation is S-tier. But, if the story is awful, then, the animation is wasted on it.