Review of Suzume

Maybe because I went into this movie with high expectations because of Makoto Shinkai's previous works, that I was so goddamn disappointed. It lowkey tilted me at how mediocre the movie is. For a movie directed by such an infamous name, I really did not expect to finish it thinking "Is that it?". Also this review is NOT spoiler free. Firstly to get it aside, yeah the movie has nice visuals and a good soundtrack. CGI was kinda ass like the worm looked like a huge red c*** sometimes and the cars and the train station background people were goofy, but it is what it is.Just generic comments.

Now moving on. Most of the cast besides Suzume is pretty one dimensional, with Souta (the chair), pretty much just being the token hot guy, who doesn't really do anything but chase a cat and parkour as a chair. The relationship between the two is even worse, where Suzume is pretty much extremely down to die for the guy she just met. In the scene where Suzume talks to Souta's grandpa, she says "Whether one lives or dies is a matter of luck", which is definitely a viewpoint I can resonate with, having lost people close to me, and well makes sense for a character like her. But this is immediately followed with her crying and saying that even though she accepts that Souta's fate was that of becoming the coldest guy 🥶🥶🥶, she's "afraid of a world without Souta". It's meant to show that she doesn't want to lose anymore people she cares about. But cmon, you've only known the guy for like 2-3 days and he was a chair for 90% of it, and you love him THAT much.

The only nice theme of the movie would be Suzume's revisiting of her trauma and the healing of her inner child and pain that she has held within her. I've seen people even say the movie is good because the plot is not spoonfed to you. But... it literally is. It's pretty easy to comprehend that she still has trauma from losing her mother, and then she revisits her destroyed hometown to face this said trauma. She then finds her child version and gives her the chair, meant to be a symbol of her coming to terms with her mother's death by letting go of her attachment to the item. But despite this grand message being such an integral part of the story's ideas and themes, it felt like the greater task at hand was Suzume trying to rizz up the hot anime guy, chase cats and destroy the killer worms...

These themes of trauma are really only looked at towards the end of the movie, and because of this, the pay off just feels totally wrong. The movie's main plot was very mediocre and straight forward, where the two leads just go across Japan clearing worms over and over again. The audience is made to believe that the relationship between the two leads and their need to stop the earthquakes is important, will have a twist or just have anything substantial, but for this main plot point literally nothing happens other than them placing keys into worms. Suzume's trauma and emotions from losing her mother were not fleshed out very well, which may make sense saying that it happened to her 12 years ago. Some may also say it's because Shinkai wanted to show a more uplifting and liberating view on trauma, but for me it made the impact of her coming-of-age to feel really lackluster.

Perhaps if I knew about the context of the 2011 earthquake prior to watching the movie, maybe I would've felt a bit more. I definitely think this movie would resonate a lot more with the Japanese people, and I respect the movie for touching on something which still affects people today in a manner which can express these people's emotions.

Overall, the movie felt pretty bland, the message was nice though, but not enough to salvage the rest of the film for me. And I can't believe Daijin did all that for Suzume to still not care. Daijin was a better friend than Souta could ever be. RIP goat cat. He deserved a better owner.